Kim administration, and he was trying to tackle them.
However, partly because he was not familiar with economic issues and partly because the Korean economy was in good shape due to the strong yen, a sense of crisis withered away, and the economic reforms were postponed and left untouched. Korea has to pay now for having neglected reforms in the past.
We often hear the argument that if a kind of economic democratization in which more people could be involved in the process of policy making had been introduced a little earlier in Korea, damages would be different from what we are experiencing now. This is a discussion only based on assumption, though. It might be too much emphasis on the positive side of the past, but I think it is true. It is complicating to see the situation in Taiwan where democratization has been realized not in politics but in its economy. The Taiwanese economy is decentralized and flexible because it is not centering around financial groups nor authorities due to powerful medium and small businesses and other factors.
That is what has been witnessed in Taiwan now. Considering this example, it doesn't seem that political transfer to democracy simply leads to economic competitiveness.
However, I think that relationships between political and economic democratization could be a big factor for tackling crises. In this sense, Prof. Yamazaki's remarks this morning that insufficient modernization is behind the current crisis can be understood in this context.
｡?PAKKASEM
You cannot simply equate democracy with economic suability or economic development. In the recent research done jointly between American and Japanese scholars, called "Democratization of Asia" is very interesting. Simple conclusion, the elected government doesn't mean democracy at the macro-level. There is so much autocracy in the micro-level. Indians claimed themselves to be the most democratic people in the world. But look at the micro-level. I think it very interesting that they are grouping three Asian types of political regimes: a military dominated autocratic regime, a multi-party regime, and a single-dominated regime.
