Last year, on the eve of his departure to the US to head his country's permanent mission at the UN in New York, I met with Oh Joon in his hometown, the South Korean capital of Seoul. Our conversation took place in the diplomatic club there. Just before his posting in New York, the South Korean diplomat served as ambassador to Singapore (2010-2013). Prior to that he served for three years as deputy minister for multilateral and global affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Seoul. In addition to representing the Republic of Korea in international missions, in 2004 and 2005 he chaired the Missile Technology Control Regime and, since 2010, has been a member of the World Economic Forum (WEF). The reason I mention details from his career is to give an idea of the background of this impressive man. His words have remained fixed in my mind to this day. I believe that his ideas are especially pertinent to us now, in Egypt, when we desperately need the beacons of successful experiences such as that of South Korea. Oh Joon, who had just completed his posting in Singapore, expressed his admiration for the economic model set by his country's East Asian neighbour, in terms of openness to and interconnectivity with the world. The two countries are similar in that they have both come a long way from the grips of grinding poverty in the 1960s to a stage where they are among the strongest economies in the world. To my surprise, Oh faulted his country for failing to emulate Singapore. He urged responsible-minded fellow citizens to reconsider the way they think and act, and to look toward Singapore as an illustration of the positive influence of economic openness and connectivity with the world. Singapore pursued an unwavering policy of openness to multinational firms, and foreign skills and talents played a pivotal role in building that country's economy. Diplomatically and commercially active, it signed a huge number of bilateral and regional free trade agreements, including one with South Korea. These agreements contributed significantly to the huge balance of trade increase. The fact that the “open door” policy in Egypt is synonymous with everything negative troubled me. Here I was sitting before someone from an economic tiger who was enthusiastically studying and admiring the successful experience of another economic tiger and calling on his own country to emulate it. And there I was looking back angrily at the autobiography of an Egyptian open door experience that swerved off course. When President Anwar Al-Sadat called for the ill-fated policy he sought to build an investment and fiscal outlook that would enable the transition from socialism to capitalism. Unfortunately, trade activity, which was permeated by a considerable amount of corruption, caused prices as well as unemployment rates to soar. The open door policy collapsed in form after the bread riots of 18 and 19 January 1977. I say “in form” because the dream of the promised economic prosperity burst in the minds of the masses of ordinary people. However, the mechanisms of illicit gain for others continued to gnaw away at the Egyptian economy. From that point a black economy began to emerge, with three sides like the Bermuda Triangle. But instead of swallowing up planes and ships, it eroded values and enfeebled bodies. Moreover, it grew worse after the social upheavals between the 25 January and 30 June revolutions. The first leg of this triangle is begging, which is no longer just a reflection of the spread of poverty but also now a crime that has a violent face. Begging has become a dangerous occupation practiced by numbers for which there are no official figures but which some estimate to be in the millions, if we include street children who practice begging. If begging is prohibited and criminalised and if the law is not enforced then this is almost tantamount to official complicity. This perpetuates a phenomenon that remedies an economic element while destroying another social one. The second leg of the triangle is bribery. If begging is practiced outside of formal structures, the crime of bribery is associated with employment in government jobs. When government employees abuse their positions and exact bribes in exchange for the performance of certain duties or services, they undermine the principle of equality between citizens. They are discriminating between those with money and those who cannot afford to pay for services that they should rightfully have access to. They also generate another type of inequality, between bribe-takers, whose incomes become disproportionately high, and honest employees, who can see with their own eyes that their attempt to safeguard values threatens their social salvation. Theft is the third leg of the black economy triangle. According to a report published by the Public Security Authority on crime rates in Egypt in early 2013, crime rates have risen. There were 2,611 cases of robbery compared with 733 the previous year, which is to say a 350 per cent increase. In addition, there were 9,284 cases burglary of private homes, up from 7,368 the previous year, and 6,792 burglaries of commercial establishments, compared with 4,687 the previous year. As for automobile theft, the incidence rate has skyrocketed by 500 per cent, or 20,375 cases compared to 4,973 the previous year. These figures are alarming. In a country that harbours great dreams for progress, the black economy looms like a huge wall, obscuring all views of the horizon for honest people with high hopes. The ideal economic liberalisation that Oh Joon speaks of cannot begin to happen under the weight of that lethal triangle. I asked him about another obstacle that stands in the way of development in Egypt: foreign debt. Oh Joon smiled calmly as he said that his country had also experienced the bitter experience of being burdened with debt. I had known this. In 1960, South Korea was the poorest country in the world, with a per capita income of $7. Because of its small size and inability to expand geographically for urbanisation and development, especially as it is hemmed in by a mountain range, it was ranked as a country with low prospects for development. South Korean families struggled bitterly to build their lives and educate their children. Women grew their hair in order to cut it off and sell it to markets in the US where the hair was used to make wigs. In 1964, South Korea's income from the sale of hair and textiles came to $100 million. In 1965, Seoul signed an agreement with Tokyo that saw Japan agree to compensate South Korea for the Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945. South Korea received $200 million in compensation and another $500 million in loans. Oh Joon said that other countries in Asia and Africa borrowed like South Korea did. Thirty years ago, Seoul had accumulated a total debt of $22 billion. But thanks to these loans it was able to realise the aims of the New Society drive. Launched by President Park Chung-hee, the campaign sought to increase the income of rural agrarian families. It instituted a plan of reforms to improve standards of living in the cities. Its keywords were hard work, self-reliance and cooperation in the framework of a popular movement to modernise society. The government undertook many actions to encourage people to free themselves from foreign dependency. Development projects extended to agricultural villages and fisheries that used hydraulic works on the mountain tributaries of the Han and Gadran and brought electricity to villages and towns. In the second year, the drive focused on educating village youth and promoted reforestation. Nor will anyone forget the construction of huge thoroughfares, especially those linking the capital with Pusan. Covering a distance equivalent to that between Cairo and Aswan, the thoroughfare created opportunities for employment, industry and the sale of products abroad via the southern port city. Today, President Park Guen-hye, the daughter of that president (a dictator who came to power by a military coup on 16 May 1961 and ruled until 1979) governs the modern sophisticated nation that her father had begun to build on the banks of the Han. It is a development story that many consider something of a miracle. In the early 1970s, South Korea's neighbours began to compete with it in small manufacturing. President Chung-hee therefore decided to shift toward heavy industries, setting into motion a five-year plan that began with chemical industries and aimed to increase exports by more than a third. A key component of the strategy was to offer major South Korean companies certain privileges in exchange for investing in fields designated by the government as priorities. As I remembered our conversation, I thought: Those loans could never had succeeded if they had been channelled into anything but the development of the organisations and resources of the state, and those people could not have progressed if they had relied on the illusory incomes of the black economy that are like deadly sedatives. The opening up of the South Korean and Singaporean economies would have failed if there hadn't been proper regulation by law. As Oh Joon says, today South Korea is among the top 20 donor nations to countries of the Third World. It is a long road from being in debt to becoming a major donor ⎯ from taking handouts to giving them. It is a difficult road, but not an impossible one. The writer is the Editor-in-Chief of the AsiaN.
