FROM NORMAN MADRID:
Korean President Kim Dae-jung, dead today at 83 or 85, teaches us Filipino idealists many practical lessons for our immediate nation-building and private fortune-making success. Could Filipinos and EPICients please forward this message to their various yahoogroups?
KDJ enriched South Korea by freeing it from authoritarianism and economic provincialism. And, he did that after two initial failures to get elected President, and after a failure 35 years earlier to be elected to the National Assembly, and after two attemps to kill him before he was elected President.
Before his Presidency, South Korea was too protectionist and too rigid domestically during the 30 years of rapid growth since 1961. Like the Philippines, it did not welcome foreign investors. It favored big businesses. Small firms complained of neglect to the extent that the owner of one mid-sized company committed suicide publicly to protest the favoritism. The rigidity kept S. Korea the poorest among the Asian Tigers.
It was hardest hit among all Tigers during the 1997-98 financial crisis, when Dae Woo, the industrial giant, and many S. Korean banks failed. Amazingly, economists worldwide had been predicting for many years that South Korea was headed for a big fall. It was the only Asian economic tiger so tagged while it was still succeeding at economics impressively.
Kim Dae-Jung modernized the South Korean attitudes that led to the failures. Rationally he welcomed a liberalization policy imposed by the IMF on the country as a condition for loans to keep it afloat in the aftermath of the 1997-98 Asian economic flu.
Memorable is the industrial estate that he established with North Korea on its soil. On about 100 factories, there now work 400 North Koreans per factory, or 40,000 in all in the entire estate.
An industrial estate like that is what we at Epic Tiger Ventures LLC want to put up. With an output of $200,000 per worker, it would have exports of $8 billion, or 1/6th of current Filipino exports. With 200 more export estates like that, the Philippines would catch up with four Asian tigers at exports and GDP. The four Tigers include South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Their combined population is lower than in the Philippines. But, their exports and GDP per capita are 20 to 27 times as high as in the Philippines. They have many more industrial estates--and all more efficient-- than the estates in the Philippines.
We fought to put Cory on top; we loved her subsequently ethical presidency. But, she failed us at economics; she was not a competent leader for nation-building.
In sharp contrast, Kim Dae-Jung was a compleat leader. He was ethical and rational at politics and economics. Although he won't be remembered by the world as revolutionary heroes like Cory, Mandela, or Gandhi, he was as great or a greater leader than all three put together at politics, ethics and economics.
As a common feature of their lives, Kim and Cory survived assassination or coup attempts because of overpowering U.S. military help.
When the U.S. scrambled two Phantom jets from Clark to Camp Villamor to frighten the leaders of a coup against Cory, the coup withered. So too, when North Korean agents abducted Kim Dae-jung in Tokyo into a ship with the plan to dump him at sea, a U.S. helicopter gunship that hovered over the boat led to Kim's release.
Today and in the future, let's honor Kim by making ourselves succeed in multi-billion dollar ways as global Tiger winners.
PHOTO BY CHARLES BOWMAN:KYONGBOK PALACE, SEOUL
No comments:
Post a Comment