Hold Seoul maps out rich, post-Covid economic landscape
There is no question, historically, that prudent and strategic dirigiste economic management has massively enriched South Korea ; not to mention neighbors Japan and China. The civil service head shed that wrote and oversaw the implementation of these blueprints has, on the whole, been a national asset and enabler rather than a nuisance, or liability.
The country saw its first wave of SOE build and private-sector industrial growth from the 1960s-1980s, as an aggressive government, wielding five-year plans, state control of capital and policies that coerced and incentivized companies to export to the world, built a top-tier national infrastructure while incubating such leading conglomerates as Samsung, Hyundai and LG.
It saw a second growth surge via the embedding of national broadband internet and the adoption of the then-advanced CDMA mobile telecoms standard in the 1990s. Korea’s hyper-speed emplacement of digital infrastructure birthed highly competitive local telcos and internet portals, while also greasing the skids of export-focused online gaming and entertainment firms.
The most recent features that have arisen on the economic landscape have been a range of startups and “unicorns” (unlisted firms valued north of $1 billion), notably in the big-tech and platform spaces. These brave new companies have leveraged a broad range of policies aimed at assisting startups, while riding the wave of a national, early-adopter Korean mania for personal digital tech.
Big picture, 21st century Korea Inc. is a resilient and diversified econosphere, with core strengths in multiple future-centric sectors.
https://asiatimes.com/2021/10/hold-seoul-maps-out-rich-post-covid-economic-landscape/
