Is Anyone Surprised?

So it's finally happened. (Again, thanks Nomad, for supporting my lazy posting with your good blog).

In a business and professional environment that is positively hostile to foreigners, exacerbated by increasing overall hostility to everything American generally – whether you're talking completely legal investment non-scandals such as Lonestar, the FTA with the US being represented as "slavery" by news outlets, hagwons that actually use xenophobia as marketing tools, or US soldiers making national news for fighting with taxi drivers – is anyone wondering that investment would drop?

I've been saying it for years.

Hey – why would anyone invest where they're not wanted, and will get government inspectors trying to cause a "scandal" for doing something as evil as making a perfectly legal profit on an investment?

And let's be real – if you were an American company and had a choice, would you go to a country that is brimming over with anti-Americanism and actively hostile to foreign companies? Or would you go to China?

Personally, I don't think Korea has much room for all this xenophobia. Is anyone surprised that Korea is starting to get a reputation for its xenophobic, jingoist, conscious descent back into the proverbial well?

Globalization, indeed.

Comments

[Schlapsta]

As Rob and others mention on Nomad's thread, politics has a lot to do with a nations FDI success. US investors have enough trouble convincing their US-based superiors to agree on relationship-based guarantees without all the anti-foreigner press Korea gets compounding the doubt. A typical consern is: Will the terms of our 'Memorandum of Understanding' be upheld by the next administration?

Another plausible reason for the dip in FDI is that most of the world top ten suppliers, in key industries such as automotive-parts and LCD-parts supply anyway, have already made substantial investment in the last 4 years and are now looking for a return. Additionally, these companies may have filled the market supplying the Korean OEMs.

For companies such as these it is not a question of China/Japan/Korea or Malaysia. If the Korean auto industry needs their parts, they've got to locate nearby to co-ordinate on technology and deliver JIT items 'just-in-time' everytime.