Well put, NK. To discount comparisons as purely insecurity while ignoring competitive spirit is a disservice to Koreans and Korean culture.

Also, Koreans are often very gracious losers.

When the Korean lost their World Cup matches, were people from the winning team’s country harrassed ? When Korea lost the final game of the WBC to Japan (after beating them 2 games out of 2 in the same tourney), were Japanese people harrassed ?

What Koreans don’t like are cheaters, including themselves. To cheat and win is worse than losing.

It is unfortunate that ugly political sentiment rears its ugly head where there ought to be goodwill and sportsmanship. But, for better or for worse, Japan-bashing/Japan-envy remains a national sport and past-time of Korea. It can be argued, though, that it was (is, still?) a big reason why Korea is the 12th largest economy. But I am sure many Korean males were able to put this historical enmity aside and partake of the universal appreciation of tits, legs, and ass that knows no politics.

To attenuate it just slightly, though, you will no doubt agree that a measure of the quality of a person’s or group’s competitive spirit is how they handle themselves when they lose a competition.

See tabitha’s comment #33 in the Miss Universe thread, for example.

That what you call “insecurity”, others may call it “competitive spirit”, which, of course, is a totally different thing. The choice is more revealing of the bias of your own mental interpretive grid.

This constant striving, grim determined effort to push ahead, and measuring of oneself against rivals…is not exactly something that most wandering slackers can relate to, of course…

However, I submit that such information is a proxy in a world where information is costly. To take a some what extreme example, lets say we go bungie jumping of the Golden Gate bridge. I bring two bugie cords. They are both brand new and the same in any visable way. One is marked “Guyana Goodness Bungie” and the other “French Fantasic Bungie”. Considering your life depended on it, honestly which would you pick?

And then if you really had time to find out they are made in the same factory, use the same South American rubber plantations, and even are the same company since Guyana is a French posession, you may very well become more indifrent. However finding all that out, given the situation, would have cost you something in time and effort. This may have been worth it for such a life saving device, but are you really going to same amount of research for radio?

I understand what you are saying but I am not sure that I fully agree. I am not sold that the respondents would use country of origin as a measurement of quality if not prodded to do so by the survey.

Pretty much irrelevant anyways as the origin of the company has little to do with where the product is made.

Many straws, true.

“And the US can’t export its way out of trouble, as you imply, because the US simply doesn’t make anything anymore.”

+

“They absolutely will not continue indefinitely buying up ‘pieces of green paper’ that cannot be exchanged in the future for anything tangible.”

There’s a good economic reason why the U.S. still had one of the highest per-capita GDPs in the world, despite being a net importer, not making much of anything tangible, and being hobbled by many other liablities, including the world’s likely worst health care system, most expensive war, and a massive budget and national deficit : knowledge creation.

The U.S. is still far and away the center of innovation in the world, perhaps not on a per-capita basis, but definitely overall. Innovation is in tangible, but has a higher value than almost any manufactured good.

The question then becomes how long can the U.S. maintain this leadership ? With more borders going up (physically, legally, and culturally), the U.S. is slipping. As an American myself, I hope the U.S. can reverse this decline before it’s too late. My big fear is that the U.S. will reach a tipping point when the outflow of brain capital triggers an irreversable downward spiral of per-capita GDP, quality of living, and thus attractiveness to investment and innovation.

Yes, a crash of the U.S. dollar may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, but it is just one straw out of the bundle. The bundle is much bigger than that, I believe, and unfortunately the camel is already showing signs of weakness.

Perhaps Koreans are a bit insecure, but they have reason to be. Most of my Korean friends over 35 years old remember when they were kids and Korea was a very poor country, nearly 3rd world. That’s an amazing achievement to develop that quickly in such a short amount of time. It was likely not even possible without a great deal of national pride and emotional investment.

This same national pride and emotional investment is still in strong force today. Hence, the excitement Koreans feel when they are ranked #1 in the world in something and the despair they feel when they slip. Most Koreans I know today regard the recent “meager” 5% annual GDP growth as a failure of not only their economy, but their country and even themselves. Hence, the insecurity.

(The reason for this slowdown in GDP growth is a topic well outside this post, so I won’t digress.)

I would think most people in the world, including most of us on Robert’s blog, would likely have reacted in a similar way if we lived in similar times in a similar country and hence would likely react in a similar way today to similar news (given a similar history, goes the logic). I could be wrong, but I’ll stand by my belief for now.

There is no such thing as ‘just wasted’. China, Japan and Saudi each have a trillion USD in ‘cash’ (T-bills) sitting around. Add in the other Gulf Coast countries and the smaller Asian tigers and you have another two trillion. At the moment, it can’t be spent; there is nothing to buy. Real estate is at its peak, stock markets are at their peak, fine art, junk bonds, everything, everything…overvalued. Yes, it would be a ‘waste’ to buy into any of these assets now. But that doesn’t mean the money simply disappears with zero net effect. The first central bank to blink and sell of some dollars will crash the USD, making all those holdings drop substantially in value, but the result would (will) be a painful global recession, since America’s gluttonous consumers will have no buying power, and the rest of the world will have no one to sell to. And the US can’t export its way out of trouble, as you imply, because the US simply doesn’t make anything anymore.

The alternative to this is inflation. The world’s central banks are at their limit for dollar accumulation. If they stop buying US treasuries, then all the money the US is printing to will have to flow into the hands of banks and consumers at a very low price (low interest). The feeding of the massive US current account deficit (800 billion per year now) into general consumer markets will cause inflation, which, as we all know, hurts the poorest people the hardest. Inflation is essentially a tax, and the easiest way for a government to dig itself out of a debt hole, at the expense of its citizens who have to use the devalued currency to buy the things they need to live, and to save. The only reason this inflation has been avoided until now is because the central banks have been buying the Treasuries. They absolutely will not continue indefinitely buying up ‘pieces of green paper’ that cannot be exchanged in the future for anything tangible.