Hanil Bank
The Hanil Bank was a financial institution first established in Korea under Japanese rule, initially as Chōsen Trust then renamed Joseon Trust Bank and Korea Trust Bank in South Korea. In 1954, it merged with Korea Trade and Industry Bank and renamed itself again as Korea Heungup Bank, then Hanil Bank in 1960. The latter name alludes to respective names in Korean of Korea and Japan, and has therefore sometimes been rendered in English as Korea–Japan Bank.
It should not be confused with an earlier Korean bank of the same name, active between 1906 and 1931 and a predecessor entity of Chohung Bank.
Under Japanese rule
Chōsen Trust was created in December 1932 at the initiative of the Governor-General of Chōsen, with initial capital provided by the Bank of Chōsen and the Chōsen Industrial Bank as well as Dong-il Bank,, and several individual Japanese and Korean businesspeople.In South Korea
With the division of Korea, as with other banks previously controlled by Japanese interests, the respective operations of Chōsen Trust were taken over by public authorities on both sides of the 38th parallel. In North Korea, they were soon merged into the central bank within the country's monobank system.In South Korea, the renamed Korea Heungup Bank was privatized in 1958 and acquired by Samsung C&T Corporation. Like other Korean commercial banks, however, it was nationalized in 1962 following the May 16 coup, as the military government expropriated large shareholders on the premise that their wealth had been amassed illicitly.
In 1979, the president of Hanil Bank was placed under criminal investigation in connection with the bankruptcy of Yulsan Group.
In 1981, Hanil Bank was again privatized. Its privatization was part of a limited financial liberalization effort undertaken by then-president Chun Doo-hwan. Hanil Bank was chosen because it was deemed the best-managed of the four major commercial banks under government ownership, and thus the one with the most promising prospects for rapid privatization. The government divestiture was announced in April 1981 and completed in June.
In 1984, Hanil Bank established Hanil Lease and acquired Hanil Securities in 1985. By the mid-1990s, it was one of the five most prominent Korean banks, together with Chohung Bank, Korea Commercial Bank, Korea First Bank, and Seoul Bank.
On, under financial stress following the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Hanil Bank announced its merger with Korea Commercial Bank, with simultaneous public recapitalization that resulted in the government holding a 95-percent equity stake in the merged entity. The merger was completed in 1999. The merged entity, initially called Hanvit Bank, was renamed to Woori Bank in 2002.
The Hanil Bank head office building was located on Namdaemunro, between the respective former seats of Korea Commercial Bank and Korea Industrial Bank. It was reconstructed in the late 1970s and eventually sold in 2002 to the Lotte Group which used it for an extension of the central Lotte Department Store, branded as AvenueL.