Many around me are disappointed I have not drank the Lee Myung-bak Kool-aid. Much like Obama-maina in the US at the moment, Lee is supposed to be “break” from the past, and more importantly is “different” then all before him. Somehow Lee is to waive a magic wand and cure all the problems with South Korea, make North Korea cower in fear, and fix every problem the US-Korea relations. Last week gave an incident that supports my skepticism.
The Korean papers were abuzz last week, and the grabbed an obscure buzzword to make it “real issue”. Wheat and other grains surged at the Chicago Board of Trade, the benchmark exchange for determining grain prices worldwide. The Korean papers trumped the problem of “Agflation”. Apparently nobody in Korea is satisfied with the more mundane “Inflation” label
The polished Lee Myung-bak PR team swung into action. Lee had a “meeting” with his cabinet. The English JoongAng Ilbo’s account of the meeting:
“As you all know, the world economy is struggling and prices have been rising globally,” Lee said in his introductory remarks to the eight senior secretaries, according to a pool report…Lee cited the rapidly spiking price of flour, which has forced local food companies and restaurants to raise their prices, as a big potential threat…
“The 100-won price hike means little to those who rarely eat ramen, but the 100-won increase really does big damage to the poor who feed themselves with cheap ramen,” Lee said. “Not only raw material prices but also grain prices are rapidly climbing … and it will deliver the biggest blow to the low-income public.” …
“I want all government agencies and bodies, economy-related or not, to focus on reviving the economy in the early days of the new administration,” Lee told his aides.
Let’s see a Korean president who lectures on the most blatantly obvious things as if rare jewels then follows with a cryptic, yet obvious, call for action. It’s a pattern that sounds familiar, I remember a while ago blogging about Roh Moo-hyun proudly lecturing his cabinet on how he read a book on how we should work harder, so we should all work harder for the nation!
Meanwhile, I cannot wait to see the innovative economic policies from the Ministry of Gender Equality, or the possible Fahrenheit 451-eque economic reforms by the National Fire Service.
The event also sheds light on another reason for me doubting the “change” Lee would bring. Can anybody think of a way to reduce prices in Korea? Hmmm, correct me if I am wrong but wasn’t the ROKUS Free Trade Agreement going to reduce prices? This would certainly be an opportune time for Lee’s people to seize the issue and make the case that rising food costs is a reason why Korea needs to pass the FTA with the US. Instead all we get is a cryptic call for action.
Let’s just take the people he was so worried about, “the poor who feed themselves with cheap ramen”. I have always wondered why in Korea a package of ramen costs around 400 won on sale, yet the equivalent US product on sale is less than 100 won (last time I checked). The difference in the product is minor, and most of the differences could be taken care of in production (all you do is slip in a different broth envelope). Further, I think the “the poor” would spending 66-75% less on a majority of their meals.
However we can go further. Why didn’t Lee use the opportunity to press the case for not only the FTA with the US, but FTA talks with Canada and the EU? All these agreements would certainly do something to push down food prices in Korea.
In fact really if Mr. Lee was so enthusiastic about solving “Agflation” for “the poor”, why not take the ultimate step and unilaterally drop food tariffs in Korea? How much is the tariff on food in Korea? An easy place to start is the ROKUS FTA. Let’s look Annex 3A which covers some of the more popular food products in Korea, and can at a glance give us on idea of what the existing tariffs are:
Onions - 135% tariff
Garlic - 360% tariff
Chili Peppers - 270% tariff
Beans - 55-595% tariff
Sweet Potatoes - 373% tariff
Green Tea - 513.6% tariff
Ginger - 377.3% tariff
Barley - 263-502% tariff
Popcorn - 601% tariff
Maize (grain corn) - 313% tariff
Buckwheat - 251-783% tariff
Processed Cereals - 783% tariff
Sesame Seed Oil - 630%
I could go on, and on, and on, but you get the idea. If food prices were really such an issue for Mr. Lee, or to Korea in general for that matter, why not end the food tariffs? You could easily cut the food by the amount of the “Agflation”, if not even more.
Lee Myung-bak a serious change? —BAH!
44 Comments
That’s right — in the 10 days he’s been in office, the fucker hasn’t changed the whole system yet. What’s he waiting for?!
At least he is admitting the problem. As you said, he is stating the obvious, but at least he is stating it. Under the Roh administration, we suffered for four years before the idiots finally admitted that Korea was in a recession started in 2003. The people were shouting “THE ECONOMY STUPID!!!” but Roh kept pandering to the North instead.
The ROK-US FTA is dead unless the Boneless Beef issue is resolved by full opening of the market…PERIOD. Lee knows that and has promised to work it. But politically speaking, no one — GNP or UNDP — wants to touch the issue until after the April elections.
I myself am starting to have some doubts too about Lee as well, but it is over his pro-chaebol policy. I remember suffering through the pain of the 1997-1998 “IMF Crisis” and the chaebols are back at it again with cross-assurance loans and now wanting to own their own banks to guarantee they can continue the policies. Samsung and Hyundai scandals are only two of the current scandals that illustrate how power corrupts absolutely.
