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KOREAN STUDIES
REVIEW
Troubled Tiger: Businessmen, Bureaucrats, and Generals in South
Korea, by Mark L. Clifford. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1998. (ISBN
0-7656-0140-0 cloth; 0-7656-0141-9 paper). 373 pp.
Reviewed by Timothy C.
Lim
California State University, Los Angeles
[This review first appeared in
Acta Koreana, 1 (1998): 143-147]
Asia's recent economic difficulties- which can be traced back to the
early
1990s, when Japan first slipped into a still on-going recession- have
led
an increasing number of observers to conclude that the "Asian Miracle"
has
run its course. Indeed, many argue that most of the region's economies
have
not merely run out of gas, but are facing the prospect of serious and
long-term economic decline. Not surprisingly, there is also a general
consensus on the basic cause of Asia's apparent downfall, namely, an
excessive reliance on an authoritarian, bureaucratic and
state-controlled
approach to capitalist development. The logic here is simple: pervasive
state involvement in the economy, which at one point may have served a
useful purpose, has become dysfunctional in the more complex,
competitive
and globalized economic environment of today. The main problem, of
course,
is that state involvement encourages corruption and inefficiency- the
two
banes of a smoothly functioning and productive capitalist market
economy.
Without dramatic change, most of Asia's economies, according to these
observers, are almost certainly doomed. In short, the very same systems
that created the basis for Asia's economic success in the past are now
said
to be the fundamental source of the region's current problems.
Mark Clifford's Troubled Tiger: Businessmen, Bureaucrats, and
Generals in
South Korea falls squarely into this new mode of thinking. In fact,
Clifford's book places South Korea at the top of an unenviable list of
inflexible, slow-moving and seriously endangered "high-cost,
low-efficiency" economies in Asia. In this respect, Clifford- who was a
correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review from 1987 to
1992 and who
now works as the Asia Correspondent for Businessweek - seems
particularly
prescient: Troubled Tiger was originally published well before
the
country's recent string of economic disasters, including the failure of
two
large business groups (Kia and Hanbo) and the still-current and quite
serious financial crisis. The ability to "predict" a future crisis,
however, is not the main objective of Clifford's book. Instead, in
Troubled
Tiger, the author's intention is to "to sketch out a more nuanced
picture
of one of the world's most extraordinary economies than that which
appears
in either popular or academic accounts" (xi). More specifically,
Clifford
wants to focus on the relationship between authoritarian politics and
rapid
economic growth; he is particularly interested in exploring the "often
ignored or misunderstood tensions between government and business, and
within the government itself ..." (5). To put it simply, Clifford wants
to
takes us deeper inside the "Korean miracle." To a significant degree,
the
author carries through on this promise, although, as I will discuss
below,
Clifford's work is far from perfect.
Troubled Tiger begins with an extremely broad outline of the
social,
cultural and historical context of South Korea's economic and political
development. Running through roughly 2,000 years of history in a mere 15
pages, Clifford quickly gets to the meat of his argument in chapter 3,
where he begins his discussion of Park Chung Hee, the man whom most
credit
with creating the basis for South Korea's phenomenal record of economic
growth. Clifford, in fact, does little to dispel the notion that Park
was
the essential (although, not sole) ingredient in South Korea's economic
rise. Indeed, the author attributes much of South Korea's early success
to
the sheer "force of Park's personality" (67). In this regard, Clifford's
chapters on the Park era (which accounts for roughly one-third of his
book)
break little or no new ground, although his extensive interviews with
political and economic elites do give us a valuable "insider"
perspective.
We find out, for example, that despite Park's strong personality and
genuine commitment to national development, he could be easily
manipulated
by appeals to his ego. According to an interview with Kim Mahn Je (who
headed the Korea Development Institute in the 1970s), Park was more
likely
to approve projects when he was led to believe that ideas proposed by
others were his own (59).
Clifford's interviews, however, reveal something far more interesting
and
valuable than such tidbits of insider information: they also show the
relatively high level of bureaucratic infighting and intra-governmental
conflict that went on during the Park era - something that has generally
been ignored in the English-language literature on Korean development.
In
this regard, Clifford certainly does what he sets out to do. Another
often-ignored aspect of South Korea's political economy is the issue of
corruption. But, in Troubled Tiger, corruption takes center
stage. Indeed,
Clifford goes to great lengths to demonstrate that corruption was
part-and-parcel of Korea's political and economic development, even
during
the Park era. As he succinctly puts it, "... the system was at its heart
corrupt." This meant too, that virtually everyone in South Korea with
any
degree of political or economic power was (and is) vulnerable to charges
of
corruption, which helps to explain why the country is besieged by
scandals
and purges almost every time a new leader comes into office. In fact,
the
author spends a great deal of time discussing details of the
"anti-corruption" campaigns carried out by every new regime in South
Korea,
from Park to Kim Young Sam. Clifford even suggests that Park was not as
squeaky clean as he is often portrayed: after his death in 1979, about
half
a million dollars was found in his personal office safe - curiously,
though, the author defends Park by noting that "... at least most of the
money stayed in Korea (93).
