The Modernization of Korea and Turkey

The 2nd international Symposium on "relations of Korea and Central Asia; Its Present and Future Prospects" on November 5, 1998 at Hoseo University, Korea. This year, KOTUAS was held the 3rd international Symposium on "The Modernization of Korea and Turkey". I sincerely welcome like this academic symposium. I also attended the 1st symposium in Turkey and 3rd in Korea. Even though there are not many scholars in KOTUS, its members are experts and specialists. They can speak both Korean and Turkish well. Thus there is no problem for exchange their views.  

Jaemahn SUH, dean of College of Oriental Languages, HUFS, Prof. Dr. Azmi SÜSLÜ, President of Atatürk Research Centre H. E. Tomur BAYER, ambassador, Republic of Turkey delivered  congratulatory Speech from 10: 00 to 11: 00 on March 16, 2001. Subsequently the ceremony of Signing Scientific Cooperation Protocol was held. Participants were heard the speech of Atatürk and enjoyed congratulatory chorus by Turkish Department Choir, HUFS.

In the afternoon two sessions that were presented 10 papers were continued from 13: 00 to 18: 00. Prof. Dr. Ay?e ONAT, Ankara University presented that Mustafa K. Atatürk was a great reformer who in spite of the fact that he was the architect of great military victories. He insistently stated the actual liberation could only he achieved through the establishment of a new political, social and economic structure in keeping with modern scientific principles. He accomplished to bring about the alphabet reform and initiate the literacy and culture mobilization as 'chief teacher' in the paper.

H.E. Mr. Tomur BAYER, ambassador of Republic of Turkey invited all the participants of symposium to the dinner party in the official residence in the evening at same day. He welcomed the participants and congratulated the symposium again. Another symposium was continued at that place till the midnight. Korean and Turkish participants and members of embassy exchanged their views and introduced the cultural difference between two countries. They also discussed about the future relation between Korea and Turkey. I'd like to express the great thanks for the ambassador's inviting. I think that the embassy meeting gave us an new opportunity to understand real Turkey. Finally I hope that many peoples who are interested in Korea and Turkey attend our KOTUAS.

Modernization and Economic Development in the Korean Economy

Dr. Seong Min Hong (President, RIES)

Modernization can be to define that structural change is advanced generally from all fields of politics, economy, society, culture and sense of value back and the process that it sees creates the life condition which improves from go backwards condition. This case transference term, as the traditional things the fact that the retrogression or underdevelopment does, when advanced or as the modern time sees the fact that it improves, modernization is a possibility as also the process which the traditional society executes in the modern society doing.

Modernization of Korea was propelled the modernization which puts an emphasis in economic development in hopes of the solution of poverty problem as short cut of modernization and met the good results with propulsion of the economic development plan which is started from 1962 years. But the rapid modernization that is centered on economic development gets up a new problem in the Korean society and re-inspection against a modernization strategy is requested. Today Korean economy has many tasks that are realization of the social justice through just distribution of wealth, moral sincerity recovery, removal of environmental pollution due to the industrialization; maintenance of international competitiveness through technical innovation and problem of industrialization is caused by it simultaneously.

Since 1962 the Korean government has consistently pursued an Outward-Looking Foreign Trade Policy, and, as a result, trade volume expanded more than 258 times between 1962 and 1989, with her export-import volume totaling $123.8 billion in 1989, which raised Korea to the rank of the 12th largest trading country in the world. As a consequence, the ratio of foreign trade to GNP rose nearly threefold from 20.9% in 1962 to 74.5% in 1989. During the same period, the Korea's export growth rate averaged 31.0% annually, and its import growth rate was 20.1% (Seong Min Hong, 1992; 24-25). 1989 saw the beginning of a short transitional period, in which Korea adapted to the loss of markets for labour-intensive manufactures. Although a current-account surplus of $5.1bn was earned and foreign debt was further reduced, exports succumbed to the twin pressures of currency appreciation and high wage increases.

