Malaysia And South Korea - What Different Trajectories!

  

Malaysia And South Korea – What Different Trajectories!

M. Bakri Musa

 

 

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s meeting with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on November 24, 2024 in Seoul reminded me of the visit to Malaysia in 1966 by President Park Chong Hee. Park received an exceptionally grand royal reception. Of particular interest was his visit to then Deputy Prime Minister Tun Razak’s famous “National Operations Room” where Razak directed Malaysia’s massive and ambitious rural development schemes.

 

            Park was so impressed and inspired by Razak’s initiative that on returning home Park commenced his own community development scheme, Saemaul Undong (SU – New Village Movement). That would be the genesis of the later “Miracle of the Han River,” with South Korea becoming one of the fastest growing economies and a leader in many sectors.

 

The trajectories of the two countries could not be more different. Today it is Malaysia’s turn to learn from South Korea. Let us hope that Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who was still in secondary school when President Park visited Malaysia, would be as eager and diligent a student as Park was earlier. 

 

South Korea’s success is even more impressive considering that it has been in a continuous state of war since the 1950s. By contrast, Malaysia’s last conflict was konfrantasi with Indonesia in 1963 and the even more deadly 1969 race riot. Both are now distant memories. Wars and conflicts are the greatest impediments to development. That makes South Korea’s achievements that much more impressive.

 

Malaysia’s GDP and per capita GDP in 1966 were US$3.14 billion and $337 respectively; South Korea’s, US$9 billion and $279 (all nominal figures). A significant chunk of the South Korean figures came from American military spending. Even American soldiers employing local maids contributed to the local GDP! By 2023, Malaysia’s GDP was US$400 billion and per capita GDP of $11.7K to South Korea’s US$9 trillion and $279K respectively, both about eight times higher than Malaysia’s.

 

Both nations share many similarities as well as significant differences. Unlike Malaysia, South Korea is a homogenous society. As for similarities, both nations had been colonized; Malaysia relatively benign by Britain, Korea more brutally by Japan. 

 

The reactions of the two nations to their former colonizers could not be more different. While Park was eager to learn and emulate the successful Japanese, Malaysian leaders went out of their way to demonize and avoid everything English, including and especially the language. That is a major self-imposed handicap as English is now the language of science and commerce. Then there was the silly and counterproductive “Buy British Last” campaign of the 1980s.

 

Both Malaysia and South Korea are committed to heavy state involvement in business. South Korea’s family-owned chaebol, modelled after the Japanese pre-war zaibutsu and post-war keirotsu, spearheaded the nation’s entry into the global market with substantive government help.

 

Malaysia too spawned many government-owned corporations to spur development as well as increase Malay participation in commerce. The key assignment for Prime Minister Anwar is to learn from South Korea why their chaebols do not suffer the ignoble fate of our Perwajas and Bank Bumiputras.

 

Then consider the South Koreans’ attitude to learning English. Malaysia had a significant advantage on that front, being a former British colony and with widespread English schools and heightened language proficiency. The modern Malay roman script is also a significant advantage over hangeul in this Internet Age. Perversely, instead of leveraging those advantages, we have treated them as impediments! Malay language nationalists would now have us revert to jawi.

 

The South Koreans do not consider themselves as disrespecting their mother tongue by learning English. The 2024 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Han Kang, writes in her native Korean but she is also crisp in English, as with most South Koreans.

 

Contrast Han Kang’s posture to Malaysia’s National Laureate, Muhammad Haji Salleh. Although educated in English, he has since decided not to write in that language in order to “decolonize his craft,” whatever that means. He is not alone. One cannot minimize the significant negative impact of such gestures on the younger set. Imagine the good he would have done if he were to instead encourage Malays to be bilingual and not consider writing or speaking in English as disrespecting Bahasa.

 

As for those Mahathir types who attribute the success of East Asian societies to their mysterious Confucius values or superior genetic stock, and by implication the success of non-Malays vis a vis Malays in Malaysia, the current fate of North Korea should disabuse them of that delusion; likewise earlier China under Mao.

 

Saemaul Undong catapulted South Korea into the First World while Malaysia’s rural development policies and institutions like MARA floundered. It is instructive to revisit President Park’s original message to the villagers:

 

"Those peasants who complain as if their poverty is due to the fault of others, believing that they are in poverty since the government does not support them and lamenting that poverty is their fate, cannot stand up on themselves even if several hundred years pass by. It is a waste of money to support those without motivation. For lazy people, even the government cannot help them."

 

That may sound harsh but is the essence of “tough love.” Park’s insight was to help only those who needed help and not those who demanded it based on some presumed rights. You are more likely to succeed with the former, and also earn their gratitude. With the latter, expect only scorn when they do not succeed.

 

That is the crucial lesson from South Korea. Success resides with us as individuals as well as collectively; blaming “them” is not productive and creates only frustrations as well as resentments.