The Perfect Prime Minister

Author’s Note: The following is a work of satire that was inspired by an article that was written in The Wall Street Journal. It should NOT be taken seriously. If you do not have a sense of humor, you should stop reading this right now.

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President Park seems to be having quite a tough time nominating her next Prime Minister. And it is a shame that such a mess is being made about appointing someone to a position that is largely ceremonial and devoid of any real political power. The Prime Minister’s chief reason for being has always seemed to act as the fall guy whenever the government does something wrong. After all, Korea has had eight prime ministers since 2004.

President Park’s first nominee for the position, Ahn Dae-hee, withdrew himself after it was discovered that he was quite rich.

Never mind that there seems to be no evidence to suggest that he has done anything illegal or that he has shown himself to be a man of integrity who does not let himself be blinded by political ideology. During his time as a state prosecutor, he helped to prosecute both the Grand National Party (the precursor to the Saenuri Party) for illegal campaign funding and against President Roh Moo-hyun’s election team for election fraud.

The lesson is clear. No rich people need apply. After all, as everyone knows, being rich is clearly a sign of pure evil.

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Then President Park nominated a man who, for all intents and purposes, does not seem ready for prime time. Among Moon Chang-keuk’s growing list of... faux pas, the former editor-in-chief of the Joongang Daily, has said on record that Japan should not apologize to Korea over the “comfort women” issue. On top of that, he also said that the Japanese occupation of Korea and the partitioning of the Korean peninsula was “God’s will.” Oh and something about the people of Joseon (the Korean kingdom that existed prior to the Japanese occupation and the subsequent division of the peninsula into North and South Korea) had laziness incorporated into their DNA and how it was Christianity that helped Koreans overcome their laziness.

What a charming fellow. Credit should be given where it is due. He’s certainly a maverick. He’s got that going for him, at least. And he’s certainly not as rich as Ahn Dae-hee but he doesn’t have any political experience. Definitely not cut out for prime time. So the second lesson is this – No inexperienced people, no matter how poor or how mavericky, need apply.

Not even if you're as dreamy as Tom Cruise.
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But it’s not just the Prime Minister. Kim Jeong-hoon, a Korean-American citizen (who was willing to give up his US citizenship) who was a former president of Bell Labs, was appointed to fill the newly created post of Minister of Future Creation and Science. In order to show his commitment, he was willing to donate up to ₩100 billion in expatriation taxes. The opposition party made a huge stink about him, however, because of his dual-citizenship. He was also accused of being a spy and his wife was associated with a brothel. He did the smart thing and decided to call it quits and headed back to the United States.

Another lesson learned. No smart American with tons of relevant experience need apply.

Surely Americans in Korea have seen these signs on occasion by now?
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So here is what we know about who is not fit to be Prime Minister:

• No rich people.
• No mavericks.
• No inexperienced people.
• No smart people.
• No Americans.

In that case, the only kind of people that are fit for that office are:

• Poor people.
• Yes Men.
• Experienced people.
• Stupid people.
• Non-Americans.

Well, if President Park is willing to consider the suggestions of a humble blogger, I have the perfect candidate in mind for the next Prime Minister. I nominate Adolf Hitler! It’s the only logical choice.

He might need a little image update though.
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Well, let’s think about it. Hitler was born into a very poor family. So we know for a fact that he understands the plight of the working poor. And this is paramount to picking a political leader – a man who has first hand experience in what it’s like to be poor.

To use an analogy, can we really trust an AIDS researcher to have a clue about what he is doing if he himself has never suffered from AIDS? Of course we can’t! Similarly, we cannot expect a rich man to even have the most basic understanding of what it’s like to be poor or even middle class. Hitler was born poor AND he was a struggling artist. If that doesn’t speak to the millennials, nothing will.

And of course he has a lot of experience! Hello? He was the Führer of Germany for eleven years. Even the most recent Korean presidents’ experience in running a country is a mere five years. Hitler has the kind of political experience that money can’t buy.

What about being stupid? Of course Hitler is stupid! Who else goes to war against the Russians and the Americans at the same damned time? You would think that Napoleon’s experience in Russia would have served as a great lesson about never invading Russia when it is cold. But he did it anyway.