In 1982, for the first time since World War Ⅱ, Korea registered a trade surplus with respect to the United States that amounted to about $0.3 billion. It caused the United States to request a more substantial import liberalization from government that was conducive for Ministry of Finance and Mistry of Trade and industry undertaking the Five-Year Tariff Programme (1984-88) and Long-Term Import Liberalization Schedule (1984-88), respectively. The rapidly rising trade surplus caused the direct and fierce intervention of US government. The Korean government decided to solve the current-account surplus problem by completely liberalizing the imports of manufactures, for example, by increasing the number of AA items and lowering the rates of tariff as scheduled, making special concessional tariff cuts, eliminating the Surveillance List, and revising Special Laws that used to restrict imports even for items on the list of automatic approval. The external pressures on Korea to open up its domestic market completely provide a new growth potential if the government gives positive responses to these pressures. In the absence of systematic responses, there is the danger of chaotic destruction of Korea's service and agricultural sectors.

Liberation in Korea changed the pattern of market share by region in the world. This reflects the change of economic circumstances and means that Korea weakened its competitiveness in the international market. Chinese sphere such as China and Hong Kong were Korea's largest export markets, occupying a 20.2 % share of the overall export market.

The next biggest was the ASEAN market, accounting for 15.5%, with a sharp increase of 21.7% from 1995. Export shares of Central and South American markets also recorded a plus growth of 17.4%. Export shares of the US and Japan markets decreased by 7.8% and 5.6% over the same period of last year. This means that Korea is losing its market share to competitors such as China, Twain, Hong Kong and Singapore. Meanwhile, imports of consumer goods from the US and EU markets in the period increased sharply by 14 to 22 percent.

The present stage of world order after the end of the cold war displays no simple pattern. The United States is no longer hegemonic over the capitalist economy in the manner that it achieved in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. But in some fields, particularly the military and the cultural, its dominance is greater in the 1990s than it has ever been. The collapse of Communism and the disintegration of alternative development strategies in the Third World has reunited the global political economy around the ideological principles of the United States. Meanwhile regionalism is in part a response to this situation. The United States, the European Union, and Japan might use the undoubted economic dominance that they enjoy in their regions to establish a political and security framework and a set of economic institutions which promote prosperity and development through trade, investment and aid. If such regionalist projects embrace open regionalism, they would still be compatible with the pursuit of policies at the global level through the G7 to stabilize the world economy and maintain economic growth.

Now Korea has moved from a stage where its advantage lay in cheap manual labour to one where that advantage lies rather in relatively cheap skilled labour and line management. Its exports are no longer dominated by textiles and clothing, but include ships, motor vehicles, integrated circuits and consumer electronics.

The most challenging task that the Korean economy faces today is how to overcome the protectionism and economic regionalism that is now prevalent in the world economy. In this regard, the new Korean government puts much emphasis on establishing a basic orientation for foreign trade policies to correspond to ever changing international conditions. In the case of the Korean economy, which has a high degree of dependency on foreign transactions, it is almost impossible to separate domestic policy and foreign trade policy because these policies are so closely interrelated. Therefore, the direction that the international economic order takes, which is strongly influenced by the three economic superpowers, the US, Japan, and the European Union, will have a great deal of influence on the Korean Economy

Entering the 1960's, the world was attracted by Korea's highly economic growth that is so called 'Miracle on the Han River' with the drastic propulsion of economic development plan. We can summarize the factors as following four fields; 1) the appearance of propulsion influence of economic development plan (establishment of political leadership), 2) Korean people's strong will (improvement of sense of value and change of national immediate necessity as social whole), 3) lower labor force, and 4) improvement of international situation. Besides many technical innovations, formation of new (overseas) market, new discovery of resources, stability of domestic politics and conversion of foreign assistance policy and improvement of specialty manpower due to the development of education in the 1960's were contributed Korean economic growth.

However crucial problems are becoming obstacles of Korea's economic growth as a secondary effect of rapid economic growth and conversion of new economic policy and economic structure is a main task to cope with them in the future. Nowadays Korean society has some secondary effects of rapid economic growth that contain the gulf between rich and poor, degradation of the social justice which is caused by an omnipotent materialism thought, overpopulation of urban population and decrease of rural population, and environmental pollution.