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South Korea - the Tiger

During all the press coverage and speculation concerning the handover of Hong - Kong back to China, we should not forget that Hong – Kong is one of the first of The Asian Tiger Economies.   Japan and South Korea have transformed the image of Asia from one of backwardness, conflict, and failure - to one of soaraway success.

From representing the past, Korea has quickly come to symbolise the future.   I read in my newspaper today, that Antonio Chiang a newspaper editor in Taiwan said:"Asia is the hope of the world.  Europe has run out of energy.  It has no dynamic.  It is like a beautiful Museum.  However, there's no hope.  There's no excitement."

We see changes every year?  There are no social barriers.
It is easy for a Korean to change his or her life.

In the fifties Korea was poor and backward, with no real industry and a gross national domestic product on par with Pakistan or Latin America.  Now Korea has achieved Western levels of development.

      South Korea is an industrial powerhouse.  Each decade has seen new Tigers emerge, first Malaysia and Thailand, then China, Indonesia and the Philippines - now Vietnam.

It is conventional wisdom in the West, that developing countries get closer to us - will become more like us? 

I just can't see the North Korean Regime being able to resist the pressure for change for much longer - look at Eastern Europe and how quickly the old communist regimes collapsed.  

In the end, the challenge is too great; the dice of history are loaded against them and the Chinese oligarchy.   Marx did a brilliant job of analysing the forces that work within society - the dialectic of opposing interests - but he overestimated the capacity for altruism and underestimated the capacity for personal greed in the socialist countries.