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Can South Korea's Success Be Sustained?
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17548 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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7 / 1990 |
1,749 Words |
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Young Whan Kihl
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South Korea's "economic miracle" rests on shaky ground due to a series of policy blunders and violent events in 1990. In one incident, thousands of riot police stormed the Hyundai shipyard at Ulsan, South Korea, in late April to disperse an unauthorized labor strike. This triggered a nationwide workers' protest and sympathy strikes.
Tens of thousands of citizens and workers joined the university students on May 8 in staging an antigovernment demonstration in Seoul and other cities. The U.S. cultural center in downtown Seoul was also attacked; demonstrators set the lower floors of the building on fire. This was the day when the newly created ruling Democratic Liberal Party was holding its first convention. They were protesting President Roh Tae Woo's consolidation power by the merger of his Democratic Justice Party with the two opposition parties, Kim Young Sam's Reunification Democracy Party and Kim Jong Pil's New Democratic Republican Party, announced in January 1990.
What will become of South Korea in the 1990s? Will it continue the economic dynamism and growth shown in the 1980s, thereby transforming South Korea into another Japan? Or will South Korean economy stagnate as a result of over expansion and labor unrest?
Industrial Politics and Social Unrest
The year 1990 offered high hopes for political stability, social progress, and economic prosperity through democratic reforms. Those expectations, born out of the success of the 1988 Seoul Olympics, are unlikely to be met due to economic reversals and policy failures.
South Korea's backward financial system could damage its industrial competitiveness. For instance, a bill mandating the disclosure of the real identity of bank deposits for taxation purposes, was abandoned in 1990.
The state-run Korean Broadcasting System was engulfed in a labor dispute, with the Roh government unable to pacify disgruntled workers. The public is also unhappy over the social unrest triggered by inflationary pressures and skyrocketing housing costs. Land price increases of more than 30 percent in 1989 alone resulted in speculation by some business conglomerates. In April, the Korean stock market added another sour twist to the economy when it twice dropped to new lows. This perturbed the middle class who had invested in the market at the government's urging. All the aforementioned offer radical university students new causes to rally worker support.
Although constitutionally elected as president on December 16, 1987, Roh Tae Woo received only 36.6 percent of the total popular vote. His ruling Democratic Justice Party also failed to capture the majority of votes in the April 1988 National Assembly election, winning only 125 seats in the 299-member legislative body. As a result, Roh's effectiveness as a political leader has been handicapped in subsequent years. To halt the government's growing paralysis in the National Assembly, the Roh government whipped up "a grand compromise" in partisan politics. The surprising announcement of a three-party merger in January 1990 was clearly an attempt to accomplish a political miracle. The newly established Democratic Liberal Party now commands more than a two-thirds majority in the legislature. Whether it will bring about political
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