He was a Class A Idiot.
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Most importantly, he’s not American. Sure, he’s not Korean either but that’s totally fine. At least he’s not from Southeast Asia, unlike some unspeakable people! Surely people have not forgotten how vitriolic and racist some people got when Jasmine Lee won a seat in the National Assembly? Anyway, I can’t imagine how the fact that he’s German will go down badly.

Another bonus – he hates, and I mean absolutely abhors, communists.  Take that, North Korea!

Yes, he forged an alliance with Hirohito and that might cause some people to get a bit upset.  So we should not bring that up too often. As long as we steer away from the fact that Hitler and Hirohito were allies, and focus on the more positive aspects, I think Hitler might turn out to be a great Prime Minister. Hell, I know at least one person in Busan will think so.

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And women voters will love him, too! Say what you will, but the Nazis had some really spiffy uniforms and we all know that women love men in spiffy uniforms. Besides, there is an entire sexual fetish dedicated to Nazis! Is there a sexual fetish for democratically elected middle aged men? I didn’t think so.

Yes, this movie actually exists.
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Now, admittedly, nominating Hitler for the position of Prime Minister is not without its hurdles. For one thing, he is dead. And there’s not even a body that we can dig up somewhere. But that’s the beauty of it all! He’ll be the one political leader whom no one will see, and above all else, or hear from. He will not do a damned thing. And who wouldn’t love that?

But if we really need someone to fill the role, we can always hire this guy. And he already has his own catchy theme song.

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So, three cheers for Adolf Hitler! Hip hip hooray!

The Korean Wave and the Broken Window Fallacy

They are beautiful and relatively clean looking. Though they often push the envelope in regards to what might be considered too risque to be shown on television (as has been written about expertly in this article in The Grand Narrative), for the most part, they appear non-threatening and they try their hardest to be as inoffensive as humanly possible. And occasionally, some of them will actually be talented.

That is K-Pop and K-Drama in a nutshell. In all fairness, this description probably fits almost every mainstream entertainer from all around the world.

With the occasional oddity that slips through the cracks once in a while (read, Psy), these are the criteria that wannabe superstars have to meet in order to be part of the Korean Wave. When I say “Korean Wave,” however, I am referring to it as the marketing tool that the government uses in order to sell a sugarcoated image of Korea to the rest of the world to either attract tourists or other kind of Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs).

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However, it is important to clarify that I do not mean to say that those entertainers would not be successful at all without government support. It should be noted that companies like YG, JYP, and SM Entertainment are for-profit private entities, albeit in bed with the government. With or without government assitance, however, they will continue to produce what sells. And if there were no demand for K-Pop or K-Dramas in their current form, you can bet your mother’s pension that they would stop producing it.

The Korean government’s financial aiding of the K-Entertainment industry, however, is not for domestic consumption. It is without question that government regulation of the industry in the past was for the specific purpose of weeding out “subversive” elements, aka censorship. Although vestiges of that era still remains to this day, government meddling in the entertainment industry today is mostly geared towards the goal of exporting it.

And, according to this article in Soompi, business is booming!

PARTY TIME!!!
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So has the government’s involvement in the industry paid off? It would be difficult to disagree. After all, US$106 million in the first three months of the fiscal year is no small change. Those earnings are very real. On top of that, considering the fact that the financial successes of the entertainment industry also means that it was (partially) successful at selling its goods overseas, that means that the number of tourists visiting Korea will likely increase as well. And there will certainly be shop owners, big and small, who will never complain about that. If nothing else, it has at the very least succeeded in increasing people’s awareness of Korea. There isn’t even a shadow of a doubt that all of this was the government’s end goal all along.

More business, more tourists, and more profits! How could anyone complain about that? It appears that I may have to swallow my pride and accept that government interference in the private sector has produced marvelous results.

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But has it really?

In 1850, a French economist named Frédéric Bastiat (pronounced Bas-tee-aa) wrote an essay titled “That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen.” In this essay, Bastiat wrote what he was going to be best known for – The Parable of the Broken Window, which later began to be referred to as the Broken Window Fallacy.

Basically, this is how the parable goes:

A young boy in a village breaks a window pane in his father’s shop. A crowd gathers around and they try to look at the bright side of things. They say that now that the window has been broken, the shopkeeper will have to spend money to pay a glazier to replace the broken window. That glazier will then be able to use that money to buy himself a loaf of bread from the baker. The baker then can use that money to buy a pair of shoes from the shoemaker. And it goes on and on.

