From Third World to First The Singapore Story pdfdrive com

33. Korea: At the Crossroads
I did not have happy memories of the Koreans because the first ones I met were
in Japanese uniform. They were one of two groups of auxiliaries the Japanese
brought to Singapore, the other being Taiwanese. The Koreans were the toughs
and as heavy-handed as the Japanese soldiers. The Taiwanese were used as
interpreters, speaking Hokkien, Singapore’s major Chinese dialect.
After the war, Korea’s economic dynamism overrode my past prejudices. I
visited the country in October 1979 when President Park Chung Hee received
me in his official residence, the Blue House. Park was an ascetic-looking man,
small and wiry with a sharp face and a narrow nose. He had been chosen and
trained as a military officer by the Japanese. He must have been among the best
of his generation.
He wanted close relations with Asean and hoped I would help. He said the
prospects of peace in the Korean peninsula were not good. The South did not
want another war, placing peace first and reunification second. The North
wanted to reunify by force. I asked if the American commitment would go
beyond 1981, the date President Carter had announced for the withdrawal of US
forces. He replied that Carter’s Defence Secretary Brown had promised security
after 1981 and had stated publicly that the security of Korea was vital to the
United States. I said Carter’s 1976 election pledge to withdraw troops from
Korea was popular with Americans; if it again became popular, Carter could
change. He agreed, saying he was uneasy over US policy which was affected by
four-year election cycles.
He had no small talk at dinner that night. His daughter, in her 20s and
English-speaking, kept the conversation flowing. Park said his training was that
of a military officer, and his job was to take the advice and recommendations of
the experts whom he had appointed as ministers and top officials, and decide
policy.
His prime minister, Choi Kyu Hah, was an able man, Japanese-educated.
Choi’s wife was equally intelligent and well-educated in Japanese. She and her

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husband still read Japanese novels and newspapers. The Korean intelligentsia,
like the Taiwanese, were as much influenced by the Japanese as I was by the
British. Park had been in power for 18 years and had got the economy thriving
with a disciplined and united people, all of whom were determined to achieve
economic modernisation. Following Japanese practice, he jealously protected his
domestic market and exported aggressively. He encouraged, even forced
Koreans to save, denying them luxuries like colour television sets which they
were exporting in increasing numbers. I was impressed by his strong will and
grim resolve for Korea to succeed. Without Park, Korea might never have made
it as an industrialised nation. Five days after I left Korea, Park was assassinated
by his closest aide, the chief of intelligence. According to the government, it was
part of a plot to seize power. Their press reported that the intelligence chief had
feared being replaced after Park criticised him for his failure in handling unrest
when students and workers fought police in Pusan.
My visit confirmed my assessment that the Korean people were tough and
capable of enduring great hardships. Successive invaders had swept across the
steppes of central Asia and come to a halt in the peninsula. Koreans are of
Mongolian stock with distinctive facial and physical features, easily
distinguishable from the Japanese or Chinese. They were proud of their history
and took me to Kyongju, their ancient cultural centre where the tombs of Shilla
dynasty kings had yielded elaborate artefacts of gold and precious stones.
Their hatred for the Japanese was intense. Thirty-five years of merciless
Japanese suppression of any rebellious activity had left deep scars on their soul.
They remembered the Japanese invasions over the last 500 years, each of which
they repelled. Even among the most Japanised of the Korean elite, including
Prime Minister Choi and his wife, both completely at home in Japanese
language, literature and culture, there was an underlying antipathy towards their
former rulers. The Japanese were hard on the Koreans because they resisted
colonisation and domination. They had also resisted Chinese overlordship for a
thousand years, but they did not have that same deep antipathy for the Chinese.
They had adopted the Chinese script and with it had imbibed the teachings of
Confucius.
Korean students in American universities have shown that they are as bright
as the Japanese or Chinese. But although physically Koreans are hardier, they
cannot equal the Japanese in cohesiveness and dedication to their companies.
Korean workers and unions were quiescent as long as there was martial law.
When it was lifted, the unions became militant with go-slows, sit-ins and strikes.

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They demanded more pay and better conditions regardless of what was
happening to their export markets. Korean employers and unions never achieved
the cooperative relationship that Japanese companies and their unions enjoy.
Japanese unions never damaged their companies’ competitive position however
sharp their disputes with their employers over who got what.
The Koreans are a fearsome people. When they riot, they are as organised
and nearly as disciplined as the riot police who confront them, policemen who
resemble gladiators in their helmets with plastic visors and plastic shields. When
their workers and students fight in the streets with these policemen, they look
like soldiers at war. Their strikers squat on the ground to listen to speeches and
pump fists into the air rhythmically. They are an intense people not given to
compromise, and when they oppose authority, they do so with vigour and
violence.
I made two more visits to South Korea in the 1980s to meet Presidents Chun
Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo. President Kim Young Sam and I met in
Singapore in 1996. All four Korean leaders, from Park to Kim, were deeply
concerned over their country’s geopolitical vulnerability, caught between three
huge and powerful neighbours, China, Russia and Japan.
When I met Chun in Seoul in 1986, I was struck by his preoccupation with
and fear of North Korea. I found this strange. Their population was twice that of
the North. They were immensely richer and had access to better military
equipment from America. The traumatic experience of the communist invasion
must have left deep scars and an abiding fear of the ferocity of their northern
brethren. The Korean foreign ministers I met all spoke with awe of the military
might and prowess of the North, despite its parlous economy.
Another issue which dominated my discussions with South Korea’s leaders
was trade and investments between the newly industrialising economies (NIEs),
which included South Korea and Singapore, and the developed countries of
Europe and America. With President Chun in 1986 I raised my concern at the
growing protectionist sentiments in America and Europe. If we, the NIEs, did
not open up our markets to reciprocate the free access we had to America and
Europe, they would find it unbearable and protectionism would grow. He agreed
that the NIEs should liberalise. Korea was doing so in a systematic and steady
way, to be completed in two years. I pointed out that after his liberalisation,
Korea’s tariffs would still be high at 16 to 20 per cent. Chun’s response was that

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Korea was not a rich country. It had a per capita income of only US$2,000, less
than Singapore’s, and it had a debt of US$46.5 billion besides the burden of
defence.
When I spoke to their four major business associations over lunch in Seoul in
1986, I found them most reluctant to open up their markets. Two years later, at
lunch with the same four associations, I discussed the need to increase their
imports, urging that they and other NIEs should discuss with the industrial
nations in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development) ways to narrow trade imbalances. This time they were more
receptive, realising that their position was not tenable in the longer run.
During Chun’s presidency, massive demonstrations and riots brought Seoul
to a standstill from time to time. Towards the end of his term, they were
endemic. Roh, as his key aide, moved skilfully to lower tensions and gathered
support to run and win the next presidential election.
Roh Tae Woo was a quiet and serious man. When we first met in July 1986,
he was a minister in Chun’s cabinet. He spoke highly of Singapore’s clean
government. His president had tried to eliminate corruption but had found this
not easy. How had we tackled it? I explained our system: first, good intelligence;
next, an impersonal, not a subjective approach; third, solid backing from the top
for anti-corruption investigation and prosecution. As his Democratic Justice