John Burton
Trump's return
Donald Trump’s return to the White House means bad news for the Blue House.
Nov 26, 2024
John Burton
John Burton is freelancer writer. He was Korea correspondent of the Financial Times, business editor of Korea JoongAng Daily, vice president of Insight Communication, Korea.
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John Burton
Korea and NATO
The Ukraine conflict has served as a catalyst in dragging both Koreas into the confrontation between NATO and Russia, as well as raising tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
Sep 10, 2024
John Burton
Trouble ahead
By John BurtonUnfortunately, there is not much to celebrate in the New Year at least as far as Korea's economy is concerned. Most economists predict tough times ahead.One key reason is Korea's dependence on semiconductors as a main growth engine. Chips now account for almost a fifth of the country's total exports. The industry faces both long-term challenges, as I discussed in my previous column, and short-term disruptions.Weaker global demand and geopolitical tensions are causing a decline in Korea's chip exports, with a 30 percent fall in recent weeks from a year ago. Events in China will determine the outlook for the sector in the year ahead.China's zero-COVID containment measures last year slowed its economic growth, which reduced demand for chips, which account for almost a third of Korea's exports to its giant neighbor. China's recent easing of COVID restrictions is raising hopes that chip exports could rebound in 2023. But this may provide only temporary relief.Korea is under American pressure to reduce chip exports to China. Washington is expecting Seoul to comply with a rang
Jan 9, 2023
John Burton
Chip crunch
By John BurtonKorea's semiconductor industry is at a crucial crossroads. It is under pressure from Washington to reduce sales to China and cooperate more closely with the U.S. in production and research. At the same time, it lags behind the tech developments of its main Taiwanese industrial rival, TSMC. All this is occurring as the demand for memory chips, in which Korea is the global leader, is weakening.Many of these challenges will fall particularly on the shoulders of Lee Jae-yong, who recently assumed the role of the new executive chairman of Samsung Electronics, the world's biggest maker of memory chips, in October. Although Lee had been the de facto leader of Samsung for several years, he could not assume formal control until he was pardoned for bribery convictions by President Yoon Suk-yeol in August.Lee is scheduled to hold a high-level global strategy meeting later this month to address the issues facing the semiconductor business. For the July-September quarter, Samsung reported a 31 percent drop in operating profit from a year ago due largely to falling memory chip prices
Dec 12, 2022
John Burton
An avoidable tragedy
By John BurtonAny tragedy has a more emotional impact if you are familiar with the place where it happened. As a result, I watched in horror a couple of weeks ago from my home in a Washington, D.C. suburb a CNN correspondent, standing in front of the Hamilton Hotel in Itaewon, reporting that many people had died from being crushed in a crowd as they celebrated Halloween.Like many other foreigners who lived in Seoul, I had spent many hours in the alley behind the Hamilton Hotel with its bars, restaurants and clubs. It was easy to imagine what had happened. As the crowd grew to the point of suffocation in the alley, some sought to escape by going down one of the four narrow passageways that link the alley to Itaewon's main street. But they were blocked by people trying to enter the passageways as they sought to join the festivities in the alley. This created the crush that ended the lives of at least 158 people. It was also shocking that such a tragic event could occur when the country has become known as “cool Korea.” It brought back memories of the bad old days when Korea
Nov 14, 2022
John Burton
BTS and Elvis
By John BurtonBTS will soon meet the army ― not its legion of fans known as ARMY (Adorable Representative M.C. for Youth) but the actual military service. Can the world's biggest boyband survive that experience and retain its popularity when it returns to the stage, expected in 2025 at the earliest. Will BTS even exist then?These questions are important since BTS has been at the center of the stunning rise of Korean culture on the world stage. One estimate is that the group has indirectly contributed $3.7 billion to the Korean economy through its association with Korean clothing, cosmetics, tourism and food.As a result, some may question whether the pressure placed on the BTS members to fulfill their military conscription duty was short-sighted. In this case, it might be argued that principle trumped pragmatism. A counter-argument would be that the supergroup had already announced earlier this year that it would be taking a “pause” as its individual members pursued their own interests. As a result, it is reasonable that BTS members should be conscripted now. BTS itself ha