So the crowd takes pleasure at the thought of this. As far as they are concerned, this young boy who broke his father’s window has helped to stimulate business in the village.

But the shopkeeper who had his window broken is not happy. He chastises them and says that they are all being silly. If his window had not been broken, he would have been able to use his money to buy a new suit from the tailor. The tailor would have then used that money to buy meat from the butcher. And it would have gone on and on.

In other words, had the window not been broken, the local economy would have gained a new suit. But now that the window has been broken, the local economy has gained nothing. It has merely had a window replaced.

The problem was that the crowd was only able to see what was visible – actual costs and benefits. They could not see the unseen, the what-might-have-been, aka opportunity costs.

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So what does this 164-year-old essay have to do with the Korean government’s financing of the entertainment industry? Everything!

Firstly, the only money that a government has is the money that it collects from the people via taxes. Therefore, when the goverment collates all that tax monies that it has scraped from the people, all the way from Seoul to Jejudo, it should not surprise anyone that there is a significant amount of money. And when a chunk of that significant amount of money is given to one particular person or group, such as the entertainment industry, it should also come as no surpise if the recipients of that money become quite rich all of a sudden.

But what are the hidden costs? The what-might-have-been? Do those benefits cost nothing? It has to be remembered that the taxpayers, from whom that money came from in the first place, are now poorer by exactly that much money. Can you picture the billions or even trillions of interconnected economic activity that would have occurred had millions of taxpayers not been deprived of their money to fund this special interest group the entertainment industry?

To get a small glimpse of what billions of economic interconnections look like, watch this video.

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If you actually can picture it, you’re on drugs. Unless we develop a way to look into parallel universes, there is no real way to calculate the economic costs and benefits of things that never occurred.

Yes, YG, JYP, and SM Entertainment have certainly benefited. The singers and performers have gained fame, notoriety, and riches. The executives have gained massive wealth. Yes, some shopkeepers have certainly benefited from the arrival of tourists. But at what cost?

Does it make sense to deprive so many people of their money in order to finance an already highly profitable industry? Is it just?

I know what I think. What about you?

That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen
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Another Slogan for the Korea Tourism Organization?

Einstein once defined madness as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By that definition, the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) is truly insane.

In a matter of a few years, the KTO has attempted various slogans to get tourists to visit Korea and to spend their money here. This article at The Korea Herald shows at least some of the slogans that the KTO has tried to use in the past:

• Dynamic Korea: Hub of Asia
• Korea Sparkling
• Korea, Be Inspired!

Does anyone remember this little guy?
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Now, Byun Choo-suk, the KTO president, who was formerly a career ad-man and a former communication design professor, seems to think that the time has come for a new slogan.

Never mind that those slogans, as laughable as they are, usually come at a cost that is seldom laughable. The TV commercials, the newspaper ads, the pamphlets and booklets, the banners, the labor costs, the legal fees, etc., etc. all eventually pile up. It would not be surprising at all to assume that billions (in Korean won, of course) has already been spent over the years.

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Has the KTO been successful? It’s dubious.

It is certainly true that the number of tourists that have come to Korea has been increasing since 2004. However, can the KTO truly take credit for this increase? Or is it more plausible that more people have been coming to Korea over the years due to increased awareness of Korea that partly sprang from the financial successes of the K-Pop industry? Whose success, by the by, did not need much help from the Korean government.

Of course, the Korean government has been involved with the entertainment industry to export K-Pop internationally. However, considering how much success (or the absolute lack thereof) that it had with something as benign as food, it’s not hard to imagine the government bungling this one, too.

But then again, Milton Friedman did once say:

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there'd be a shortage of sand.

Whether you agree with him or not, you have to give credit where it is due.  The man did have a way with words.
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But that’s neither here nor there, I suppose.

Ah, but it’s another year. And I am sure that they will do a spectacular job this time around!

An Open Letter to the Anti-Gay Conservative Christians

Dear Conservative Christians...

Actually, let’s not mince words.  There is nothing Christ-like about you.  And I should know.  I am hardly a fan of Christ but I like to think that I really do my research before hating anything or anyone.  So let’s call you what you really are.

Dear Primitive Neanderthals,

Yesterday, with hundreds of people carrying signs that read “Love is Stronger than Hate,” the fifteenth annual Queer Pride Festival took place in Sinchon. It was not without controversy.  That was because you refused to let it go quietly.  You  had to make it a point to show the world how hateful you are.

