Economic Agendas in a Global Context: Reflections on the Role of Korea.
Organised by: Asia Research Centre. Korea Foundation-LSE Academic Exchange Programme
Title: Economic Agendas in a Global Context: Reflections on the Role of Korea.
Date/time: Tuesday 14 October 2008, 6:30-8:00pm
Venue: Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House, LSE
Speaker: Prof. Ha-joon Chang, University of Cambridge
Chair: Prof. Lord Nicholas Stern, LSE
Bio: Professor Ha-Joon Chang is one of the world's foremost economists specialising in the economics of development. Chang is the author of several influential policy books which include Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective, and Bad Samaritans - The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism?
Background:
The global economy is going through a turbulent time. The recent meltdown in the world financial centres, the US and Britain, is creating pressure for a radical reform of the global financial architecture. The gridlock over the WTO talks has revealed some fundamental disagreements over what the world trading system should be. Increased immigration is creating both opportunities and tensions. Environmental problems, both local and global, are forcing us to re-examine the way we live – or at least aspire to live. It is time for a fundamental re-design of the global system.
In doing this, Korea has a unique set of assets to provide. It is one of the few countries that have transformed itself from one of the poorest to the one of the industrialized in living memory, so it can understand the concerns that span across a huge spectrum of countries. For example, in designing a pro-development world trading system, it can empathize with the positions of both rich countries and poor countries. For another example, it can play a unique role in fairly distributing the burdens of global environmental adjustment because the recentness of its poverty means that it has experienced all possible environmental issues, ranging from typically developing country problems of de-forestation due to collection of fuel wood, through development-driven environmental clean-up, and more recently to its newly-acquired duty (as a richer country) to bear a serious burden in cutting down greenhouse gases.
Unfortunately, Korea is not fully living up to its potential as a unique mediator in the international system. For example, while it is more understanding of the concerns of developing countries in international trade negotiations than the older industrial nations are, it has failed to use its own development experience as a tool to persuade the other rich countries that developing countries need more protection and less stringent intellectual property rights protection. It has very rapidly turned from a net emigration country to a net immigration country, but it has treated the immigrants very poorly, forgetting that many Koreans used to suffer from similar treatments in their adoptive countries and people back in Korea used to get outraged about it.
In this lecture, Ha-Joon Chang will discuss how Korea can, and should, contribute to the reform of the global system, which is becoming more and more necessary, by drawing on its unique historical experience and becoming a mediator that genuinely understands the concerns of, say, Swaziland to Switzerland.
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