By Oh Young-jin
Assistant managing editor
A blog, run by Knight FX dealing with foreign exchange-related issues, made an interesting comparison between the current Bank of Korea (BOK) Gov. Kim Choong-soo and his predecessor Lee Seong-tae.
Knight FX says, "Lee didn't like to fight the government, while Kim doesn't need to fight. Lee didn't act according to his beliefs but Kim will be able to act on his beliefs. But that doesn't mean that under Kim the central bank will earn a healthy dose of independence."
Lee, appointed by the late President Roh Moo-hyun, was caught in a tussle with the government at the tail end of his term. He thought the time had come to raise the key rate, which has been kept at 2 percent for the 15th month in a row in May.
Since he took office in April, Kim, the first senior secretary for economic affairs under the incumbent President Lee Myung-bak, has not given any serious indication that his priorities' list included the BOK's independence. The 63-year-old central banker is fighting criticism for being too cozy with Strategy and Finance Minister Yoon Jeung-hyun and for speaking without substance.
Last week, I had a chance to talk to Kim and observe him, together with half a dozen other business editors from different news outlets. Since it was agreed beforehand that the content of his remarks would be off the record, I will attempt to convey what he is like, mainly on the basis of how he answered my questions and on my observations.
First, I noticed that he has a pair of clear eyes and often looks the interlocutor straight in the eye, leaving little doubt that he was academically outstanding during his school days. Indeed, he graduated from Seoul National University and is regarded as one of the best students under the stewardship of Cho Soon, who authored textbooks on economic principles that are still in use. Cho later became deputy prime minister for economic affairs.
During his salad days, Kim also worked at the state-run Korea Development Institute (KDI), when the state-supported research organization was still playing a key role to help set the nation's economic policy. Kim served as presidential secretary during the Kim Young-sam administration, together with his high school alumnae Han Duck-soo. According to their associates, they kept a 29-day work month. Han is now ambassador to the United States after serving as prime minister of the Roh administration.
Secondly, it proved to be true that he talks in length.
This seems closely related to his penchant for not leaving any loose ends untied. The way he talks revealed a constant effort to explain himself, not because he doesn't know the subject he is talking about, but more likely because he fears that the audience doesn't fully understand his points.
I bet that Kim keeps his desk clean and tidy even without the help of his secretary.
Then, another editor jumped in to confront Kim with allegations that he is too transparent and leaves little unexplained, a character that he argues doesn't jibe with the conventional image of a poker-faced central banker, who knows how to leave just enough doubt for misunderstanding.
He looked irritated for a moment before, as expected, starting what turned out to be a lecture-length explanation. Few at the table appeared to be convinced but, judging by his earnest attitude, it didn't look like he would give up the fight against this public perception any time soon.
In a way, he may be of two minds. On one hand, he keeps reminding himself that his BOK tour of duty is the 11th job in his stellar career that also includes a stint as ambassador to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and president of Hallym University.
On the other hand, as any honor student, Kim may not allow himself to settle for being less than the best.
Then, when he was asked to choose as role model between former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and his successor Ben Bernanke, he reacted in a manner expected of a man who grasps Karl Marx's axiom that it is not individual leadership but a given set of circumstances that determines one's fate as well as that of an organization he or she belongs to. Simply, Kim avoided revealing his choice.
Basically, both Bernanke and Greenspan are not vastly different from each other with their policies being products of the times. Greenspan's biggest asset was his persona or the myth the public held about his power as Federal Reserve chairman, which in turned provided grounds for the U.S. central bank's independence. His myth has since been debunked as he has been blamed for being the cause of the subprime crisis.
Bernanke, in contrast, has maintained a hand-in-glove relationship with the Treasury because handling the Wall Street meltdown needed a series of joint measures.
Now, Kim resembles Bernanke in the pre-crisis era, when he couldn't emulate Greenspan's strategic ambiguity in a rhetorical sense. Now few would argue with the same vigor as before that Greenspan is better than Bernanke. Perhaps, Kim has selected his role model between the two but didn't want to say who it was.
Toward the end of our meeting, one editor inquired why he used English words. Another chimed in, saying that he used less during the second news conference than the first. He took some flak for being not pro-hangeul. Obviously, we ran out of topics and the time came to wrap up the meeting.