no_name
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"South Korea has a lot of focus and drive. Their companies also have scale and depth - including economies of scale. Part of this is because South Korea never cared about diversity. They bet it all on a half dozen gigantic mega-corps to run everything. It gives them the scale to get a foothold, but if one failed it would be a national crisis. And you better believe the gov't would back those companies up all the way to the abyss with taxpayer financing, even if it had to put every person in Korea at risk to do so. If their bet had failed their entire country would've been wiped out with the companies."
"Also, it doesn't hurt that, at a very critical stage in its growth, South Korea's Cold War protector (i.e. the US) allowed them to basically export at will while keeping their market almost completely closed to imports -- which they still are to a large degree."
"One thing that makes China very different from South Korea is that China is big. South Korea is roughly the size of a single Chinese province. So one thing that the central government has to deal with is the fact that some provinces will be moving into upper incomes while other provinces are still in developing stage.
China's bigness helps it in these situations, because you can have different provinces and different localities try very different things, and then whatever works gets copied. In the case of South Korea, you have to decide on one economic policy, whereas with China, you can have six different policies and just see what works."
"South Korea is most commonly compared with Taiwan, which went a more American-style route to success with heavier emphasis on SMEs. Comparing the two countries, South Korea has better conglomerates with global brand recognition, while Taiwan has higher living standards.
Recently, however, Taiwan has been growing at a breathneck 8 or 9% speed due to, I'm told, tighter integration with the Chinese economy than South Korea's 6 or 7% growth rate."
"Also, it doesn't hurt that, at a very critical stage in its growth, South Korea's Cold War protector (i.e. the US) allowed them to basically export at will while keeping their market almost completely closed to imports -- which they still are to a large degree."
"One thing that makes China very different from South Korea is that China is big. South Korea is roughly the size of a single Chinese province. So one thing that the central government has to deal with is the fact that some provinces will be moving into upper incomes while other provinces are still in developing stage.
China's bigness helps it in these situations, because you can have different provinces and different localities try very different things, and then whatever works gets copied. In the case of South Korea, you have to decide on one economic policy, whereas with China, you can have six different policies and just see what works."
"South Korea is most commonly compared with Taiwan, which went a more American-style route to success with heavier emphasis on SMEs. Comparing the two countries, South Korea has better conglomerates with global brand recognition, while Taiwan has higher living standards.
Recently, however, Taiwan has been growing at a breathneck 8 or 9% speed due to, I'm told, tighter integration with the Chinese economy than South Korea's 6 or 7% growth rate."