as i was writing yesterday, it's getting hard out there for korean banks. the FT and forbes are reporting on HSBC's threat to back out of a deal with the Korea Exchange Bank if the government won't speed up its regulatory vetting process.
boy, president lee myung-bak is between a rock and a hard place right now. the korean public basically elected him on a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too platform: make korea an economic giant, but maintain korea's unique identity by preventing foreign meddling. ergo, the horrible debacle about korean imports of US beef.
the korean public is going to have to get over its fear of mad cow if it wants to get this FTA with the US going, and it needs to get over its fear of the FTA if it wants to get the economy revved up for another leap in the international rankings.
president lee sort of has his hands tied! he clearly wants to cut down the regulatory agencies (hell, he was trying to avoid them for years when he was a semi-corrupt businessman), but he can't do it without regaining the political capital he's losing out in the streets. and if he doesn't move soon, HSBC's gonna back out. and as goes HSBC, so go a number of other firms.
then again, maybe i'm underestimating the power of mad cow disease.
(btw, i'm mainly joking about that last sentence, and should be clear about that. koreans have been protesting the US-korea FTA since well before the mad cow scare. it's largely a symbol of deeper fears about losing control of the economy, as far as i can see. it's too bad that the US press has mainly been portraying the protests as being about mad cow—it makes koreans look paranoid and superstitious. but then again, ain't that always the way with portrayals of asians?)
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hey abe! i'm in seoul now!! i hate to say it, but there does seem to be a pervasive fear of mad cow here. at least, the majority of the anti-US beef propaganda that i've seen addresses mad cow in particular -- there are stickers around the subway that portray a cow's head with googly eyes and the american flag stamped across it with the words "no mad cow!" beside it. i guess something like that could be read at a lot of levels, though.
on a related note, kevin and i came across a huge police brigade gearing up to meet a scheduled protest the other day.
interesting. i guess i assumed, given that there were anti-FTA protests on campuses last semester, that the mad cow protests were an extension of the previous ones. but i'm not on the ground. you are!
what a crazy time to be in your homeland!
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