However, I am saying wait until after the April elections when he will gain control of the National Assembly and then can effect some change. Then his true colors will come out — good or bad.
Yes, Korean ramen is much cheaper in North America than it is here. Last time I checked, a pack of made-in-Korea ramen sold for 27-33 cents regular price back home, nearly half the per unit price of most Korean brand-name noodles.
Seriously, could someone please edit Dram_man’s writing before it is posted? The dreadful grammar, dropped articles, bad syntax, not knowing the difference between “then” and “than”, it’s all too painful to read.
damn. brendon beat me to it. hasn’t the guy be in office for like ten minutes? as for the fta, even if lee does something about it, doesn’t it still have to be approved from the u.s. side?
as for grammar, mine sucks so i’m in no position to criticize anyone but please note that the period comes before the end quotation mark.
I have my reservations about Lee, but more along the lines of what Kalani mentioned (the pitfalls of an excessively growth-oriented policy) than the way he conducted his meeting. I tend to think much of a president’s job is to state the obvious in providing an objective to the staff, waiting for them to come back with detailed proposals, asking questions about each option, and choosing the one that makes more sense. If Lee had come to the meeting and said “reduce tariffs now,” as you suggest, then that would be precisely the kind of behavior that would make many people worry.
I find myself scrolling down to confirm the identity of the author as Dram Man as soon as I come across the first jarring misspelling or grating malapropism. (Just as some of you might do to see if it’s me where something seems too acerbic or biting.) It’s a comfort when I confirm it’s him: Aha! Just as I suspected! Still, it’s good to have an identifiable “voice” to one’s writing.
I’m going to take a guess at the ramen price difference issue.
Nongshim has a plant in the US and presumably uses US-grown rice for its flour.
Nongshim plants here I am sure must use Korean-grown rice that is so heavily subsidised it is more than four times dearer (at least at the consumer level).
Well the new Minister of Agriculture and fisheries seems be open to FTAs. They are not dumb though I am not a fan of the American meat industry at all.
I don’t think the Dram deserves to be taken to task for impatience. The point of his rant is not that LMB isn’t acting fast enough, but that such actions as he’s taken don’t indicate that he’s going to be making the kinds of changes that are needed - same might say, desperately so. An even more telling example than the wheel-spinning re int’l grain prices and giving taxi drivers a break on fuel taxes (wanna bet how much of the savings will be passed along to consumers?) is the announced policy to remove the restrictions on chaebol investments. Meanwhile, as the Blue House begins to relax anti-trust constraints on the Korean monopolists, note that the ever vigilant KFTA has announced its intention to get tough with multinational “cartelists”. The net result will be to strengthen the strangehold of the local cartels on the Korean economy (thereby also increasing the already nearly insuperable informal barriers to foreign participation in domestic markets) while KFTA action simultaneously implements official formal barriers to entry. My heart would go out to the poor minister tasked with i”inducing” more foreign investment, if I believed that (at the highest levels) at least, the relevant foreign investment promotion policies were not of a piece with the whole scheme of continuing to operate as closed an economy as possible.
Korean ramen here is a dollar.
How about everyone wait for him to actually do something? He’s been in office what a week?
With ROH he’d start talking about how great instant noodles are and how we should send them to North Korea.
Too acerbic or biting? Eh? Mr. Carr, you must be one of them edumacated fellas that has to ante up and showboat your flamboyant display of vernacular wizardry. Try toning it down for us general folk here that simply drop by and visit without have to sift through the laughable cluster f**** of your inane sense of reprieve. Keep it up Dram, I enjoyed your piece.
Acerbic might be high school graduate-level vocabulary (is it showboating to out myself as a high school graduate?), but I am worried if the word biting is something you consider too difficult.
But then I have to consider your perspective. What does “sense of reprieve” mean, anyway? I don’t think you’re using that word correctly, G.B.
I enjoy Dram’s pieces too — I recognize his unique style.
yeah people correcting grammar and spelling on blogs are relatively jerkoffs
once they opt you to spell check before you submit then there might be an argument however until then please save it for your students
I don’t know about acerbic and biting, but Brendon Carr fits the Macintosh user profile of self-centered, arrogant, conceited, self-important, less modest, and “more assured of their own superiority than the population at large.”
http://www.baltimoresun.com/bu.....8830.story
http://www.macobserver.com/art.....21.9.shtml
http://www.thestreet.com/video/10404600/index.html
I use Linux.
Yes, it’s true: Because I use a Mac, I’m awesome. Or is it the other way around?
And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Mac Users and Window XP-ers, Linux Lovers and all the other Open Sourcers, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
Could I claim the malapropism above was intentional irony? Oh well, worth a shot. Meanwhile, you all are taking this a bit too seriously.
Sorry but I do not find Lee’s time in office a factor. I was not expecting change right away, rather as pointed out later the direction of his policy. So far a big zero in my estimation. As I imply above, Roh himself could of had the same “meeting”, and would have likely said the same exact thing.