In general, Clifford's focus on corruption provides a much needed and
worthwhile corrective to the hundreds of studies that have portrayed the
South Korean state (especially under Park) as a paragon of
developmentalism. Clifford does a particularly good job of showing the
deep-seated institutional/structural basis of corruption in Korean
society.
It is disappointing, then, that the author seems to take for granted the
notion that corruption in South Korea was primarily, if not wholly, a
reflection of unchallengeable state power. This points to a more serious
problem in Troubled Tiger: like most people who have written
about South
Korean development, Clifford largely disregards the possibility that the
private sector played an autonomous and proactive role in
charting South
Korea's developmental course. To be sure, Clifford recognizes the
importance of Korea's primary economic agents - the chaebol - but only
as
relatively passive vehicles for state policy, particularly during the
Park
years. Clifford, for example, simply asserts that "Park incorporated the
private sector into the state" (41); later, while acknowledging that the
relationship between business leaders and President Park was
"ambiguous,"
the author nonetheless supports the claim that Park "had them trembling
with fear", and could "crush them like insects" (107).
In this respect, Clifford beats a tired refrain, albeit with a few new
verses. This is all the more disappointing because the author, at times,
clearly recognizes the potentially reciprocal (rather than one-way)
nature
of state-business relations in Korea. In his chapter on Korea's "Big
Push"
into heavy and chemical industries, for example, Clifford points out
that
Park "... needed the economic growth that only business could provide,
and
businessmen needed the business licenses and access to cheap loans that
only the government could grant" (114). On this point, it is important
to
remember that entrepreneurial and managerial skills were in extremely
short
supply in South Korea for several decades following liberation. In other
words, entrepreneurial/managerial ability was as scarce a resource in
South
Korea as was (financial) capital; yet, neither could thrive without the
other. This meant that, while Park could "crush" a few insectival
chaebol
on an individual basis, he could not threaten capital as a class.
It is, I
believe, critical to appreciate the mutually constitutive nature of
state-capital relations in South Korea, not only because it paints a
more
accurate picture of what really happened, but because it provides us
with a
far better basis for understanding the complex and problematic process
of
capitalist development in a late developing economy.
Take for example the critical issue of exports. Clifford and others have
noted that Park and the members of his "revolutionary council" were so
pessimistic about the prospect of selling goods abroad that they deleted
the section on exports in the First Five-Year Plan (54). Clifford also
notes, however, that Lee Byung Chull (founder of the Samsung Group, one
of
Korea's largest chaebol), "reputedly was influential in pushing for
government support of exports" (ibid.). Clifford, though, does not ask
why
Lee was so interested in securing export subsidies. If he had, he would
have discovered that Lee - like many of his business cohorts - was
desperately in need of foreign exchange to purchase raw materials from
abroad (Lee's main business lines at the time - sugar, flour and woolen
textiles -were all 100 percent dependent on imported raw goods). From
this
perspective, one can argue that Lee used the government to significantly
further his own economic interests. Later, of course, Park used export
targets as a way to enforce "discipline" on the private sector. But,
this
is precisely the point: Lee's entrepreneurial motives put in motion a
dynamic that allowed both the state and business to achieve their
goals,
although not necessarily in the manner both intended. Clifford, in fact,
agrees: very early in his book, he argues that the statist approach was
successful in stimulating economic growth only because it went
hand in hand
with "fierce competition" made possible by Korea's intimate involvement
in
export markets (6). Certainly, neither the state nor big business
anticipated that export-led development would create the basis for
intense
competition, and that this competition would ensure the relatively
efficient and productive use of scarce resources.
The second half of Clifford's book is devoted to an examination of the
regimes of Chun Doo Hwan, Roh Tae Woo, and Kim Young Sam (I should point
out, though, that Clifford's book is not strictly chronological). In
these
chapters, Clifford adopts a subtle change in tone: whereas his earlier
chapters on Park are alternately laudatory and reproachful, his latter
chapters are more uniformly critical, even of the economic bureaucracy.
Thus, the same bureaucrats that Clifford praised as the "brains" and
"hands" of economic policy during the Park era (48-9), had become, by
the
mid-1980s, out-of-touch "mandarins," who had little practical knowledge
of
or interest in the real workings of the economy (247). Despite the
increasingly detached nature of the economic bureaucracy, the economy
continued to grow. Indeed, Clifford points out that, between 1985 and
1988,
Korean exports doubled and the country moved into the ranks of the top
twelve trading nations in the world.
