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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

What happened to green growth?

By John Burton Each Korean president usually has a signature cause. In the case of President Park Geun-hye, it is creating a “creative economy.” It is a worthy goal because Korea must rely more on high-tech services rather than manufacturing for future growth.But the downside is that this campaign will likely to be abandoned when the next president comes to office. Korean presidents have a habit of trashing the favorite agenda of their predecessors. Whatever happened, for example, to making Seoul a global financial hub, an idea that was promoted by Roh Moo-hyun? Is the same fate now in store for the green growth initiatives of Lee Myung-bak?If so, Korea is losing a valuable opportunity to make its mark in the global energy sector. The issue of climate change is as important as ever. Just a few weeks ago, U.S. President Barack Obama announced a new plan to cut greenhouse emissions and encourage international efforts to combat climate change, including launching negotiations for global free trade in clean energy technology.Asia is expected to be at the center of this n

Jul 17, 2013By John Burton
John Burton

The Chinese timebomb

By John Burton The North Korea nuclear issue dominated the headlines when South Korean President Park Geun-hye met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing last week. But perhaps they should have spent more time discussing the perilous state of the Chinese financial system, which poses a more immediate threat to the well-being of both countries. With Korean exports slowing to Europe and the U.S. and the country’s export competitiveness being undercut further by a weakening Japanese yen, China is more important than ever to South Korea’s economic health. The scores of South Korean businessmen who accompanied President Park on her visit underscored the fact that China is South Korea’s leading trade partner. China now buys more products from Korea than Japan and Seoul wants to increase bilateral trade to $300 billion by 2015 from $256 billion in 2012. So it might have been of concern to President Park that just days before her arrival in Beijing the Chinese banking system suffered a sudden credit crunch, a symptom of the country’s flawed growth mode

Jul 3, 2013By John Burton
John Burton

Why nations fail

By John Burton I’ve recently been involved in a project by the Korea Development Institute on how the Middle East can learn from the Korean economic miracle. The study offers a wealth of examples from education reforms to industrial policies to explain Korea’s rapid rise to advanced economic status and how these lessons could be applied to Middle Eastern countries. But are good ideas always exportable elsewhere? Frankly, I have my doubts after reading “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty” by Daron Acemoglu from MIT and James A. Robinson from Harvard. The book, which was published last year, argues that it is not geography, culture or ignorance of good policies that determines whether a nation succeeds or fails. Rather, it is the nature of its political and economic institutions that determines a nation’s future. Acemoglu and Robinson’s central argument is that economies can only grow in a sustainable manner if there are institutional safeguards that guarantee that the fruits of investment and innovati

Jun 19, 2013By John Burton
John Burton

The creativity gap

By John Burton It might appear that Korea is already half way to becoming the  “creative economy” that President Park Geun-hye wants to achieve during her administration.The Korean wave of entertainment and fashion is popular throughout Asia, a prime example of national soft power. Samsung Electronics is not only the world’s biggest producer of smartphones, but it even threatens to topple Apple from its pedestal as the maker of the “coolest” gadgets. Korea ranks an impressive eighth in the World Bank’s respected  “Doing Business” index, which measures overall business environment conditions.That all bodes well for Park’s goal of creating an economy based on innovation and services rather than on manufacturing and industrial exports, the model that her father, Park Chung-hee, introduced in the 1960s and 1970s.  Along with Singapore and Hong Kong, Korea appears to be leading Asia in fashioning an economy fit for the 21st century.But one thing still threatens to kill that dream: Korea’s top-down management a

Jun 5, 2013By John Burton
John Burton

The other Korean wave

By John Burton Korea has many types of glamorous models. But the one that excites foreign governments the most is called the “Miracle on the Han.” Emerging countries from Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to Cambodia and Saudi Arabia have been intensely studying Korea for lessons on how they can copy its rapid rise from a war-devastated agricultural economy to a global industrial powerhouse in the span of only 60 years. Their interest is not surprising. Jim O’Neill, the recently retired chief economist at Goldman Sachs who coined the term BRIC economies, has described Korea as “the most interesting story in my lifetime.” While attention has mostly focused on the Korean wave of entertainment as the best example of the country’s “soft” power, Korea’s biggest and most enduring influence is likely to be the economic lessons it imparts to others. There are several reasons besides Korea’s obvious economic success that made it an appealing model for emulation by developing countries. One is that Korea’s population

