Why it is kinda stupid to compare Malaysia with Korea
Anas Zubedy
I am all for learning from others. I also believe in benchmarking. But in order to learn and benchmark from others with much sense, we must compare apples with apples. In the last few years, it is vogue to compare Malaysia with South Korea. Suggesting that they have moved forward far better than us and as such we must been doing rather badly. They somehow feel that we screwed up and should have been more like South Korea.
Some of our politicians and their supporters are perhaps using this comparison to win votes through half-truths.
Let us just for a while suspend our intelligence and agree with them. Let us list down what we need to have in order to become like South Korea.
1. We need a communist North Korea (complete with Soviet back-up) to taunt us so that America will adopt us like a favourite son. Being an ally to the USA, Korea received enormous sum of aid, first from the US and then from another ally, Japan. Accordingly from 1946 to 1978 they received USD 60 billion from the US. During the same period the entire African continent received only USD 68.9 billion. Indirect aids and support were also forthcoming with preferential treatment in most areas between the two countries, in trade, social and cultural.
2. We need to almost completely disregard the environment in the first 20 – 30 years of industrialization. Many do not know that until recently, the tap water in Seoul is completely unsafe for consumption! While we in Malaysia can still boast about our ‘oldest rainforest’, Korea has almost completely destroyed their original forestry. Air quality has been a major challenge for decades with acid rain, sulphur oxides, and annual yellow dust .The environmental degradation was made worst by the damage done by US military bases – from oil spills, noise pollution, water contamination from waste water and chemical.
3. We need to throw away democratic rule till about the 80s. In South Korea, the civilian government took over the military one rather recently, in 1987. Yes we need an authoritarian military to rule the country with ‘kuku besi’ type of management. It was bloody. Assassinations of head of states and all that would have become part of our political history.
