President Roh Moo-hyun has made it his goal to reach $20,000 per capita GDP. South Korean stock market expert and CEO of International Investment Advisors Henry Seggerman thinks this goal can be achieved, but only if South Korean policymakers do some serious restructuring. South Korea's economy has been on a steady course since it emerged from the '97 Asian financial crisis, he said, but the threat of stagnation remains real and is growing every day. A punishing regime of overregulation has come along with the country's master-planned economic success. Rules that set artificial market share rates for newspapers and seemingly arbitrary government interventions in the real estate market are what economists refer to when they say South Korea has "one foot on the accelerator and one foot on the brake pedal." To instigate real, sustained growth, Seggerman argued that President Roh and others should make deregulation a priority-especially in the labor market. Dozens of chronically unprofitable corporations that the government encouraged the chaebol to start during the boom years should be allowed to go under. Cheap North Korean labor should be utilized to return big corporations to profitability and large, unnecessary infrastructure projects-like moving the capital from Seoul-should be scrapped. "Once these changes are made," Seggerman concluded, "$20,000 per capita GDP won't seem like nearly so ambitious an objective."

Business Roundtable 

with

Henry Seggerman
South Korean Stock Market Expert
CEO, International Investment Advisors

Thursday, April 21, 2005