May 22, 2013By John Burton
John Burton

Magic realism in North Korea

By John Burton Adam Johnson, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Orphan Master’s Son,’’ recently raised eyebrows among North Korean watchers when he described his first and only visit to Pyongyang to conduct research for his book. “When I arrived at Pyongyang’s Sunan Airport a few years ago, my head was still spinning from a landing on a runway lined with cattle, electric fences and the fuselages of other jets whose landings hadn’t gone so well,” he wrote. The sentence created an image of a benighted city that appeared to be on a par with some backward outpost in central Africa, which no doubt confirmed the prejudices of his readers. The only problem was that those familiar with North Korea did not recognize the description. “I never saw a cow, never saw a crashed aircraft and most airports are surrounded by protective barriers of some sort,” said James Hoare, the former British ambassador to Pyongyang, in a website forum devoted to North Korea. Perhaps Johnson was taking liberties becaus

May 8, 2013By John Burton
John Burton

'Enter the Dragon'

By John BurtonLast week, China and Russia jointly warned against any unilateral foreign military intervention in North Korea over its recent nuclear test in a statement clearly aimed at the United States. The two countries said that any action against North Korea had to be approved by the United Nations Security Council, where China and Russia have veto powers, although there is little indication that the U.S. is contemplating such an action. But an issue that is seldom discussed is what would be the response of the U.S. and South Korea if China was forced to unilaterally deploy its troops into North Korea to prevent or contain a humanitarian crisis in response to the sudden collapse of the Pyongyang government. Would this lead to a Sino-American military confrontation or could any potential conflict be resolved peacefully through the United Nations?  Since the 1990s, the U.S. and South Korea have been preparing contingency plans, known as OPLAN 5029, for dealing with “sudden change” in North Korea. Although few details are publicly known, OPLAN 5029 calls

Feb 27, 2013By John Burton
John Burton

Is North Korea a paper tiger?

By John Burton  After North Korea conducted its third nuclear test this week following the recent launch of a long-range ballistic missile, it is perhaps appropriate to ask whether these provocative acts are signs of military weakness rather than strength. Is their purpose to cover up the vulnerabilities of the North Korean People’s Army instead of Pyongyang posing an aggressive threat to its neighbors?On paper, North Korean maintains its image as the Sparta of Asia with an army of one million troops and 5,000 tanks, about twice the size of the South Korean army. But numbers alone are not a good indication of an army’s combat effectiveness.Most of the North’s military equipment is aging. Its Soviet-era tanks are based on obsolescent technology from the 1950s and 1970s after Moscow cut off military aid because of the end of the Cold War. The same could be said for the North’s air force, which has nearly 50 percent more combat aircraft than those operated by the South. But 80 percent of the North’s air power is antiquated, based on Chinese and Soviet

Feb 13, 2013By John Burton
John Burton

Park the peacemaker

By John BurtonIt was 99 years ago when Europe, at the height of its prosperity and global influence, suddenly plunged into a calamitous conflict. There were many reasons for the outbreak of World War I, although the main cause was that the rise of Germany posed a challenge to the traditional European powers of Great Britain, France and Russia. Nonetheless, the war was avoidable if cooler heads had prevailed following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, an event whose only importance laid in the fact that it provided a pretext for the declaration of hostilities that caught many by surprise.Could something similar be happening now in Northeast Asia? The risks of a war between China and Japan are rising over their territorial dispute concerning the five islets in the East China Sea known as the Senkakus in Japan and the Diaoyus in China. The issue itself is minor, but it reflects growing tensions between a rising China and a declining Japan. Such a transition in regional power relationships is often a recipe for war. What is particularly frightening is that

Jan 30, 2013By John Burton
John Burton

Korea's Japanese problem

By John BurtonJust a few days before Park Geun-hye was elected as the new Korean president, Shinzo Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party won a landslide victory in Japan. That event could have a major impact on Park’s administration over the next five years. The state of Korean-Japanese relations might even overshadow those between Seoul and Pyongyang in terms of importance during her term.The return of Abe marks a sharp rightward shift in Japanese politics, increasing the possibility of growing tensions in Korean-Japanese ties when it comes to territorial claims over the Dokdo islets and Seoul’s demand for a clear apology from Tokyo on the “comfort women” issue. Although one of Prime Minister Abe’s first acts was to make a conciliatory gesture toward Seoul by sending a former Japanese defense minister to mend ties, progress is unlikely since many of the new Japanese Cabinet ministers are “radical nationalists” in the words of The Economist.At the same time, the Abe government is set to deliver an economic blow to Korea by easing monetary poli

Jan 16, 2013By John Burton
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