Astral Codex Ten

Park Chung-Hee

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Park Chung-Hee

Article

Park Chung-Hee is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between June 28, 2021 and December 07, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “Park motored on regardless … Park was a leader of conviction”; “Park Chung-Hee had a simple, straightforward strategy for dealing with foreign companies”; “Park Chung-Hee started with crappy steel mills and barely-functional cars and worked his way up”. It most often appears alongside China, Dubai, Hong Kong.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 4
  • Issue count: 4
  • First seen: June 28, 2021
  • Last seen: December 07, 2023

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Book Review: How Asia Works
June 28, 2021 · Original source
In 1961, General Park Chung-Hee took power after a military coup in South Korea. I don't know much about Korean religion, but if some heavenly Scriptwriter wanted the perfect hero for an industrial development story, they might come up with someone who looked a lot like General Park.
First, Mahathir didn't enforce export discipline. "This not only engendered an acute balance of payments problem, it left Mahathir to make critical investment decisions without the market-based information that export performance provided to Park Chung-Hee. Instead of counting exports, Mahathir trusted his own judgment about the firms and managers he was backing. He tried to know more than the market."
Third, Mahathir let foreign partners lead the way, or get equity in Malaysian firms. Studwell thinks this was a bad decision. Sure, working with foreign companies who already have the technology you need seems like a good way to get a leg up. But they usually try to do all the exciting high-tech stuff themselves and just use you for menial labor. Remember, when you get a steel company to produce a million tons of steel, you're mostly not buying steel, you're buying learning. If a foreign company makes and runs the factory, they're the ones learning more about steel, on your dime. Park Chung-Hee had a simple, straightforward strategy for dealing with foreign companies: partner with them only long enough to steal all of their technology. Malaysia tried actually partnering with them, and so a lot of foreign companies produced large parts of Malaysian goods and Malaysia barely benefitted.
Model City Monday
July 05, 2021 · Original source
Lots of charter cities want to be Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore. But could a charter city be Park Chung-Hee’s Korea? Sounds like a harder problem, especially since it won’t be immediately profitable (and in fact will be actively less profitable than doing other things in the short-term). Still, it might turn out that that’s what you need if you want to end poverty at scale.
Mark Lutter of CCI broadly supports the research, but argues that the World Bank study might underrate CCI’s work. The study only investigated SEZs between 0.5 and 10 square kilometers. This is more like a neighborhood than like a real city (Central Park is 3.5 square kilometers, Manhattan is 87, Shenzhen is 320). But Lutter thinks that “a city is the smallest unit that can support economic development”. He also thinks the SEZs were comparatively weak - slightly lower taxes or something boring like that, compared to the total overhaul involved in charter cities. He comes up with a reference class that includes Shenzhen, but not a lot of SEZs that don’t work, and says this is the proper comparison.
Inline links: broadly supports the research
The state capacity approach defines the rights and responsibilities of both residents and the government but offers a wider range of flexibility in dealing with unforeseen challenges. The emphasis is not on the state as a contractual service provider, but instead on the state as a positive actor in the development of the city. The Singaporean government, for example, plays an active role in Singapore’s development, building industrial parks, attracting investment, and focusing on the growth of specific industries.
Inline links: active role
Dictator Book Club: Xi Jinping
April 06, 2022 · Original source
Source is here. We already talked about how every East Asian country went through a period of seemingly miraculous economic growth. Of those, China is least impressive (so far). Perhaps every East Asian country was run by geniuses - certainly people like Park Chung-hee and Lee Kwan Yew come out looking very impressive. But how many hits do you have to get before you start thinking there’s something special about this region, independent of democracy vs. dictatorship or anything else?
Inline links: here, already talked about
What Ever Happened To Neoreaction?
December 07, 2023 · Original source
Charter Cities: This is maybe closest to the original spirit of neoreaction. Reactionaries noticed that many developing countries, when given a democratic choice, picked warlords who promised revenge on their ethnic enemies, or socialists eager to expropriate the property of anyone trying to start a useful industry. Meanwhile, benevolent dictators like Lee Kuan Yew and Park Chung-hee led their countries to peace and prosperity.