канализация Корейского полуострова
Бывает - пишешь что-то, аж мозги дымятся, потом результатом гордишься с невероятной силою - а плод сих трудов никто и не заметит. А бывает и наоборот. В общем, утром 31 декабря написал я стать о Великом Канале Ли Мён-бака. Написал не потому, что хотел, а потому, что попросил один хороший мужик, которому я отказать не мог. В спешке, перед отъездом, за пару часов статью и написал. А потом обнаружил, что статью и цитируют, и в посольские дайжесты включают, и проч.
В целом эмбарго на выкладывание здесь в ЖЖ ссылок на мои (очень многочисленные) публикации пока сохраняется, до урегулирования некоей мелкой ситуации. Однако нет правил без исключений, так что вот ссылка на привлекшую внимание публики статью (по-английски).
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2008/01/116_17175.html
Is Canal Dream Feasible?
By Andrei Lankov
It seems that we are witnessing the birth of a new tradition in the Korean politics: every president elect that comes to power does so with some grandiose investment project which, he insists, will make social and economic miracles. In 2002, Roh Moo-hyun, when elected the president, promised to move the national capital away from Seoul. This time, we have a new grandiose plan. President-elect Lee Myung-bak says that he would build a great canal which will go through the entire Korean Peninsula, from Pusan to Seoul, making possible inland water transportation on a grand scale. This pledge was repeated a number of times, and, one assumes, is taken rather seriously by Lee himself.
The extensive canal networks played a great role in the rise of the West European economy in the 1700s and early 1800s, when they were the mainstream of inland cargo traffic. The canals were important in pre-industrial China as well.
However, the era of inland canals is long gone, and in a small country surrounded by sea, canals were never a good transportation option in the first place. The arrival of the railway some 150 years ago made most canals economically unviable, so nowadays the old canals of Europe are traveled largely by tourist boats. There are some countries, like Germany or Russia, where the inland canals and rivers bear significant traffic, but those countries are very dissimilar to Korea: they are large, have long navigable rivers and rather flat terrain. And even there, one should notice, not a single major inland canal was built in recent decades. Canals nowadays are built to connect seas and oceans ― not rivers.
President-elect Lee estimated the future cost of the Grand Korean Canal at $16 billion, while the pessimists (I'd say, realists) believe that the figure would be closer to $50 billion. At any rate, this is a really large amount of money.
If this is the case, why is Lee, a no-nonsense politician and manager, so infatuated with this project which runs so contrary to his much professed belief in rationality and pragmatism?
It seems that the ``canal dream'' hints at one potentially serious problem which the future administration will have to deal with. This problem is internal, it is rooted in the mindsets of the President-elect and his associates, and it remains to be seen whether they will overcome it successfully. This obstacle is their ingrained belief in the power of government intervention.
The future Korean administration is usually described as "non-nationalistic", "right-leaning" and "market-friendly". These labels are basically correct, but each one needs qualifications and caveats. Lee and his associates are believers in capitalism indeed, but due to their lifetime experiences they are used to a particular brand of capitalism which is by no means an embodiment of the free market.
Lee's ideas of the economics formed from 1965-1992 when he worked in the Hyundai Group. The environment he encountered in Hyundai of the 1960s and 1970s was far from a free market ideal. These were decades of state-controlled and state-sponsored capitalism. Hyundai grew fast, but this growth was made possible only because of state protection and government tutelage. Hyundai, like all other Korean conglomerates, obediently followed the government's strategic decisions, switching from overseas construction projects to shipbuilding to car manufacturing whenever the Seoul bureaucrats ― not some faceless ``market forces'' ― decided that such a switch was necessary.
In more extreme cases, the government invested itself. For example, in the late 1960s the Korean government built an extensive highway network, as well as a huge steel mill (the POSCO plants in Pohang), since private business had neither money nor expertise for such an undertaking. Both initiatives, much criticized at first, greatly contributed toward the record-breaking economic growth of the 1970s.
In Hyundai, Lee spent decades as a businessman working under the state's control and supervision. When in 2002 Lee was elected Seoul major, he changed sides but remained a part of the same system. As a head of the municipal administration he was, essentially, a bureaucrat, a state functionary whose job was to push businesses in the direction, he considered right. He did his job well, and this might have reinforced his convictions.
It has been pointed out that the revival of Cheonggyecheon has greatly contributed toward Lee's popularity. Indeed, as the mayor of Seoul he created a major tourist attraction of the Korean capital by creating a picturesque artificial stream, a small canal. This success might have made him more amenable to the canals indeed, but still the major reason for his approach is his belief in the miraculous power of government intervention.
Lee obviously hopes that a grandiose investment project will suffice to re-vitalize the economy ― much like it was done by the investments of President Park Chung-hee three or four decades ago, in the days of Lee's youth. It seems that, true to the 1970s' tradition, Lee believes that an investment, if it is large enough, will heal the Korean economy. Lee has said that the canal would create some 700,000 new jobs and by doing so it will restart the Korean economy.
There are some serious problems with this approach, however. First of all, nowadays it is increasingly unlikely whether a state-sponsored super-project can become a miraculous solution to economic problems.
Even if this is still the case (a big "if", one should admit), the choice of an inland canal is hardly the best idea for such a super-investment scheme. The project is both too expensive and too anachronistic.
It is sufficient to remind what has happened to Uljin Airport. This local airport was built on the same assumption ― to revive the local economy. Its cost was some $140 million, but, scheduled to open in 2003, it still remains unused: no airline wants to use it. The Grand Korean Canal has high chances to share the sorry fate of Uljin Airport, at best becoming yet another tourist attraction.
However, I would not excessively worry about the canal-mania. After all, Lee is not known as an embodiment of pragmatism for nothing. So, in all probability, the canal project will go the same way the ``capital relocation project'' of President Roh Moo-hyun's administration. Sometimes, it is good not to keep campaign promises.