AN EXERCISE IN WORLDMAKING 2009 - ISS

8 Benevolent Makeover Or Insidious Takeover? The Case Of South Korea 93
CONCLUSION - TIGER DOWN: A MISSION ACCOMPLISHED?
Reform is inherently political and the universalistic one-size-fits-all recipe
for policy reform does not enable countries to craft their own distinctive
country-specific path to sustainable and equitable development (Beeson
and Islam 2005), but perhaps that is the end goal after all? Neo-liberalism
as an aggressive manifestation of capitalism crushes the sovereignty of
nation-states, diminishes labor standards, amplifies poverty and exploitation
and robs people of the inherent right to shape their own economic
destiny. For South Korea, it did not bode well. By the World Bank’s own
admission, a 2005 report deduced that “the national economy is now
suffering from weak investment, slow growth and slow job creation and
rising unemployment”, signifying that the neo-liberal model may not
have been the correct model to impose on South Korea in the aftermath
of its financial crisis. (Earlier on, there were those who believed it did
not work due to “incomplete reforms or incorrect sequencing of reform
measures”) (Dollar and Kraay 1999, 2000).
In the final analysis, the tiger was down: from the heights of one of
the most industrialized countries in the world to the home of one of the
highest suicide rates in the world (brought about by agonizing labor
market reform, it was quite a leap. Moreover, “unemployment rate was
up fourfold in Korea, urban poverty almost tripled, with almost a quarter
of the population falling into poverty, GDP declined by 6.7 % (Harvey
2005: 96). South Korea was able to re-gain its footing as it later on chose
to ignore some of the industrial and financial restructuring (it recovered
faster than other neighbors which had followed IMF policies more stringently),
but the demise of the Asian miracle was achieved. Those who
bucked the trend of following the free market gospel had to be brought
down from their lofty, hallowed position by virtue of the fact that in an
age of shrinking resources, further accumulation, by definition, necessitated
the dispossession of another. A benevolent makeover was never
the true aim of the exercise, much to the detriment of the Asian tiger.
Insidiously shrouded in a call for wholesale reform, it was a takeover at
its most severe.