November 9, 2010

G-20 Event to Showcase South Korea’s Arrival

By MARK McDONALD

SEOUL — There may be a cabbage farmer in the rural heartland, or an abalone fisherman off Jeju Island, or even a bartender slinging soju in Pusan who is unaware of his country’s recent emergence as a global economic player. The Bulldozer is about to let them all know, however, that South Korea is now at “the center of the world.”
The Bulldozer — the nickname is used both admiringly and derisively here — is President Lee Myung-bak, and he has overseen, often personally, often microscopically, the extravagant preparations for the summit meeting of the Group of 20 major economies to be held Thursday and Friday in Seoul.
Until South Korea was chosen to serve as G-20 host, Mr. Lee said at the time of the announcement, the country “was passive in international society and did not have a say.”
“Now it will no longer be possible to discuss a global issue without including Korea,” he said, proclaiming that the country had moved “away from the periphery of Asia to the center of the world.”
South Korea is the first Asian nation to hold the gathering of the G-20 heads of government and the first non-Group of 7 nation to be the host. It was the first former aid recipient to become an aid donor within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Once poorer than Communist North Korea, it now boasts the world’s 13th-largest economy and has recovered from the current economic downturn faster than any other developed nation.
“The G-20 is a landmark financial coming-out event — a sort of Korea comeback story on the back of the perceived embarrassment it felt from the 1997-98 financial crisis,” said Jasper Kim, associate professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. “The G-20 is also big for South Korea because this time the G-2 — the U.S. and China — are highly focused on it.”
Mr. Lee, 68, who as a young chief executive turned Hyundai Construction from a small company into a worldwide builder (hence The Bulldozer), was mayor of Seoul before becoming president in 2008 on a pro-business platform that also promised closer ties with the United States and a harder line toward North Korea. “The G-20 is important to Lee Myung-bak, who wants to be remembered as an economic president,” said Gi-wook Shin, director of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University in California. “He ran his presidential campaign as a ‘C.E.O. president.’ All past presidents have wanted to leave a legacy, and with a successful hosting of the G-20, he can claim that he has advanced Korea to the status of a global player.”
Austerity may be the economic mantra elsewhere, but South Korea is not throwing its G-20 party on the cheap (though it seems unlikely that Seoul’s budget will surpass the $860 million that Toronto spent to hold the previous summit meeting, last June). The organizers have declined to estimate the total cost, but the mayor of Seoul, Oh Se-hoon, said in an interview Tuesday the city was spending just $9 million extra.
Politicians and business leaders here sense that this is a chance to finally strut their stuff, to show off the national grit and economic mettle, maybe even to lecture some larger countries, especially Japan and China, about the merits of the South Korean model.
For Seoul, the G-20 meeting is not just about exchange-rate feuds and trade policies. New museum shows and gallery exhibits have opened, and dance and music concerts are being staged all week. There will even be bursts of gastrodiplomacy — culinary demonstrations featuring Korea’s fiery and famously fermented foods. Organizers have prepared a G-20 pep song, G-20 cocktails, souvenir knickknacks, appearances by TV stars and massive G-20 billboards featuring Kim Yu-na, the Olympic figure skating champion.
As they are laying on the show, the organizers also are going heavy on the security. The Toronto meeting was beset with violence and nearly a thousand arrests. Mr. Lee and his lieutenants will be tolerating none of that. “They’ll do whatever it takes to block any protests,” said Mr. Shin. Mr. Lee, in an interview last weekend, said he did not expect any disturbances from North Korea. Still, the South Korean military has been placed on alert, the Defense Ministry said.
South Korea and its capital are well-credentialed in the big-event business. The country successfully staged the 2002 World Cup soccer tournament jointly with Japan. The 1988 Olympic Summer Games, held in what was then a fledgling South Korean democracy, were a huge success, uniting all of the world’s teams after the three previous Summer Games were marred by boycotts.
“Seoul established new standards for security, transportation and efficiency,” said Mike Moran, a former senior official with the U.S. Olympic Committee. “The Koreans demonstrated patience and a willingness to correct systems when the Games began, and that was a first.”
Mr. Oh said that the Olympics had “really put us on the map,” but that “holding the G-20 will be more important as a way of showing that Korea is part of the new global economic order, and part of the flow.”
Koreans are famously fond of lists that show where they rank in relation to other countries. The topic hardly matters. First in patent filings per gross domestic product. Lowest unemployment rate among all G-20 countries. The Olympic gold medal in baseball. The world’s highest rate of Internet penetration. The No. 1 maker of computer chips and flat-screen televisions. A government-backed plan that intends to lift Korean food into the “top five rank of world cuisines” by 2017, whatever that means.
But the country’s phoenix-like economic rebound is not necessarily obvious to all South Koreans, many of whom have seen incomes flatten and consumer prices skyrocket. A splashy hosting of the G-20 could generate some significant domestic political capital for Mr. Lee.
“Samsung, LG and Hyundai are world-class businesses, but there are people in the countryside still living in 20th-century houses with a 19th-century mentality, and maybe they don’t realize the meaning and importance of the G-20,” said Kim Seoc-woo, director of the Institute of Peace and Cooperation, a research group in Seoul. “This a chance for them to see Korea alone in the spotlight.”
South Korea can sometimes seem obsessed with its image. Mr. Lee established a Presidential Council on National Branding to improve the country’s image, which, according to the council and the Samsung Economic Research Institute, ranks 20th worldwide.
“Hosting the G-20 certainly has something to do with nationalism and identity,” said Mr. Shin. “Korea’s reference point has not been other developing countries, even in the 1970s and ’80s, but advanced countries, especially Japan.
“Koreans also say their country is ‘small,’ and it certainly looks so in Northeast Asia since its neighbors are so huge: China, Russia, Japan,” he said. “But it’s a top-15 country in terms of economic size. And through the G-20, Koreans want to show the world that they have become an advanced country.”