For a country with grand ambitions to become a financial services "hub", South Korea has a strange way of pursuing them. Logically, its priority should be to simplify regulation and reduce discrimination against foreign investors. Instead, Seoul seems bent on doing the opposite.

The latest instance is a requirement that any shareholder acquiring more than 5 per cent of a Korean company declare whether it intends to "influence" the latter's management and disclose its sources of funding. In practice, the rule may prove little more than a bureaucratic irritant, since few foreign institutions hold stakes above the threshold. However, it follows other measures clearly directed against foreign investors, including a proposal to reserve half the seats on Korean banks' boards for Korean nationals.