Quotes of the Day
The opening ceremony of the World Stem Cell Hub was held last month at Seoul National University Hospital, in an aging lecture hall equipped with worn, wooden desks and iron reading lamps. While the setting was antiquated, the occasion was 21st century all the way. South Korea's stem-cell "bank" will offer cloned embryonic-stem-cell lines to researchers around the world hoping to devise revolutionary treatments for ailments such as diabetes and Parkinson's disease. The guests squeezed into the hall included South Korea's President Roh Moo Hyun and leading lights in the field of cloning and stem-cell research, such as Ian Wilmut, the British embryologist who cloned Dolly the sheep. The heady ambitions of this scientific enterprise were trumpeted on banners around the hall: "Hope of the World. Dream of Korea."
The stem-cell bank made global headlines and that's a very Korean dream these days: to be recognized internationally as a country on the cutting edge, not a mere copycat manufacturer of VCRs and microwave ovens. As the port of Pusan, the nation's second-largest city, prepares to host the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit this month, South Korea finds itself at a watershed moment between its past and future. The country's export-intensive postwar economic model, borrowed from Japan, delivered the robust economic growth that is one of the principal goals of APEC; by the time of the organization's landmark 1994 conference in Bogor, Indonesia, South Korea was on the brink of being recognized as a developed nation, defined as having per-capita income of $10,000. Today, the country is home to world-class technology companies (Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics), automakers (Kia Motors, Hyundai Motor), steelmakers (POSCO) and shipbuilders (Hyundai Heavy Industries). South Korea has become a land of bullet trains and microchip-controlled refrigerators for making kimchi.
But reliance on manufacturing and exports has also left Korea vulnerable to foreign competitors following the same blueprint—particularly China. The Asian financial crisis of 1997 brutally revealed the flaws in the South Korean economy—the sclerotic and secretive management practices of the family-dominated chaebol (business conglomerates); corruption and cronyism; and the fact that much of what the country produces is based on technologies invented in the U.S. or, even more ignominious, in Japan, its former colonial overlord. South Korea's economy grew by 4.6% last year and it's expected to slow to 4% this year, compared with 9% or higher in China.
The 1997 crisis helped convince many South Koreans that it isn't enough to be a "developed" follower of other countries' ways. They are determined instead to create an advanced economy powered by their own inventions and talents. This business plan jibes perfectly with APEC's philosophy of breaking down barriers and opening up to the world, and that's a remarkable about-face for what has traditionally been a deeply insular nation, distrustful and resentful of the outside world. Koreans are now jetting everywhere, learning a host of foreign languages, investing everywhere from China and India to Turkey and the Philippines. Before 1989, the average citizen was only allowed a passport for government-approved business and family visits, and investing abroad was akin to treason. But innovation, openness and an eagerness to compete on the global stage—particularly in hot, fast-evolving fields such as I.T., biotech and entertainment—are now national mantras.
Switching to an unfamiliar economic game plan entails risks—but "reckless" and "hasty" are adjectives Koreans use with pride to describe themselves. "Korea has not only the brains but the basic attitude," says Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, who conceived the World Stem Cell Hub last April and brought it to fruition in just six months. Patients suffering from spinal-cord injuries and Parkinson's find nothing hasty in that: last week, when the center started accepting applications for cell donations from people who might benefit from the research, its server nearly crashed from the overload. Listen to Hwang and there is no mistaking the sense of urgency fuelling this economic transformation: "We have to find another kind of national growth engine."
Hardware is passé: China has the busy hands that will make the dolls and appliances that sell at Wal-Mart and Carrefour stores around the world. (Although branded and high-ticket items are still attractive: Samsung last month unveiled a two-meter-wide plasma television that retails for $124,000.) Korea's main natural resource is brainpower, and it's got more than its fair share: 97% of its youth make it to grade 10 of high school, the highest percentage in the world. Korean students' math skills are second only to those of the Finns. When your people are as smart and educated as those in advanced countries, you can compete on the higher level of ideas and creativity.
