`Can do` spirit of Park Chung-hee

Friday marks the 50th anniversary of the announcement of the first five-year economic development plan by Song Yo-chan, chief Cabinet minister and foreign minister of the junta that took power after the 1961 coup. Back then, South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world, with per capita income of just 79 U.S. dollars in 1960. Last year, the figure reached 24,000 dollars, a 3,000-percent increase from half a century ago. North Korea was better off than South Korea with average yearly income of 137 dollars in 1960. Now, the South Korean economy is 37 times larger than that of the communist North. When discussing the South`s economic miracle, the five-year economic development plan led by President Park Chung-hee cannot be ignored.

After the coup in 1961, President Park made economic development the core task of his administration and made the government lead the process. It was the developmental economy that led the World Bank to recognize the state role in achieving high growth. As the result, Korea, which had little to export but depended on foreign aid, became the ninth country to achieve 1 trillion dollars in exports in December 2011.

The economic concentration on big business, worsening income distribution and labor friction stemming from seven rounds of five-year economic development plans, and focus on nurturing heavy and chemical industries are the shades of economic bipolarization that the country should overcome.

Park changed the nation`s fate by instilling a “can-do” spirit into the people. Arthur Lewis, a Nobel Prize laureate in economics, studied why India could not achieve economic success despite vast injections of money. He said “the will to economize” is the key to economic development. Administrations led by President Syngman Rhee and Prime Minister Jang Myun drafted their own five-year economic development plans but failed because they lacked the spirit of Park`s model.

In 1970, the Park administration supplied about 300 sacks of cement to 33,267 villages across the country for public works. Villages that accomplished their goals on their own received more support, while those that failed to show the will to be independent did not. The Saemaeul (New Village) Movement enlightened the people with the spirit of diligence, self-help and cooperation. The “miracle on the Han River” should not be underestimated as a Korean achievement made at a time when the people could not even eat three meals a day. Yet is the country`s business community filled with the entrepreneurship pioneered by Hyundai Group founder Chung Ju-yung, Samsung Group founder Lee Byung-chull and POSCO founder Park Tae-joon, who built world-class businesses with their bare hands? The younger generation should learn from the “can do” spirit instead of whining about their difficulties.