Word: chungs
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...developing world has had no shortage of dictators who made lofty promises to uplift the poor and build powerful nations. Few ever delivered. But then there is South Korea's Park Chung Hee. A general who took control of South Korea after a coup in 1961, he ruled, often with an iron fist, for 18 years. Yet he was also deeply moved by South Korea's destitution. In the early 1960s, the country's per capita national income was just over $100 and the economy depended on American aid. Park, a virulent nationalist, vowed to do something about this...
...Much of a Good Thing the problem with the tiger economies is that, four decades on, the spirit of Park Chung Hee is alive and well. While the mix of products may have changed from sneakers and stuffed toys to microchips and flat-panel TVs, the tigers remain heavily reliant upon exports to power growth. And like any addict, they're now experiencing the pain of rapid withdrawal as factories close and millions of workers across the region lose their jobs. Homelessness is on the rise in South Korea's capital, Seoul, where at 2 a.m. each night the city...
...second layer of diversification requires reducing overall dependence on trade by promoting domestic consumption and expanding service sectors. Park Chung Hee's growth model discouraged investment in domestically focused sectors and consumer spending - both of which could provide a cushion to Asian economies in global downturns. Vestiges of his biases remain, to the detriment of the South Korean economy. For example, South Korea hasn't developed the kind of social services, such as day-care centers for the children of working parents and homes for the elderly, that would relieve some of the financial burdens on working-class families...
...tigers really want to thrive in the future, the answer might lie in rejecting another legacy of Park Chung Hee: the idea that governments alone can successfully engineer high economic performance. Jim Walker, an economist at independent research firm Asianomics in Hong Kong, argues that politicians still intervene too much in their economies instead of allowing market forces to work. "What governments need to do is start trusting their own people rather than hoping the West is going to get it right all of the time," Walker says. For the tigers to keep roaring, they may need to find their...
...ALICE CHUNG...