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View Full Version : Making Mitt Romney looks poor in comparison....



RollingWave
04-30-2012, 04:32 AM
Well we know the rap on Romney, criticisim that he made money in cut throat busniess and all that.. and of course that he inheriently representing big corperate interest etc...

But that's nothing compare to the latest announcement from South Korea... where Mr Chung Mong-Joon (http://"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chung_Mong-joon"=) had just announced hat he'll join in this year's upcomming Presidential Primaries for the ruling Saenuri party. election. Who's Chung you say?

Chung is the son of Chung Ju-Yung, the found of Hyundai, Hyundai like most other major korean companies is essentially a family busniess, the Chung family still controll the entire Hyundai group, and if taken together as one company, then they are effectively the largest company in Korea (yes, bigger than Samsung) and also makes them one of the most powerful company in the entire world.

The major korean companies (the Chaebols) though wildly succesful, have been heavily criticized for often being above the law, and also controls so big of a share of Korea's national GDP that they're essentially holdng them hostage at times. of course, Mr Chung being one of the effective controller of the largest group running for top office certainly is pushing it to an even further level... this would be like if Bill Gates and Warrent Buffett ran on the same ticket... I'd think even the most pro-capitalist folks would find that slightly distrubing. (and Korea's case is worse, since there's no clear law limiting office holders' ability to also run companies at the same time... though not exactly the best enforced ever, Korea's even worse as... made more complicated by the fact that due to the nature of the Chaebols being family busniess, even if the candidates sell all his stocks he'd still probably be in control...)

Still, the Saenuri party primary seem to be the most amusing this time around, since Chung's main adversary is likely to be Ms. Park Geun-Hye, the daughter of the late military dictator Park Chung-Hee..... (one of the most powerful and notorious South Korean dictators. he was so bad that he got assasinated in 1979... which was already the 3rd assasination attempt on him... his wife was killed in the 2nd attempt...)

So you have the daughter of a brutal dictator vs the son and owner of a uber family congolmerate, this makes the US Presidential election suddenly seems a lot less terrible I guess :grin:

MMC
04-30-2012, 05:43 AM
Well we know the rap on Romney, criticisim that he made money in cut throat busniess and all that.. and of course that he inheriently representing big corperate interest etc...

But that's nothing compare to the latest announcement from South Korea... where Mr Chung Mong-Joon (http://"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chung_Mong-joon"=) had just announced hat he'll join in this year's upcomming Presidential Primaries for the ruling Saenuri party. election. Who's Chung you say?

Chung is the son of Chung Ju-Yung, the found of Hyundai, Hyundai like most other major korean companies is essentially a family busniess, the Chung family still controll the entire Hyundai group, and if taken together as one company, then they are effectively the largest company in Korea (yes, bigger than Samsung) and also makes them one of the most powerful company in the entire world.

The major korean companies (the Chaebols) though wildly succesful, have been heavily criticized for often being above the law, and also controls so big of a share of Korea's national GDP that they're essentially holdng them hostage at times. of course, Mr Chung being one of the effective controller of the largest group running for top office certainly is pushing it to an even further level... this would be like if Bill Gates and Warrent Buffett ran on the same ticket... I'd think even the most pro-capitalist folks would find that slightly distrubing. (and Korea's case is worse, since there's no clear law limiting office holders' ability to also run companies at the same time... though not exactly the best enforced ever, Korea's even worse as... made more complicated by the fact that due to the nature of the Chaebols being family busniess, even if the candidates sell all his stocks he'd still probably be in control...)

Still, the Saenuri party primary seem to be the most amusing this time around, since Chung's main adversary is likely to be Ms. Park Geun-Hye, the daughter of the late military dictator Park Chung-Hee..... (one of the most powerful and notorious South Korean dictators. he was so bad that he got assasinated in 1979... which was already the 3rd assasination attempt on him... his wife was killed in the 2nd attempt...)

So you have the daughter of a brutal dictator vs the son and owner of a uber family congolmerate, this makes the US Presidential election suddenly seems a lot less terrible I guess :grin:

Morning RW.....is the daughter in any sort of power now? Or does she have to run for the power in order to be considered a player at the table?

RollingWave
04-30-2012, 09:26 AM
She has to run of course, Park is the current leader of the party, they'll run a primary and all that.

Her father while was a brutal dictator was also remembered for starting a lot of the modernization work, since he was the main leader after the Korean war . so he's not remembered as all bad.

MMC
04-30-2012, 09:30 AM
What do you think the Take on Korea becoming Unified is.....over there by you RW?

RollingWave
04-30-2012, 11:55 AM
who knows, the real question is HOW they become unified. you'd think the Kim regime is unlikely to go down lightly, and if it goes down with a mushroom bang then obviously all bets are off.

having said that, the South is making preperations for unifications, they have a fund stashed away for that event and a "patriot tax" levied specifically for that purpose (imagine that, a government with extra money! :grin:) if the north go down without major military disastors involved the South would be relatively ready.

though really, amusingly both China and the US seem to not really want a unified Korea, since either way they lean it's going to be really problematic for the other side (and they aren't as sure fired to lean US as you think.)

