THE MOST SUCCESSFUL NATION

South Korea’s accomplishments are due to support for markets and trade, and big investments in education and infrastructure

AS the world’s attention turns briefly away from United States President Donald Trump and towards the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, it’s worth focusing not just on the sports but on this year’s host country. South Korea is, in some senses, the most successful nation in the world, and its success provides some crucial lessons.

First, the economics — South Korea is in a league of its own. In his 2012 book, Breakout Nations, Ruchir Sharma observed that only two economies had grown at an average annual rate of more than five per cent for five decades in a row — South Korea and Taiwan. Sharma noted that South Korea’s trajectory was perhaps even more impressive because, unlike Taiwan — which is still rooted in low-cost manufacturing and assembly — South Korea has been able to move into the post-industrial economy with ease, entering industries like consumer electronics, biotech and robotics. Seoul is also an entertainment powerhouse, providing much of the best music and television for East Asia. Sharma awarded it the “gold medal” among breakout nations.

The achievement is all the more impressive when you consider where it started. Half a century ago, South Korea was one of the poorest countries on the planet, and nobody would have predicted that it would conjure up an economic miracle. In 1960, its per capita gross domestic product (GDP) was US$158 (RM625), slightly less than Ghana’s. Today, it is over US$27,000 — almost 20 times that of Ghana’s. But, poverty only begins to describe South Korea’s woes as it emerged from the Korean War. The country had no natural resources, no geographic advantages, a largely illiterate population and a physical infrastructure that had been battered during the war.

It faced the menace of North Korea, then staunchly supported by the world’s other superpower, the Soviet Union, and China, which had sent millions of soldiers to defeat it in the Korean War.

In addition to its economic boom, however, South Korea has also undergone a political transformation. It spent its first decades under a series of repressive dictatorships.

By the 1980s, that system began to crack as the Korean people demanded change.

The transition to liberal democracy was rocky, as it is everywhere, but South Korea pulled it off.