The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| With Psy and currency swaps, South Korea grabs global influence Posted: 21 Oct 2013 07:29 PM PDT Its most recent effort to leverage brand "Korea" — three currency swap deals worth more than $20 billion (RM64 billion) that were announced this month. South Korea had the seventh largest currency reserves in the world at the end of August, worth $331.1 billion (RM1.05 trillion), according to the Bank of Korea. It can easily afford to match cultural diplomacy with economic muscle as it competes with Japan and China for influence. K-Pop icons such as Psy, whose Gangnam Style hit went viral in 2012, and even Korean food are used by Seoul to build South Korea's brand, while Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Hyundai Motor Co are firms with global reach. "Becoming a country that can offer currency swaps to support other economies elevates our standing abroad," a senior official at the central bank, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters. Thanks to its huge foreign exchange reserves, South Korea doesn't need to buttress its currency against possible speculative attacks, although its swap partners Indonesia and Malaysia have been hit by recent financial market turmoil. The third deal with the United Arab Emirates is part of a package that has seen energy-starved Seoul take substantial stakes in UAE oil fields and win a hefty nuclear contract. Once impoverished, South Korea is now the world's 14th largest economy and has moved from a net aid recipient in the dark days after the 1950-53 Korean war to a net donor. The government aims to increase overseas development aid by 9.9% in 2014 to $2.17 billion (RM7 billion), outpacing a projected 2.5% rise in total spending despite fiscal constraints on the country's budget. "Swap agreements and international aid should be seen as long-term strategic decisions to ensure a greater stake and influence in Southeast Asia and elsewhere," said Lee Sang-jae, an economist at Hyundai Securities in Seoul. South Korea has a long history of using economic leverage to win diplomatic prizes. In 1989, Hungary became the first Soviet bloc country to formally recognise South Korea in exchange for a tranche of economic aid in a move aimed at winning over communist allies of rival North Korea. Soft culture is just as important as hard politics and cash to Seoul. K-Pop, the carefully choreographed dance music showcased by bands like Girls' Generation had sales worth $3.4 billion (RM10.8 billion), according to US show business magazine Billboard. It is especially popular in Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, where stars fly in almost every month to sold out concerts and Malaysian buyers line up for days for the latest Samsung smartphones. So popular are the acts that Malaysian mobile phone operator DiGi has run campaigns where customers had to buy pre-paid phone credits to win a chance to meet a K-Pop star while Asia's biggest budget carrier, AirAsia, sponsored a K-Pop concert to promote its Kuala Lumpur-Seoul route. "K-Pop idols always have unique choreography and that is what makes their songs famous. They work really hard to please their fans," said Azim Shaun bin Hermain Herbert, 25, a paralegal at a Malaysian law firm. Dian Novita, 27, an account manager at Jakarta-based Narrada Communications, has a Samsung phone, likes Korean food and watches Korean mini-series, known as K-Drama. "I started to dig into Korean culture three years ago. It started out from watching K-Drama, then I started to listen to the music too," said Novita. South Korean TV series are also popular closer to home - in China and Japan. "There has been a sharp rise in positive responses in surveys of Korea's image among younger people (abroad); this is soft power," said Oh In-gyu, professor of Korean studies at Korea University. The promotion of "brand Korea" has not always been straightforward. Rapper Psy's success was outside the mainstream carefully nurtured groups, but was later proclaimed as a Korean success story by the government. In the 1990s, red-faced officials withdrew the My Seoul, Our Seoul motto when told that a phonetic reading rendered it laughable to English speakers. A recent Korean food promotion overseas by the government twinned K-Pop stars with "Energizing Persimmon", "Romantic Mushroom" and "Sexy Red Pepper Paste", among others and was met with bemusement. Nonetheless, Seoul will continue to push ahead. "As our products are exported, people start to take interest and start asking where South Korea is and to look for interesting things; as that spreads, there is a synergy," said Ju Won, a senior research fellow at Hyundai Research Institute. - Reuters, October 22, 2013. |
| Mongolia’s nomads turn to private land Posted: 21 Oct 2013 04:51 PM PDT Mongolia's nomads have roamed its sprawling grasslands for centuries, pitching their yurts wherever they find pasture for their animals, but now Tsogtsaikhan Orgodol is staying put as part of a scheme to tackle chronic overgrazing. The tanned 53-year-old still wears his nomad's riding boots, but he and his community have been given exclusive rights to 2,500 acres of steppe in exchange for reducing their herds and remaining in the same place all year round, giving the land a chance to regenerate. "I have agreed to cut the number of our goats in half," said Orgodol, looking out from horseback over their 200 animals, mostly sheep and some cows, who despite the project principles are not fenced in. "The only problem is when other animals come," he added. "They sense where the good grass is. We have to chase them away. There is no other mechanism." According to MCC's website, the project will cover about 300 tracts of land near Ulan Bator and Mongolia's next two largest towns, Erdenet and Darkhan, involving around 1,000 households in total. Orgodol's 22-strong group shares two yurts, known as gers in Mongolia, and a permanent house next to a barn about 45 kilometres outside the capital Ulan Bator. The national tradition is for land to be accessible to all, with pastoralist families moving several times a year in search of fodder and water. But Nyamsuren Lkhagvasuren, who runs the land programme for the US-funded aid agency Millennium Challenge Corporation, told AFP: "The number of livestock has exploded to more than 40 million. "This goes beyond the limits of what is reasonable, even for Mongolia, which is a vast country." In a study published last month in the journal Global Change Biology, researchers from the University of Oregon using satellite images from NASA found that 70% of Mongolia's grassland - which makes up almost four-fifths of the country - is now "degraded". Twelve percent of the country's biomass has disappeared in recent years, they said, calling overgrazing a "primary contributor" to the alarming decline of the steppe. Livestock was collectivised under the socialist planned economy imposed under decades of Communist dictatorship when Mongolia was a satellite of the Soviet Union. But since the advent of democracy and a market economy in 1990 many Mongolians have returned to their sheep and cattle - partly because unemployment shot up - so that 40% of the working population are now herders. Agriculture Minister Battulga Khaltmaa acknowledged concerns about desertification but downplayed the University of Oregon findings, attributing the problem to climate change rather than overgrazing. "The number of animals is not that high compared to the size of the land," he said. In the Soviet era even greater numbers of cattle roamed the country of 1.6 million square kilometres, he said. "Under socialism we had 26 million livestock and under Stalin the target was set at 250 million in order to meet the demand for meat in Siberia." But herders who cannot command high prices resort to selling large quantities instead, said Thomas Pavie, an agriculture expert who advises French government projects in Mongolia. "There is indeed overgrazing, especially in the production of cashmere. The problem is that Mongolia exports wool in the form of raw material, particularly to China, so the value-added happens somewhere else," he said. "That requires them to produce a lot. If wool were sold more expensively, they would need fewer animals." - AFP, October 22, 2013. |
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