One of Korea's hottest exports these days is entertainment—movies, TV programs, pop singers, Internet games—and that's a triumph of talent. An episode of the serialized television drama Jewel in the Palace scored Hong Kong's highest viewership ratings ever this year, and Chinese President Hu Jintao told a visiting South Korean lawmaker he's a fan. Jang Dong Gun, Korea's hottest leading man, is suddenly everywhere. After starring in last year's Taegukgi, a Korean War tear-jerker that broke box-office records at home, Jang is playing opposite Hong Kong star Cecilia Cheung in the big-budget U.S-Chinese-Korean co-production The Promise, which Beijing has picked as its contender for the Best Foreign Film Oscar.
The overseas popularity of such cultural exports has been dubbed the "Korean Wave," and it's at its crest. In the first nine months of this year, 550,000 tourists visited South Korea on Wave package tours, which take them to locations where TV serials have been filmed. At any given hour, millions of people in China, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong and the U.S. are online playing Lineage, a computer game created by Seoul-based NCsoft. Singers such as Rain and BoA are white hot throughout Asia.
The overseas box office from South Korean films for the first six months of this year came to $42 million (up from $58 million for all of last year and $15 million in 2002), while computer-game exports are expected to reach $480 million (up from $376 million in 2004). That's still a pittance compared with the country's electronics exports, which are expected to top $100 billion this year.
But money isn't everything. Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon says the Wave has brought South Korea long-overdue respect. "Everybody knows we are the 11th-largest economic power in the world," he says. "But we have 5,000 years of culture and this is not well known." Says Yang Kee Ho, a political-science professor at Seoul's SungKongHoe University: "The Korean Wave shows we're not just a small country anymore."
Koreans also say their art reflects the country's unique sensibility. For one thing, familial relations are strongly portrayed in its dramas. Yun Suk Ho, director of four TV serials that have been smashes in Japan, talks of han, a Korean word for a deeply felt sense of oppression: "Korean dramas express sadness particularly well. The writer of Autumn in the Heart would cry when writing his script. The actors, during rehearsals, started crying too." Shin Hyun Taik, a film producer who runs a government-funded foundation promoting cultural exports, emphasizes another aspect of han: a grudge mentality, with resentments directed at everyone from U.S. troops to Japanese politicians. "A grudge is part of our national sentiment," he says. "We have a talent for expressing this."
Shin worries that the Wave will subside. His solution: to aggressively court film industries in other Asian nations to join in co-productions and other cross-pollinations. "We don't want to make the same mistake Hong Kong made," he says. "The action flicks, the Jackie Chan movies, were great. But they didn't share with the rest of Asia and their wave ended." In other words, Korea simply can't go it alone in this business.
It's just past dawn on a Saturday morning and Hwang Woo Suk, the founder of the World Stem Cell Hub, is clad in surgical scrubs. He stands next to a full-term pregnant sow suspended upside down from the ceiling by a steel cable. "Ready?" he shouts to his operating team. Hwang makes a 30-cm slash in the sow's belly, thrusts in his arm right up to the elbow and withdraws the sow's womb, and within it, a shivering, black cloned baby pig. If the technology develops, the pigs may someday be used for xenotransplantation: their organs can be used as replacement parts for humans.
Hwang, 52, is a one-man parable of South Korea's coming of age. He was raised in poverty and, as a child, helped support his family by taking care of neighbors' cows. He is a veterinarian by training—not a geneticist or biochemist—and his initial research in embryology was intended to help Korea develop cows that produced more milk. But he kept setting his sights higher: cloning a Holstein cow, piglets, cows resistant to mad cow disease. Hwang's research made mainstream news in May, when he announced that his lab had created 11 human stem-cell lines cloned from patients suffering from diseases such as diabetes. (In theory, those lines may be able to produce new, genetically identical cells to be used to treat patients.) Ten weeks later, he made headlines by unveiling Snuppy, the first cloned dog. "Korea has a very distinct world lead," says British embryologist Wilmut. "There's no one else who can produce stem cells from cloned embryos like they can—not by a large margin." Hwang shares his discoveries with colleagues around the world, partly to push the science faster—but also to ensure that his lab never finds itself out of the loop.
