On Aug. 8, 2016, we raised the foreign and local currency sovereign credit ratings on Korea to 'AA' from 'AA-'. We are raising our long-term issuer credit and senior unsecured issue ratings on five commercial Korean banks: Kookmin, Shinhan, Woori, Busan, and Daegu; and four financial institution GREs: KDB, KEXIM, IBK, and NongHyup by one notch following the action on the sovereign. The upgrades reflect additional government support notching mainly based on our current assessment of systemic importance at the current stand-alone credit profiles of the commercial banks and based on the likelihood of receiving extraordinary government for the GREs. The stable outlooks on these financial institutions mainly reflect that on the sovereign and our view that they will likely