Oct 31, 2022
John Burton
A slap in the face
By John BurtonCars have been at the center of trade disputes between Korea and the U.S. for more than 30 years. When Korean cars began making inroads into the U.S. in the late 1980s and early 1990s, U.S. auto manufacturers complained that both tariff and non-tariff barriers were keeping their products out of Korea. Although Seoul would make some concessions, the number of U.S. cars sold in Korea remained extremely low.The car trade imbalance was addressed again in the mid-2000s when negotiations began on a Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA). Although a deal was reached in 2007, it was blocked in the U.S. Congress when Democrats complained about the bilateral trade deficit in autos. At the time, only around 5,000 American-made cars were being sold in Korea, while sales of Korean-made cars in the U.S. were more than half a million.Talks on the KORUS FTA were resumed in 2010 with much of the focus on how to increase U.S. car sales in Korea. Seoul agreed to reduce car taxes based on engine displacement, which was said to disadvantage U.S.-made cars because they tended to be larg
Oct 17, 2022
John Burton
Nuclear brinkmanship
By John BurtonNorth Korea's recent declaration that it would remain a nuclear state and that its decision was “irreversible” underscores the complete failure of U.S. policy toward Pyongyang over the last two decades.The statement received surprisingly little attention in the U.S. since the news was overshadowed by the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the ongoing war in Ukraine. Some sought to dismiss its significance since North Korea had already declared itself a nuclear state a decade ago.But North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in a speech before his parliament added several conditions that will make it even harder for the U.S. to achieve its goal of North Korea's complete nuclear disarmament. Kim said his country would never again engage in talks on its denuclearization. He also introduced a new nuclear doctrine that did not rule out launching a preemptive nuclear “first strike” if the regime considered it was under immediate threat. He also appeared to give military field commanders the authority to launch a nuclear strike if the leadership in Pyongyang was wip
Oct 3, 2022
John Burton
Learning English the Nordic way
By John BurtonBusan Mayor Park Heong-joon's ambition to turn his city into a center of English-speaking Koreans is a laudable one, but it will also be difficult to achieve, at least in the short term.No one doubts that English is the lingua franca of the global economy and its widespread use will help attract foreign investment to Busan and elsewhere in Korea.I have lived in several countries which were essentially bilingual in terms of English and the local language ― Sweden, the Netherlands and Singapore. All of them offer lessons to Korea in its quest to achieve English fluency, but I like to focus on Sweden and the rest of the Nordic region.Swedes, together with Norwegians and Danes, are considered the world's best non-native speakers of English. Rarely during my six years in Sweden did I meet anyone who did not speak fluent English.One advantage that these Scandinavian speakers may have is that their native languages are all part of the Germanic language family and are closely related to English, another Germanic language, in terms of both grammar and words.But this does not exp
Sep 27, 2022
John Burton
Korean populism
By John BurtonThe hottest new trend in American newsrooms is coverage of threats to democracy, which has been sparked by the presidency of Donald Trump and its aftermath. Is Korea's hard-won democracy also threatened by troubling social trends? There are signs of increased public dissatisfaction, such as the world's lowest birth rate, high personal debt levels and a new generation that believes that it has not benefited from the Miracle on the Han River.Economic inequality and growing social divisions are not healthy for any country and these conditions have fueled the rise of populism around the world since the 2008 global financial crisis. Korea is no exception.Part of the problem lies with the lopsided nature of Korea's economy, which continues to be dominated by the “chaebol,” a large industrial South Korean conglomerate run and controlled by an individual or family. Smaller start-up businesses find it difficult to grow in this environment since they face challenges in raising capital and attracting the best talent. Entrepreneurial risk-taking is not encouraged by Kor
Sep 5, 2022