South Korea’s influence in Asia: This year’s model

South Korean pop groups like this one are idolised by Cambodian youths.

A country on a roll, or rather a wave

Feb 18th 2012
The Economist
PHNOM PENH AND SEOUL

GIVING on to one of the Cambodian capital’s grand, crumbling boulevards is an unusually modern, unfeasibly clean building: the home of the South Korean embassy’s commercial section. It is also noticeably big, indicative of South Korea’s growing economic ties with one of the poorest countries in the region. Officials point out that two of South Korea’s biggest banks opened here in 2009, and South Korean engineers are building Phnom Penh’s highest building. South Korean investments, though impressive, lag behind the Chinese and Japanese ones, but relative to South Korea’s size, the embassy’s staff like to think that they are not doing badly.

Besides the usual commercial ties, however, South Korea has been cultivating another, equally significant, link with Cambodia. Impressed by the economic success of South Korea over the past decades, Cambodian officials and businessmen are now flocking to Seoul, South Korea’s capital, to find out how the country has done it. And the South Koreans, proud of their achievements and eager to tell the world, are doing everything they can to oblige. It is an effective exercise of “soft” power. Chinese success is more talked about. But China is such an unusually large and atypical country that other Asians are not sure that the Chinese model, if it really exists, is readily exportable. Japan, sadly, has lost its lustre. Midsized South Korea, however, fits the bill nicely.

Interest in the South Korean model of economic success, which for much of its history combined heavy state intervention with an aspirational, entrepreneurial culture, has been around for a while. What has changed in recent years is the government’s willingness to promote the success—particularly in electronics, cars, construction and shipbuilding, and the increasing number of newly developing countries that want to learn from it.

Thus South Korea has established several organisations and programmes designed to get people to Seoul to study the country’s achievements up close. Kim Ki-hwan, one of the leaders of the Korea Development Institute, which runs courses attracting graduate students from around the world, argues that “the way to help a country is not only to give money but to share experiences.” Of those studying at the institute over the past decade, Cambodians feature strongly, alongside Vietnamese, Indonesians, Bangladeshis and Mongolians. Interest has surged among the Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

To meet soaring demand for knowledge about South Korea, a new department of public diplomacy was set up two years ago by the Korea Foundation, a government quango. This runs an “Intellectual Exchanges” programme and a “Next Generation Leaders” programme, catering mainly for visiting government ministers and bureaucrats. So many Vietnamese have come for this, says Kim Tae-hwan, the programmes’ director, that they now run a separate course just for them. Three weeks ago an emissary from the newly reforming government of Myanmar turned up asking for help, so the foundation will now set up a study week for three Myanmar officials, together with three each from Laos and Cambodia.

So far, so uncontroversial. Intriguingly, however, South Koreans are now also starting to talk about promoting the story of the country’s political transformation as much as its economic success. South Korea’s industrial progress has attracted most attention, but the country’s transition from the brutal authoritarianism of the post-war strongman, Park Chung-hee, into one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies is at least as impressive. Yet this aspect of South Korea’s story seems to pass by many of the visitors, often from authoritarian or one-party states themselves. Kim Tae-hwan says they are all “interested in Korea as an economic success, but not in political democratisation. The Vietnamese just try to ignore the political side of the same coin.”

Maybe they are just too well-drilled. But the chances are that South Korea’s political example will rub off, too. South Korean officials might be helped by the wild popularity of Korean pop and television dramas and soap operas in the rest of Asia, part of the “Korean wave”. In one of Phnom Penh’s more fashionable parks, the young gather most evenings to rehearse their Korean-pop dance moves and sing Korean songs. Eventually people may start to get the real message of the links between the country’s prosperity, openness, relative political freedom and lively—if nakedly commercial—popular culture.