
Ask HN: How did South Korea raise in tech so quickly - samblr
I remember late 90s was when South Korea was undergoing a low phase. How did it scale to tech prowess so quickly? Can anybody suggest books related to South Korean tech entrepreneurs in English or a book which captures this growth.
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nibs
South Korea has the highest average IQ of any country in the world [1]. The
process of democratizing the country started working early 2000s in addition
to the social capital built by co-hosting the World Cup in 2002. While this
was happening, government supported a lot of IT-related investment. [2]. So
start with smart people, give them freedom and shared purpose, give them some
money to get them started, and here we are.

[1]: [http://www.statisticbrain.com/countries-with-the-highest-
low...](http://www.statisticbrain.com/countries-with-the-highest-lowest-
average-iq/) [2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_South_Korea#Sixth_R...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_South_Korea#Sixth_Republic_1987.E2.80.93present)

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samblr
Thanks for your input. Any tech entrepreneur book you know of from South Korea
- in a way successful person's background captures essence of time.

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Gibbon1
I remember a article in a magazine about 35-40 years ago talking about Asian
countries and industrial development.

The points in short were the conventional wisdom was these countries were
totally hosed. They were poor, run by despots, and had a huge population of
young people entering adulthood and everyone assumed they'd fall into war and
revolution. The authors claim was that the despots had done two things,
provided some stability and forced children to go to school. And had sucked up
to[1] the western governments with their large markets and excess capital.

So

1\. Elites/despots, committed to industrialization at almost any cost.

2\. Huge population of educated workers entering the workforce.

3\. Countries had ready access to US and European markets and capital.

The above fits South Korea to a T.

[1] Sucked up but did not let themselves be controlled by.

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samblr
From history it is evident that baton of power-and-knowledge gets passed from
one civilisation to other! Im interested in understanding positive spin to
these changes.

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Gibbon1
Historically the power of a civilization was based on size and quality of the
arable land it controlled. 1750's onward there was a switch to the amount of
energy resources it's controlled. it's why France was the dominate power in
Europe until the British and Germans started using coal to fuel their
industries.

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samblr
"size and quality of the arable land" "the amount of energy resources it's
controlled"

Above are _just_ variables of time - these act on an successful individual (of
his/her time) to produce companies/empires. I would like to know such stories
from South Korea.