Not surprisingly, though, Clifford gives the government little credit
for
bringing about this tremendous spurt of growth in the 1980s. Instead, he
attributes the country's export success to a particularly favorable set
of
international conditions and - more importantly - to far-sighted
planning
by the private sector. Clifford almost does an about face here:
in a
curious chapter on the Korean automobile industry, the author implies
that
the development of this sector was due primarily to the entrepreneurial
efforts and vision of men like Chung Ju Yung (founder of Hyundai),
rather
than to the planning and support of the government. Clifford even
asserts
that in the struggle for control of the auto industry, "the company
[Hyundai] kept what mattered most - its independence" (257). Although
Clifford is referring to events that occurred during the Chun years, it
is
still difficult to reconcile the author's newfound appreciation of
private
sector autonomy with his earlier assertions of near-total subservience.
(On
this point, I might also note that Hyundai's automobile company
generally
pursued its own path even during the Park years.) In general, though,
Clifford remains fairly consistent. After all, the primary objective of
the
second half of Troubled Tiger is to show how once-successful
policies
become dysfunctional, both in economic and political terms. And, for the
most part, he does a good job of this.
Overall, in reading Clifford's perspective on South Korea's political
economy, one is treated to a fairly balanced, sometimes surprising, and
always easy to read account of a complex story. For these reasons,
however,
I was particularly unhappy to see Clifford slip into a stereotypical and
somewhat offensive (if not racist) mode in the last few chapters of his
book, where he discusses the difficulties Korea has faced, and will
continue to face, as it moves from the status of a Third World country
to a
"developed" nation. In these chapters, Clifford seems primarily
concerned
with showing that Korea and Koreans have a long way to go before they
will
be ready to "join the Big Leagues" - which to Clifford, seems to mean
accepting liberal economic policies. For example, in alluding to a
conflict
over the importation of Florida grapefruits, Clifford refers to the
Korean
press as "hysterical," "conspiratorial," and "xenophobic" (297). He then
argues that Korean resistance to a fully liberalized agricultural market
is
little more than an irrational and infantile demand for "affirmative
action" (298). In almost the same breath, Clifford turns his attention
to
Koreans more generally: he notes that, with regard to bilateral trade,
US
officials are "unhappy with the cocksure attitude of Koreans and
their
often adolescent assertions of national pride" (italics added,
298).
Clifford himself repeats this theme in chapter 24, when accuses Korean
authorities of engaging in "juvenile tactics" to discourage imports
(337).
In his zeal to stereotype Koreans, Clifford even engages in a bit of
oxymoronic foolishness - he asserts, for example, that "Koreans too
often
have a greediness, a sense of atomistic individualism that makes
common
cause only with others with whom one has an existing connection, such as
the family, schoolmates, or coworkers" (342). How one can be
atomistically
individualist and oriented toward larger social groups at the same time
is
certainly beyond me.
It is worth reiterating that all of Clifford's denunciations are based
on
the unwillingness of Koreans to immediately embrace a policy of full
liberalization. In other words, because Koreans, in general, are afraid
of
the risks posed by a sudden opening of their economy, Clifford feels
justified in condemning them as infantile, xenophobic, hysterical, and
untrusting. One might argue, instead, that Clifford's unwillingness to
acknowledge the social cost associated with "liberalization" is the real
problem. One could also argue that Clifford's condemnation of Korea is
extremely unfair: after all, few countries in history - including the
United States - have readily freed themselves of neo-mercantilist
practices
as they moved from developing to developed status. Indeed, even advanced
industrial democracies have recurrent problems regarding "free trade"
and
open borders - witness the hysterical backlash against Mexican
immigrants
in the United States. In addition, can one forget the sledgehammering of
Japanese imported cars in the 1980s by American autoworkers? Was this
the
"mature" response to liberalization that Clifford implies the West has
taken?
None of this is to say that Koreans should avoid liberalizing their
economy; rather, it is to say that Clifford's "hysterical" rhetoric is
not
an appropriate or particularly constructive way to deal with the issue.
Despite these misgivings, I still believe that Troubled Tiger is
a useful,
informative, and even important book. It should, however, be read with
caution and with the understanding that Clifford's perspective is deeply
colored by a neo-liberal and distinctly Anglo-American bias, which the
author neither questions nor acknowledges.
Citation:
Lim, Timothy C. 1998
Review of Mark L. Clifford, Troubled Tiger: Businessmen,
Bureaucrats, and Generals in South Korea (1998)
Korean Studies Review 1998, no. 8
Electronic file:
http://koreanstudies.com/ks/ksr/ksr98-08.htm
[This review first appeared in Acta Koreana, 1 (1998): 143-147]
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