If only Europe could match Korea’s “gold standard”
Posted by WATATAWA on December 14, 2011
By Bill Rylance, WATATAWA Founder & CEO
A lot of ideas and opinions are flying around as the Euro zone seeks a solution to its sovereign debt crisis. One that really caught my eye was from a former IMF chief economist who wondered if there were lessons Europe could learn from Korea’s response to the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
Sadly I don’t think there are. Or at least the lessons are there but the disparate Europeans are neither structurally nor emotionally equipped to follow them.
I was living in Korea in 1997 and, indeed, our firm was retained by the government to manage a sovereign communications program. The world had often seen images of apparent polarisation when demonstrators and riot police fought pitched battles over many issues — but when the country faced its worst crisis since the Korean War, it put on an astonishing show of national unity.
Housewives lined up to donate their gold jewelry, including even their wedding rings, to help bolster the country’s reserves and pay off foreign debts. The country initiated a national job-sharing program to prevent unemployment from rising sharply. Those who did lose their jobs were served discount noodles by shopkeepers.