Mainecoons
04-30-2012, 06:56 PM
When I look at how Vietnam has evolved, I wonder if we would have done the Koreans a bigger favor by just getting out of the way. For certain, we did not need to kill a bunch of healthy young men and squander a bunch of treasure to make the world safe for Hyundai.

Conley
04-30-2012, 06:58 PM
who knows, the real question is HOW they become unified. you'd think the Kim regime is unlikely to go down lightly, and if it goes down with a mushroom bang then obviously all bets are off.

having said that, the South is making preperations for unifications, they have a fund stashed away for that event and a "patriot tax" levied specifically for that purpose (imagine that, a government with extra money! :grin:) if the north go down without major military disastors involved the South would be relatively ready.

though really, amusingly both China and the US seem to not really want a unified Korea, since either way they lean it's going to be really problematic for the other side (and they aren't as sure fired to lean US as you think.)

I have to think the unified Korea will aim more to duplicate South Korea than North Korea, so I'm surprised to read you think it's not as certain to lean toward the US as we might think.

MMC
04-30-2012, 07:01 PM
I have to think the unified Korea will aim more to duplicate South Korea than North Korea, so I'm surprised to read you think it's not as certain to lean toward the US as we might think.

I was looking for that piece we had up about the US and China discussing the Koreas being Unified. I checked under World affairs with China stuff. I can't remember if we had that up there or in latest happenings. Tried to search to. I think we were in a thread on something with N Korea and S Korea.

RollingWave
05-01-2012, 05:40 AM
When I look at how Vietnam has evolved, I wonder if we would have done the Koreans a bigger favor by just getting out of the way. For certain, we did not need to kill a bunch of healthy young men and squander a bunch of treasure to make the world safe for Hyundai.

I find it unlikely that if all of Korea had been ran by the Kim family since 1950 the South would have anything close to it's current achievment. and there was no question at all that if the US just quit in 1950 that the Kims would rule all of Korea, since the US had intentionally not armed the South, they were essentially fighting tanks with nothing but infantry (and no LAWs either) at the start of the war. and what's worse is that unlike the North, South Korea have far less natural defensive barriers so they could not have conducted the same sort of warfare that the North and China eventually pulled on the US.


I have to think the unified Korea will aim more to duplicate South Korea than North Korea, so I'm surprised to read you think it's not as certain to lean toward the US as we might think.

A united Korea will certainly on an economic level continue the South Korean model, but one has to realize that Geo-strategic interest is much more likely to change, the key sticking point remains Japan. which had over the course of the last 1000+ years steadily pushed Korea to have strong geopolitical alliances with China. as the case in point that since the late 16th century China have had 3 major wars that involved going into Korea and rescuing the local dynasty (Imjin War, the first Sino-Japanese war, Korean War). two of them Japan was the aggressor and the 3rd Japan was the key launching pad.

Koreans are obviously not fully trusting of Chinese, but they usually find them to be the considerablly less of the two evil when compared to their neighbor to the east. China has professed no serious intention of conquering Korea since (if you do not count the Mongol Yuan dynasty, who in the 1200s-1300s professed the desire to conquer anything that walks :grin:) around 700 AD. while the Japanese were still colonizing Korea within living memory. that choice is fairly obvious.

Also, Korea and China already share common interest against Japan even today, as both country have islands they claim to be their own but is currently effectively owned by Japan.(as do we here in Taiwan) but the presence of more dire potential enemies (North Korea for the South, the PRC for us) means that we don't push Japan too overly hard on these issues and mostly just continue to have diplomatic protest. however those protest are often the most serious in south korea...

I think the likely course of a Korean unification would be...

A. US forces leave Korea, as no longer justified northern threat, and the US domestic voices tend to be anti-foreign deployment, and neither China nor the US probably would love a direct land contact US base with China .

B. Some of those force probably move to Japan, and the removal of the US forces in Korea as a buffer probably will scare the Japanese into upping it's military capacity.

C. meanwhile, a united Korea is more likely to pursue realistically on the dispute of those islands., where again it's interest line up strongly with China's.

D. an ugly cycle as Japan probably become even more defensive and as a result pushes Korea even further towards China.

MMC
05-01-2012, 05:45 AM
What do you take from the North's recent round of threats to the South RW? Do you think the North has a legitmate excuse when the South will test a Short range missile? I think it was a little over the top to threaten to turn Seoul into Ashes.

RollingWave
05-01-2012, 10:20 AM
What do you take from the North's recent round of threats to the South RW? Do you think the North has a legitmate excuse when the South will test a Short range missile? I think it was a little over the top to threaten to turn Seoul into Ashes.

ehe, they've long exceeded the cry wolf point, no one really take the North's crazy rants seriously.