Japan vs Korea

Greg Nowell GN842 at CNSVAX.Albany.Edu
Thu Jun 10 11:51:23 PDT 1999


Actually if you follow James Fallow's argument, which I think is sound, the Koreans really aren't catching up tot he Japanese

a) because the keiretsu model is less effective in a country with a small domestic demand base than a larger country like Japan. b) because the Japanese own a lot of the potential competition in Korea. c) because the Japanese refuse to license to the Koreans lotsa their hot stuff in whatever field you should choose to name.

-gn.

Doug Henwood wrote:


> Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
>
> >To what extent can the industrialisation of the NICS be understood as a
> >consequence of Japan's emphasis on its perceived racial purity?
> >As Sukhamoy Chakravarty muses:
> >"Korea launched a strategy of export oriented industrialization from the
> >mid-sixties onwards, when Japan had crossed the so called Lewis turning
> >point in her economic development, making it necessary to obtain new
> >sources of cheap labour. Given the character of Japanese society and its
> >emphasis on racial purity, it was a much better option to forge new
> >economic links with the Republic of Korea through subcontracting, etc.,
> >than to encourage large scale labour immigration. This strategy also
> >enabled the Korean economy to maintain a regime of excess demand, which
> >could be met by an *import surplus*, which has persisted since the
> >beginning of the sixties."
> >Selected Economic Writings, p. 150
> >
> >At any rate, this does raise the question not only of the reasons for
> >different immigration policies within the OECD but also the consequences
> >these varying policies have had on capitalist dynamics.
>
> I wonder if the Japanese thought the Koreans could never catch up to them,
> so Japanese firms didn't initially worry that the technology sharing that
> came with these subcontracting arrangements would lead to a considerable
> competitive threat by the late 1980s/early 1990s. Anyone know?
>
> Doug

-- Gregory P. Nowell Associate Professor Department of Political Science, Milne 100 State University of New York 135 Western Ave. Albany, New York 12222

Fax 518-442-5298



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list