KFTC has taken more enforcement action in calendar 2006 than in all of the 23 previous years, combined. In 2007, more still. Just because they are staffing an international cartels bureau doesn’t necessarily mean an anti-foreign campaign. There are international cartels, you know: The Europeans love cartels.
I have not “D-R-U-N-K”
mcnut wrote:
yeah people correcting grammar and spelling on blogs are relatively jerkoffs
once they opt you to spell check before you submit then there might be an argument however until then please save it for your students
mcnut, you’ve posted good things in the past, but I can’t resist correcting your post here. “relatively jerkoffs” doesn’t work, nor does “once they opt you.” You need periods, one semi-colon, and commas.
Finally, go back to capitalization class. And take pawi with you.
If I were the sheriff around here, I’d delete posts without caps. Seriously.
Umm, well, it’s the KORUS FTA, not ROKUS…
Yeah, what’s all the ROKUS about?
it amazes me that people continue to try defining korea’s economic nationalism via liberalism. ain’t gonna work.
#23 I agree to a certain extent. But sometimes it’s too unbearable to read. LiKE WheN THey DO soMeTHing LiKE thiS or actually typing out Ebonics.
#3 Ramen in NYC is at least a $1, if not a bit more. I think if you buy one at a time at a smaller store, they can cost upto about $1.39 or so. I never thought about the price though. I guess living here for so long, I’ve become desensitized to getting ripped off all the time.
I just remember Ansung Tangmyun costing W100 in Korea for a very long time in the 90’s. They used to taste so good.
FYI An article on the current price of ramen noodles in Korea in the wake of “Agflation”
http://joongangdaily.joins.com.....id=2886894
As for US prices, I wonder what your smoking in NYC. As I recall my area supermarket in LA routinely gave out coupons for 12 packages for a dollar. Granted they were not imported Korean brands, but the US made Nissin or Marauchan brands. Like I said above however, they could be localized for Korea in short order. Besides if you were really worried about “the poor” ramen noodle eating masses, what does it matter what flavor envelope is in the soup?
My quick skim of the FTA indicates the tariff on ramen noodles themselves to be relatively low (8%). However they may choose to individually tax the seasoning packet (at 45%). Not to sure how the accounting works out though in full.
My argument however does not necessarily hinge on the importation of US ramen. Rather I offer if Nong-shim, Ottogi, and other producers had access to cheaper overseas raw materials, prices would be pressed downward by competition.
#’s 24, 25> The title in English on the final text of the agreement is “Free Trade Agreement Between the United States of America and the Republic of Korea”. I guess FTABUSAROK, or “Fat-a-bus-a-rok” was not catchy enough.
Getting a bit off topic, it amused me now and in negotiation that the US trade rep’s seems to make a point of saying “South Korea” or the “Republic of Korea” in the talks rather than the shorthand “Korea”. It could have been a finger in the eye over the Kaesong Industrial Complex issue.
Some commenters seem to have become afflicted with Angry White Man Syndrome. Thank goodness for there aren’t gun dealers on every street corner.
I was expecting Sonagi to remind us to avoid ramen, with all its calories, fat and chemicals.
In American English, yes, in British English, no. I don’t know about English-speaking countries.
Typo correction: I don’t know about other English-speaking countries.
whitey,
I will work on it however can’t promise anything.
#8, #11,
Grab a few packs of non-Korean brand ramen and check where they were made. Some, if not all, of the most common brands of ramen sold in North America were produced in Korea, or at least they used to be.
isn’t that used to protect local producers?
#30,
Expatriate communities tend to be suffocatingly claustrophobic. I imagine it doesn’t help things if expats find themselves in a society that suffers from the same problems.
Drambuie Man makes some good points. I would argue that it’s always best to open up your economy unilaterally, rather than waiting for a slightly-better-than-current-situation FTA to be ratified.
Australia and New Zealand have some of the most efficient agricultural producers on the planet due to a removal of tariff barriers and subsidies. They did it because it was in their best interest, not because some FTA “forced” them to do it.
Dram: Need you on the team tomorrow night, mil guys on exercise.
OPSEC?
Operational security. Learned that one from AFKN - “Always practice good OPSEC!” My absolute favorite AFKN commercial has to be the one where the GI is reminded to close his dresser drawer to avoid an accident. I kid you not. This was a real commercial.
So Wedgie left his drawer open a crack. Maybe my ? shoulda been a !.
Wedge> No can do. Sorry man.
39> You should have been there two weeks ago when Incheon was crammed with a couple hundred soliders going “Yeah, were here for some exercize”. With the tone some used, you would have sworn they expected to be doing jumping-jacks and jogging.
I like the way he is going to “waive” the magic wand….maybe that is why it isn’t working yet….perhaps if he were to “wave” it, things would get better!
i think Marmot missed this interesting piece of news from long ago… i didn’t see it here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....re=related
some of the more interesting and depressing commentary from a presumably korean poster is:
“Lee Myung Bak promised to take Korea back to where we were ten years ago, and he literally delivered on that promise.”