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IT IS a crisp autumn morning in Seoul, and a hopeful fisherman sits dreaming by the Cheonggyecheon stream as the world bustles happily by. Glass skyscrapers rise behind him housing the capital’s new financial district. The shopfronts at their base are among the swankiest in Asia. Office workers, families and schoolchildren amble past. Busking fills the air. The water tumbles past plum trees and willows.
Twenty years ago, this background would itself have seemed a dream for anyone foolish enough to be trying to fish the Cheonggyecheon. Its waters, dirty and hidden, were trapped beneath a roaring highway its surroundings were a slum of sweatshops, metal bashing and poverty. The reclamation of the Cheonggyecheon, one of the great urban-regeneration projects of the world, has about it the air of a dream achieved. So, to a large extent, has the Korea through which the stream flows.
In 1960, in the aftermath of a devastating war, the exhausted south was one of the poorest countries in the world, with an income per head on a par with the poorest parts of Africa. By the end of 2011 it will be richer than the European Union average, with a gross domestic product per person of $31,750, calculated on a basis of purchasing-power parity (PPP), compared with $31,550 for the EU. South Korea is the only country that has so far managed to go from being the recipient of a lot of development aid to being rich within a working life.
For most poor countries, South Korea is a model of growth, a better exemplar than China, which is too vast to copy, and better, too, than Taiwan, Singapore or Hong Kong. All three are richer than Korea but all are, in different ways, exceptions: Singapore and Hong Kong are city states, while Taiwan’s disputed sovereignty makes it sui generis.

A. 어휘
ascent 上昇(상승). template 型板(형판), 모범. caught up with 따라 잡다.
crisp 상쾌한, 파삭 파삭한. stream 냇물. bustles 부산하게 움직이다.
skyscrapers 고층건물, 摩天樓(마천루). financial district 금융지구.
swanky 화사한, 멋진. amble 느릿느릿 걷다. Busking 거리의 즉흥공연.
tumbles 구르다, 넘어지다. past ...를 지나서(전치사).
plum trees 자두나무. willows 버드나무. trapped 덫에 걸린.
sweatshops 노동착취공장. bashing 强打(강타).
reclamation 較正(교정), 개간, 敎化(교화). urban 도시의.
regeneration 부활, 재건. aftermath 결과, 餘波(여파), 영향.
devastating 파멸적인. exhausted 氣盡脈盡(기진맥진)한, 枯渴(고갈)된.
par 동등. purchasing-power parity 구매력 동가. recipient 受領者(수령자).
vast 광대한. disputed 논쟁이 되고 있는. sovereignty 主權(주권).
sui generis 독자적인, 독특한.