Hwang says he has no intention of cloning a human, which he suspects is technically impossible. But the changes he's trying to engineer for Korea are, in their own way, almost as revolutionary. "We need a whole new paradigm, a fresh concept, to develop this country," he says. "Ships and semiconductors were not Korean industries. We adopted those products from the outside." The way forward is to pursue technological innovations in a way that only Koreans can, Hwang says. "We were conquered by Japan for 36 years," he explains. "During the Korean War, so many people were killed." The result, he says, is a "hungry, fighting spirit" that other countries find hard to match. "Our lab has been working 365 days a year for 15 years. This concentration and diligence were really needed. Western culture cannot understand and cannot endure the hardship. If we devote ourselves for a few more decades, I strongly believe we will develop one of the most advanced countries in the world. This is my dream."
Oh Yeon Ho wants to build a new Korea, too—after reducing an existing part to rubble. In 2000, he launched OhmyNews, an Internet news site with a singular twist: aside from its staff of 27 journalists, OhmyNews publishes articles by average folk, whom Oh labels "citizen reporters" or "news guerrillas." The submissions, which are vetted and edited, pour in at a rate of 200 per day from 40,000 registered contributors. In addition, when an article appears on the OhmyNews website, netizens are encouraged to write their responses, which are posted prominently alongside the website's story—providing instant feedback and debate.
For all his talk of empowering average citizens, Oh is really trying to disempower another group: Korea's conservative mainstream media, which traces its clout to the dictatorial days of the past. Oh is very much of his generation: the anti-government student protestors of the mid-1980s who managed to rid South Korea of its dictatorships. He served a year in prison in 1988-89 after being charged with violating the country's infamous National Security Law, and his autobiography dwells on the frustrations of working for the non-mainstream press. The beauty of the Internet, Oh realized, is that the establishment couldn't control it. "OhmyNews wasn't created just for money," he says. "It was created to change society."
In fact, the student-movement generation now holds power in South Korea. (President Roh is a former human-rights lawyer and opponent of the dictatorship.) But old networks live on in the media, politics and big business. And while the Asian financial crisis forced many chaebol to clean up their business practices, the process is hardly complete. Two Samsung executives were recently convicted of using illegal means to transfer control of the conglomerate from its chairman to his son. Chey Tae Won, chairman of oil-refining giant SK Corp., was jailed for securities and accounting fraud in 2003, yet shareholders demanding his resignation as chairman lost the battle. Oh sees the technology that drives OhmyNews as a natural challenge to old boys up to shady tricks: "I thought if I raised the flag—Every citizen a reporter!—it could even the balance."
When the 21 world leaders don traditional South Korean durumagi coats for APEC's closing day photo-op in Pusan, they will pose in a specially built Korean-style garden near the beach resort of Haeundae. If he can, Roh should get them out of the garden to see the signs of Korea changing and opening: the young soldier in the Pusan train station toting a duffel bag in one hand, a fat copy of GQ (in English) in the other. Or the flier distributed to every diner at Seoul's Fresco restaurant, which reads (in English): "We are proud of our fresh salad and pasta. In the near future, we'll be one of the numerous competitors in the Italian food market and create value for all the customers we serve." That's Korea today: ambitious as always, hyper-competitive, trying not only to keep up with the times but to create a new future—and everyone's infected with urgency, right down to the pizzerias.
- Anthony Spaeth and Donald Macintyre
- South Korea used manufacturing muscle to build a modern economy. Now it has started to focus on using its head