[KS] origins of segyehwa motto

[Kent Allen Davy]

On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 8:14 AM, YM Clara Hwang <sumovmi at hotmail.com> wrote:

>  Thanks Alexander and Sarah for the reply. Segyehwa is often quoted as
> 'Korea's answer to Globalization', quite time-specific though. It was widely
> used as Sarah rightly pointed out during Kim Young Sam government. My
> question, however, is the origins of this phrase. 'gajang
> hangukjeogingeosi gajang segyejeogingeosida' (sorry for sloppy
> romanization). Who came up with it and how did it become so popular? I
> believe Segyehwa Promotion Committee was formed in 1995. Is there any
> published work on this committee? Perhaps that could be a start.
>
> Regards,
> Yun Mi Hwang
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> It's my understanding (from a conversation with his chief of staff when he
was a National Assemblyman from a district in Busan) that (current?) senior
Presidential Secretary Park Hyun-Joon was a staff member of such committee
when he was a young apparatchik of the KYS government.  Perhaps someone
should ask him (he used to be fairly approachable, but who knows given his
current position) or another member of the committee directly what they had
in mind.  One interesting item that bears closer scrutiny is the apparent
discrepancy between the simple slogan "segyehwa", which (and is) the
shibboleth trotted out for foreigners, particularly prospective foreign
investors [see the publications of KOTRA and the foreign investment
promotion agency Invest Korea, *passim*] and the slogan  "gajang
hangukjeogingeosi gajang segyejeogingeosida' [redolent as it is with of
other similar such ideas as "Confucian" modernization, etc.. etc.].  If
ROKGOV officials and other actors were operating in terms of the latter,
while foreign investors and other foreign actors were acting based on a
(correspondingly) misapprehended understanding of "globalization", it might
explain a lot about the VERY difficult character of the Korean
market-"opening" that also commenced during the KYS administration and has
proceeded rather fitfully ever since.


____________________________________________________________
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