Why the Next Global Superpower is...Korea?

Posted by Moezilla at 11:13, 01 Mar 2010

Korea's 360 naturally-occuring minerals have an estimated worth of $6 trillion. And today South Korea is already #1 in digital technology, #1 in shipbuilding, it constructed the world's tallest building, the largest shopping center, the biggest boat.

How'd South Korea do it? Relentless education, long work hours (2,390 hours per person annually, 34% more than Americans) and brave creativity - they own the 3rd largest number of patents... South Koreans between 25-34 years old are now more likely to have an upper secondary education (97%) than anyone else in the world.

And now South Korea's government is investing $750 million to become the world robot leader within the next eight years.

They plan to get a service robot in every home within a decade, and they're developing English-teaching robots to replace up to 30,000 human instructors at language institutes. The demilitarized zone even inspired an "Intelligence Surveillance and Guard" robot "that detects and interrogates intruders, sounds alarms, and can fire with a Daewoo K-3 machine gun."

And finally, they're building "Robot Land" - a combination grad school, R & D robotics center, and theme park with 340 robots, including the 364-foot tall Robot Taekwon U - "Voltar the Invincible". Plus, South Korea also has 3,000 computer specialists just to counter online attacks from North
Korea...

South Korea is now 15 years ahead of the USA in broadband speed with 95% of its households online. (Made easier by their cramped population -- imagine 50 million people in Kentucky.) And because of this, "South Korea dwells in a futuristic web frenzy...

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along with
#1
36chambers's picture
Member since:
27 November 2007
Last activity:
1 year 47 weeks
Posted by 36chambers on 12 Mar 2010 at about 02:59.

Interesting, I think there are a couple other things that need to happen before your theory rings true. 1)They need to unite, first and foremost. 2)They need military superiority and simply threatening the world with a nuclear arms program doesn't count, actually one could argue it detracts from it. Also, one could argue that having an educated population would detract from becoming a super power, just look at America and China. Every government needs the people backing their play and statistics show that educated people are less likely to trust and follow their government, and rightfully so.

unity costs money
#2
earthling's picture
Member since:
22 November 2004
Last activity:
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Posted by earthling on 12 Mar 2010 at about 03:07.

I don't have much insight into Korean politics, but I have heard that the South is more hesitant now about unification. They see how expensive it has been for Germany. And East Germany, although an economic basket case, was not as nearly as bad as North Korea.

Unification would take a lot of their resources.

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