When Kim Yu-na, South Korea’s figure skating sensation, takes to the Vancouver ice for her final programme this week, a nation’s pride will be riding on her 19-year-old shoulders. The near-hysteria back home surrounding her efforts to win an Olympic gold is all the more intense because her closest rival, Mao Asada, is from Japan, the old colonial enemy. In a nation used to seeing itself as an underdog, overshadowed by neighbouring China and Japan and all-but ignored by the rest of the world, sporting victory in an international arena takes on a supercharged significance.
But South Korea’s status as an underdog is wearing thin. Its economy is practically as big as India’s even with a population less than one-twentieth the size. It exports more goods than the UK, a statistic admittedly more surprising to those who are aware that Britain still makes things. Samsung, not long ago considered a poor-man’s Sony, overhauled Hewlett-Packard last year to become the world’s biggest technology company by sales. This year, it should make more money than the top 15 Japanese electronics groups combined.
South Korea has had a good crisis. While most other countries fell into recession or staved off collapse by putting themselves in hock, it is already back to robust growth. After treading water in 2009, the economy is expected to expand this year by 4.7 per cent, with a budget deficit of just 2 per cent of output, positively parsimonious in these Keynesian times. Urbanised, sophisticated, wired-up and with a per capita income in purchasing-power terms of some $28,000 – only $5,000 behind arch-rival Japan – South Korea is on the verge of long-cherished rich-country status. It even makes Asia’s most popular soap operas.