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True to form, you showed your ignorance, myopia, bigotry, and misanthropy by participating in a protest against the legally sanctioned Queer Pride Festival.  If you thought that the police would support you, you were clearly wrong as evidenced when some of you were arrested for refusing to disperse after being told to do so.

Much has been said about gay rights, civil rights, and equality. On the other hand, much has already been said about tradition, the sanctity of marriage, and religion. Much has already been said about how wrong the other side is.

I know for a fact that what I say here will not change this debate. The debate will not change. It will only end when you primitive mystics are bred out of the gene pool.

In the meantime, my dear conservative idiots, please, watch this video. If Mr. Bill “Fox News We’ll-Do-It-Live Papa Bear” O’Reilly tells you that you’re wrong, YOU ARE WRONG.

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"Gangnam Style's " Two Billion Hits and the (Tongue-in-Cheek) Opportunity Costs

When I read this article in The Economist, I could not help but chuckle a bit.

Who ever says that economists have no sense of humor?

Of course the study is full of holes, silliness, and wildly-made presumptions.  But then again, so is the rest of the dismal field.

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Rapprochement between Korea and Japan? Don't hold your breath.

My very first post on this blog was about how Korea and Japan can both improve their bilateral relations with one another. For those who don’t wish to read the whole thing, it came down to one essential idea – “Don’t feed the trolls.” It was my first post and it was a somewhat lighthearted attempt at writing about a complex issue between two countries whose historical relationship with one one another has had more downs than ups.

Although Seoul-Tokyo relations have always been thorny, it has taken a turn for the worse and has not gotten any better since 2012 when President Lee Myung-bak became the first sitting Republic of Korea president to have visited Dokdo.

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Since then, Japanese lawmakers’ annual visits to Yasukuni Shrine, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government’s attempt at historical revisionism, the issue over the euphemistically called comfort women, Japan’s claim about Dokdo being part of its territory, its increase in defense spending, and the possibility of reforming Japan’s pacifist Constitution have done nothing to help to improve Seoul-Tokyo relations.

Furthermore, Abenomics, which is just a Japanese name for Keynesian economics (it is Japan’s attempt at jump-starting its economy via monetary and fiscal stimulus packages), which has had little affect on improving Japan’s economy but has had significant negative effects on Korea’s economy, has exacerbated matters even further.

For its part, Korea has done little to help matters either. Until recently, President Park has refused to meet with Prime Minister Abe until he has expressed “sincerity” in regards to the issue of comfort women despite the fact that both leaders had been elected to their respected offices for a year. She has since reaffirmed that she would not meet Prime Minister Abe again.

Roboseyo has written a thoughtful piece about Korea’s desire for Japan’s “sincerity” on the issue (though it is most likely not a popular one among Koreans).

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Secondly, Koreans have been insisting that the Sea of Japan be renamed the East Sea; and have begun to include American state legislatures over this matter. Furthermore, the construction of a statue of Ahn Jung-geun in China, of all places, cannot be seen as anything else besides Korea’s willingness to do as much as it can to sabotage relations with Japan. Whereas Japan may be being blithe about its history and the feelings of its neighboring countries, Korea, for its part, seems to be showing all of the classic symptoms of PCSD (Post-Colonial Stress Disorder).

In a supreme example of unreasonable emotionalism, public outrage forced Korean peacekeepers in South Sudan to return 10,000 rounds of ammunition to Japanese Defense Forces after the commanding Korean officer asked the Japanese commander for ammunition when the Korean peacekeepers there faced an imminent threat from local militias. Apparently Koreans prefer to see their own soldiers placed in harm’s way than to show even a bit of cooperation with Japan.

Though it is more than likely that President Obama has various agendas that he would like to hit upon in his Asia tour, there is very little doubt that one of the things that he will discuss behind closed doors is his desire to see both Korea and Japan move on from the past in order to concentrate on the now and the future. As much as the United States has tried its best to remain above the bickering between the two countries, it must surely be an annoyance to have two of its closest Asian allies failing to be cordial with one another.

The question, of course, then becomes how effective President Obama will be. My advice: Don’t hold your breath.

