PM Orbán admires the success story of South Korea
Addressing the opening of a V4-Korea Business Forum in Budapest, PM Viktor Orbán said that the existing good and friendly relations between Hungary and the Republic of Korea would be raised to a strategic level and economic relations would be expanded to include science, research and education.
Orbán said Hungarians find it difficult to understand how it is possible that South Korea, which was among the poorest countries in the world some fifty years ago, can currently produce the 12th largest GDP globally.
He said his government had
Orbán said Hungarians find it difficult to understand how it is possible that South Korea, which was among the poorest countries in the world some fifty years ago, can currently produce the 12th largest GDP globally.
He said his government had
looked to South Korea as a “success story” to learn from
when it returned to power in 2010.
Orbán said the country offered an example of how tradition must be combined with technology, family must be “placed above all”, the economy is work-based and there is life-long learning, national identity is strong, regional logistics advantages are put to use, and planning is for the long term.
Orbán noted that bilateral trade between Hungary and South Korea has grown by a factor of ten in the past decade. South Korean companies are the fourth-biggest group of investors in the country and have projects worth 4 billion dollars underway, he said. Talks are ongoing on the launch of a further 16 big South Korean investments, he added.
“The broader and deeper cooperation is between South Korea and the European Union, between South Korea and the Visegrád Group, and between South Korea and Hungary, the sooner the whole of the European continent can
regain its competitiveness in the global economy,”
he said.
In spite of being occupied by foreign troops and separated from its northern brother, S.Korea is everything what Orbanistan is not: free, democratic, educated, technological, with independent media and one of the best, perhaps the best, state health care system in the world. Corruption exists there also, in politics and financial groups, but it does not affect the life of the average taxpayer, unlike in Orbanistan, where bribery is needed at many levels, even basic level, of daily life.
An autocratic, illiberal, medieval rule like Orbán’s would be impossible to conceive in S Korea, so I doubt that the Hu despot is genuinely envying Korea. It is just protocol speech.