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Korea’s relentless convergence towards America’s standard of living (see chart 1) has barely missed a beat. China’s dollar GDP per person would have to grow at 7.5-8% a year for 20 years to reach the heights Korea has already scaled. If the Korean economy goes on growing at 4.5% a year and America’s at 2.5%, Korea would overtake America (in PPP terms) only a few years later.
To keep growing that impressively, though, Korea will need some new tactics. And it will need to develop them from scratch. When a country or a company is playing catch-up it can look at what others are doing and do it better. This Korea has done well. Hyundai has outcompeted Toyota in the market for reliable, efficient, cheap cars. Korea’s shipyards have beaten everyone through economies of scale.

All change
But this way of doing things works only when others have blazed a trail before you. As you join the ranks of the richest, you run out of beaten track to follow. Your economy comes to depend more on innovation and on learning from your own mistakes than on improving on the successes of others. The South Korean model of 1960-2010 remains an example for developing countries but Korea itself now needs something new.
The Korean model had four distinctive features: a Stakhanovite workforce powerful conglomerates relatively weak smaller firms and high social cohesion. All these are either coming under strain, or in need of reassessment, or both.

A. 어휘
relentless 가차 없는, 냉혹한, 잔인한. convergence 收斂(수렴).
barely 거의...않다. a beat 한 박자. scale 올라가다, 등산하다, 비늘을 벗기다, 저울.
that impressively=so impressively. tactics 전술, 방법.
from scratch 출발선에서부터, 처음부터, 無(무)에서.
catch-up 격차해소, 따라잡기. reliable 믿을 수 있는. efficient 능률적인.
shipyards 조선소. blaze 횃불, 불꽃, 나무껍질에 새긴 흰 표적.
blazed a trail 나무에 표적을 새기다, 앞서 가면서 길을 내다.
innovation 혁신. distinctive 구별되는, 특유의. features 특징.
Stakhanovite 목표를 초과달성할 만큼 열심히 일하는.
conglomerates 기업집단. relatively 상대적으로. cohesion 응집력.
coming under strain 긴장하다, 부담을 느끼다. reassessment 재평가.