Tuesday 21 April 2009
(Working Breakfast)
(Organised by Menas Associates)
(Marketing Support from Asia-Pacific Technology Network)
Speaker
Menas Associates would be delighted if you, or a colleague, could attend a Breakfast Briefing on Korea at the Lansdowne Club on 21st April, 2009, starting at 8 for 8.30 am.
Location: Lansdowne Club, 9 Fitzmaurice Place, London W1J 5JD
Nearest tube station: Green Park
Timing: 8 for 8.30 am (with breakfast)
Pricing: Free, by invitation. First come first served and, in the first instance, one person per company.
To Register: please express your interest to Lucinda Martin, Menas Associates, 16/19 Southampton Place London WC1A 2AJ (Email: lucinda.martin@menas.co.uk: Telephone: +44-(0)207 745 7190 )
Why Korea? Squashed between China and Japan, Korea is often overlooked alongside east Asia’s giants. That is unwise. This small but crowded peninsula – there are 73 million Koreans – presents an intriguing mix of opportunities and threats, for business and public policy alike. South Korea is the missing K in BRIC, if Goldman Sachs could spell. The planet’s most wired society and in the top 15 global economies, it leads the world in ships (Hyundai) and chips (Samsung). The old Korea Inc and Fortress Korea are yielding, not without a struggle, to more open markets. Service sectors like health and education are the next battleground. Politically, after a bad start, a pro-business president is getting a grip on the financial crisis. North Korea is trouble, as in its recent defiant rocket launch. Now a nuclear power, it clings grimly to a failed Stalinist system even at the price of famine. ‘Dear Leader’ Kim Jong-il, 67 and sick, has yet to name any successor. 20 years after communism elsewhere collapsed or morphed into something more sensible, the North Korean end-game draws ever closer. Unification? Worlds apart after 60 years – South Korea exports more in two days than the North does in a year – this will make Germany’s unification travails look like child’s play. Yet the coming decades will see it happen, with reunified Korea at the hub of a new northeast Asian region.
The speaker Aidan Foster-Carter has followed Korea for almost 40 years, visiting the peninsula 24 times. Since 1993 he has worked full-time as a Korea analyst and consultant: writing, lecturing and broadcasting for business, policy and academic audiences in the UK and worldwide. He will address all the above issues and more. There will be ample time for discussion and Q&A.
We also believe that there is a market for a new analytical fortnightly or monthly electronic publication which would track Korea’s fast-moving situation. Menas Associates would welcome your views. Would you subscribe?