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Of the two countries, the United States will have an easier time exerting its influence on Korea. With the United States’ negotiations with Korea over sharing defense costs, the transfer of wartime control, and even negotiations about Korea’s missile range, combined with Korea’s need to purchase more American military hardware as well as from other countries to combat what appears to be North Korea’s drone fleet, the United States has quite an array of diplomatic tools to convince Korea to play nice at the negotiations table.

Its diplomatic tools when negotiating with Japan, on the other hand, is a different matter entirely. Although Japan has had some heated clashes with China over the Senkaku Islands, unlike Korea with its erratic northern neighbor, Japan is not under the constant threat of existential annihilation. Furthermore, it was just announced that President Obama has stated that the defense of the Senkaku Islands is covered by the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security, which means that the United States is obligated to come to Japan’s defense should an armed conflict ever arise between Japan and China over those islets.

Seeing how Japan is an ally and a trading partner (whose interests, most importantly, do not clash with those of the United States’) as well as that it is also the second largest holder of US debt, the United States does not have nearly as much influence over Japan as it does over Korea as evidenced by a Japanese cabinet minister and about 150 lawmakers visiting Yasukuni Shrine a day before President Obama arrived in Japan.

And, of course, all three countries are painfully aware of these facts.

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As a result, any attempt at mediating between Korea and Japan will likely backfire for the United States. Korea will resent being treated like the lesser partner in the trilateral relationship, which could push Korea toward China’s sphere of influence as was evidenced by Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se’s statement about how Korea should consider forging a pact with China on sharing military intelligence, which is a shocking statement considering that Korea scrapped a similar pact with Japan, a country which shares a mutual alliance with the United States, before it could even be signed after a public outcry in 2012.

Though there isn’t a single Korean (who isn’t clinically insane) who believes that Japan would ever pose a military threat to Korea as it did in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, hatred toward Japan is so intense that some Koreans are seriously considering forming closer military partnerships with the People’s Republic of China, a country that is known for being, among other things, North Korea’s only ally!

(That being said, China is also Korea’s largest trading partner and Korea is rightly wary of being entangled in a possible new Cold War with the United States and Japan on one hand, and China on the other.)

Though the United States would not have to worry about losing Japan as a key military ally, it does need Japan to fully commit to the Trans-Pacific Partnership in order for it to be viable, which could become the world’s biggest free trade agreement. However, the United States needs the TPP more than Japan does. Japan has already signed many bilateral trade agreements with the countries that are interested in joining this FTA; as has the United States. However, the United States needs the TPP more precisely because it is one of the central pillars that is needed for President Obama’s “Asia Pivot” to work. Japan can make things much harder for the United States (as it has already done) if the United States overly pressures Japanese leaders to “lose face” by having to apologize to both Korea and China over its wartime atrocities yet again.

Korea does have legitimate grievances with Japan. However, there is another reason why Korea has become more abrasive with Japan in recent years than it has in the past. Rightly or wrongly, Koreans believe that their time has come.

Whereas Japan’s economy has not been able to escape from its thirty-year-old deflationary trap, this was about the same time, despite the financial meltdown of 1997, that Korea experienced the Miracle on the Han River. It would seem that K-pop has overtaken the once unbeatable J-pop juggernaut. Whereas Toyota, Sony, and Panasonic used to be household names until the 1990s, these days, those names have been replaced with Hyundai, Samsung, and LG.

Of course, Japan is now the third largest economy in the world and Korea ranks fifteenth. Korea has a long way to go before it can even hope to be Japan’s equal when it comes to raw economic power. However, and despite the irony that Koreans appear to be the unhappiest lot in the OECD (The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), it would appear that Koreans are more optimistic about their future in relation to Japan.

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With the ascendancy of the nationalists in Japan following decades of deflationary economics and a voting public that is more willing for Japan to be more assertive in its international affairs on one hand, and the economic rise of a former colony on the other, both sides have begun more and more to look at each others’ relationship as a zero-sum game.

(How and why the nationalists became more popular in Japan requires another and much more thoughtful analysis than I am qualified to write about.)

I have entertained the possibility of there needing to be a third party that poses a mutual threat to both Korea and Japan for both countries to bury the hatchet. However, such a scenario is overly simplistic as it conveniently ignores the inner political and economic dynamics of each country.

For the foreseeable future, at least, it would seem that the power dynamics in East Asia is not conducive for a rapprochement between Seoul and Tokyo. For good or for ill, it would seem that the relationship between both Korea and Japan will stay frosty.

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