Over the last five years, Korea’s economy has outperformed all the advanced economies in the G-20 with the exception of 2012, when the United States and Australia posted higher levels of GDP growth.
Elected in 2012, President Park Geun-hye promised to rebalance the country’s economy by redistributing wealth through “economic democratization.”
In the aftermath of last spring’s shutdown of the Kaesong Industrial Complex, the Park administration has sought international investment to serve as a bulwark against future actions by North Korea that would endanger Kaesong’s operations.
Korea has consistently grown at rates comparable to BRIC countries such as Russia and Brazil in this new post-crisis era.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye travelled to India this week for her first overseas trip in 2014.
As we look back at the events that helped to shape 2013, we are also looking back the predictions The Peninsula made in our annual “10 Things to Watch for on the Korean Peninsula in 2013” blog.
If Korean companies are able to exceed, or at a minimum match the world-wide average of an engaged workforce, government efforts to foster a creative economy will have a greater chance to succeed.
While Korea’s announcement is only the first step in the process, Korea’s eventual membership in the TPP would be a natural outgrowth of the current administration’s broader economic and trade policy.
Recent news out of South Korea is the excitement over having “kimchi” likely placed on UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritages.
While more than two-thirds of all U.S. states exceeded the average international comparative score of 500, South Korea outpaced them all in math, along with every other country in the world, and all but two U.S. states and two other nations in science.