Financial Times: Korea Needs to Take Things Slow

So many of Korea’s problems could be eased if only the education the locals receive was applicable to the world in which they live and not just an abstract that gets repeated, but can’t be used. I guess pissing away 20 billion to prop up the won is a great example for the need for change.

Maybe a better start is to change or modify the core tenets of Korean corporate culture: top-down management, the focus on short-term gain, and, of course, cronyism (loyalty in Korea). The rest may take care of itself.

On another note, I’m a little surprised with the lack of depth with the Financial Times. I think the reporter’s comments could have been made by anybody who has been in Korea more than a year.

Moral System?

Cutting the gordian knot isn’t the solution. A rotten Confucian social system, an antiquated educational system, and a developmental stage-based economic model are all problems, but saying something like DO AWAY WITH IT ALL isn’t a rational nor feasible idea.

Revolutionary ideology is just stupid on all levels, and armchair thinkers can spend all fucking day calling for radical solutions when the changes they advocate will ultimately simply cause more harm than good.

A better solution would be to take things slow in an evolutionary fashion and do a little soft-landing policy making. Yes the won is depreciating, but imagine the depreciation that would’ve occurred without a defensive central bank in the midst of the shocks in the international economy caused by the credit crunch, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, the oil shocks, etc etc. Korea is NOT Japan; the won remains a volatile currency in the minds of traders and too severe of a depreciation would paralyze the economy as gas prices would be astronomical and all factors would be severely hamstrung due to that alone.

Announcing the defense of their currency allows a temporary relief. There is a serious risk of bankrupting the central bank of its foreign reserves, but it is a perfectly legitimate strategy as long as it isn’t held on for too long and removed once all bets are off.

Education policies, domestic market structures, all that needs to be changed sure. But only idiots and communists go around yelling that the proper policy is just to go “Fuck it, let’s bail guys” and expect society to just keep functioning properly.

Korea creating an educational system that teaches only the essentials for international economic success and doesn’t indoctrinate national ideologies is not going to happen nor reasonable. Korea removing the chaebol who are the primary domestic economic force and MNCs who pile in money for the Korean economy and is essentially the skeleton of the Korean economic system isn’t realistic or even the right decision to do. Sure the idea of reform is fine, but unlikely to happen radically as fast as a lot of people believe needs to happen. Also, dropping Confucianism overnight and adopting Kantian and/or Millian ideology is definitely NOT going to happen in the next hundred years. Just because it doesn’t form to the Western model of social integrity does not mean it isn’t feasible.

Shunyata, by unification do you mean North and South Korea unifying into one country? Because South Korea needs North Korea like a burn victim needs cancer.

Not to nitpick, but that one-day fall in the won was about 1.2%. Certainly enough to get anyone’s attention, but hardly jump-out-the-window news.

Shunyata –

“What Korea needs: 1. unification”
- Burn victim, cancer… see above.

“2. strengthened military”
- Like Germany in 1938? South Korea literally can’t police it’s own streets, they don’t need their ineptitude spread to Japan.

“3. greater alliance with the US”
- That’s the smartest thing you’ve said so far… too bad Koreans many are too insecure to act like adults and do so.

“4. adoption of Scandinavian-style safety nets”
- Well *that* isn’t free, and Korea certainly doesn’t have the work-opportunities (and therefore the tax-base) to pay for it. If you’ve got the gold in hand, feel free to mail your financial support to the President of Korea, care of the Blue House.

“High school students who can score 99 per cent in an English test are often unable to hold even a simple conversation”

Whatever the solution may be to Korea’s problems, can we stop bringing this one up? I want to see a country using a latin-based language doing better by forcing their people to learn Korean. And if counterfactuals don’t exist, then that’s all the more reason to stop bringing this up.

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I don’t get it.

All I’m saying is, Koreans already know — some to the detriment of getting their goddamn tongues cutoff — that they have to find ways to improve English education.

And obviously it takes alot of friggin money and effort to learn English when its linguistically opposite your native tongue and you’re pretty much *forced* to learn the damn thing.

Good grief, you don’t gotta bring it up in every “whats wrong with korea” discussion.

Korean unification = destruction of Korea. One cannot survive while the other still lives. Yeah its the serious Harry Potter shit…

Uh, Dram, that’s the kind of thing you’re supposed to say over a pint at the 3 Alley.

Anyway, I wish her the best in Beirut. I see her as the #1 correspondent of the upcoming Iran War.

Wedge> I disagree. I mean, how is she going to know about the cute little caboose with somebody telling her?