“Hero-Led Growth,” Not “Income-Led Growth”

There are truths in this world that do not change no matter how stubbornly people argue against them. One is that if you want to drink tea, the teacup must always be lower than the teapot. Only when the teacup is lowered can the teapot be tilted, and only then can tea be shared. As even the old Bible says, those who do not work cannot eat. No matter how much the world changes or how complicated it becomes, truth does not change. Perhaps the old days were no different in their confusion, which is why people kindly gave such things the name of truth.

When we remember the Imjin War, we do not remember the naval soldiers who died in the water, but the hero Yi Sun-sin. That is because he accomplished alone what even hundreds of thousands gathered together could not. Yi Sun-sin was able to defend Joseon from Japan because his military knowledge was so outstanding that the enemy could scarcely have imagined it. Yi Sun-sin first knew exactly what he himself possessed. How many ships he had, how well they were trained, what weapons he had, and every other matter related to the military—he knew them all precisely. He also understood well things that could not be calculated, such as the morale of the soldiers and the sentiment of the people. The same was true of the enemy. He grasped thoroughly what he could know, and he did not recklessly try to know what he could not. That is why every battle could unfold as Yi Sun-sin had envisioned. He defeated the enemy first in his mind and only then went out to the battlefield. If it was a battle he could not win in his mind, he gave the enemy no opening to fight. So Yi Sun-sin was winning even in the very moment of battle, and he was winning even when he was not fighting. Because such a figure as Yi Sun-sin existed, the war ended as a war that was “not lost.”

People’s economic activity can in fact be seen as a kind of battle like this. Every moment, whenever people buy goods, the price the buyer wants to push down and the price the seller wants to raise are a kind of battle. The bull that signifies a rising market and the bear that signifies a falling market in the stock market vividly express this combative aspect of prices. We do not make money simply by buying or selling goods. We make money when we buy something for less than its value to us, or sell something for more than its value. If you buy an item worth 10,000 won for 5,000 won, you immediately gain an expected profit of 5,000 won. Conversely, if you sell an item worth 10,000 won for 15,000 won, you gain 5,000 won more in cash. In the market, this is merely a question of whether the exchange is made in money, but either way money is created in the same sense. That is right: money is not the cash in one’s hand, but utility or value.

In the market, such battles take place every moment in every space. This is true both in the stock market where tens of trillions of won change hands and in the moment someone buys bean sprouts at the market for 1,000 won or 1,500 won. But the more urgent the war, as in the example of Yi Sun-sin, the more important one outstanding general is than hundreds of thousands of soldiers. If trading is a kind of battle, then a great general will always win when buying goods and always win when selling them. Then the money accumulated in the process of buying and selling will gather wholly to that person, then to the company, and then to the nation. Just as soldiers all want to fight under a general who always wins, so it is in the economy. Everyone wants to work with a manager who wins in the market as well. If there is someone who wins both when buying and when selling in the market, someone equipped with both strategic wisdom and practical capability, it is only natural that such a person becomes the manager of a company. Around such a person, both resources and people are bound to gather. Everyone wants victory in battle.

The chaebol so often criticized in Korean society emerged in precisely this way, like Yi Sun-sin, when the Korean economy confronted crisis. When the Korean War broke out, they built businesses while picking up bullets in the middle of the battlefield, and to save a people who were starving to death, they built businesses while bowing their heads to yesterday’s enemy. Businesses played a role of that magnitude in enabling Korean society to grow this much even amid such wars and to speak confidently on the world stage. And among those businesses, a very small number of exceptionally outstanding firms carried out this economic war superbly. Those now called chaebol are precisely the heroes. Like Yi Sun-sin, who held back Japanese forces with only twelve ships, they fought brilliantly in the Republic of Korea, a country with no resources to speak of, and they have prevailed.

When the Korean peninsula was engulfed in flames during the Imjin War, was it the hundreds of thousands of soldiers carrying bamboo spears who saved Joseon? Or was it Yi Sun-sin, who blocked hundreds of enemy ships with only twelve vessels? As everyone knows, the answer is clear. We are told that we study history in order not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Looking back at the Imjin War, we criticize King Seonjo, who did not trust Yi Sun-sin, and the court officials who envied him. But modern South Korea is a sovereign democratic state. The people are the kings that Seonjo once was. Every day, a brutal economic war is being fought across the world, and if in that war we rebuke and punish heroes for no reason other than that they won too well, then what exactly have we learned from history? How, really, are the people of today’s Republic of Korea any different from Seonjo?

As long as life continues, war does not end. Even today, we make the foolish mistake of persecuting heroes while waiting for heroes to appear.

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Original title: ‘소득주도성장’ 아닌 “영웅주도성장”

Author: Kyeong-mo Son

Date: 2020-09-03

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=free_opinion&pn=13&idx=23049