Asian Financial Crisis

Remarks BY
His Excellency Dr. Surin Pitsuwan
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Thailand
At the Asia Pacific Roundtable
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
1 June 1998
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Mr. Chairman, Excellencies, Distinguished Roundtable Participants,

It is certainly a pleasure to be in Kuala Lumpur again attending this 12th Asia Pacific Roundtable and seeing so many old friends and colleagues. I have lost track of the number of times that I have visited the Malaysian capital over the past year. Not only is KL one of my favourite cities in Asia, but the trip here is quite pleasant. It usually takes me less time to get here than to travel from one part of Bangkok to another! Read the rest of this entry »

By Meredith Woo-Cumings

The question that I am asked to address is how an industrial juggernaut like South Korea–widely touted as the eleventh largest in the world–has ended up in the lap of the International Monetary Fund, and what this portends for an economic system that came to be known as Korea Inc. Rather than revisit the daily unfolding of the Korean financial debacle in the past few weeks, with which you all are familiar, I would rather like to use this occasion to discuss the political and historical logic of the Korean economic system, so that that we can better discern the parameters of current and future Korean (and American) action. When we do that, I think we may find that the IMF has bitten off a lot more than it may be able to chew, let alone digest. Read the rest of this entry »

by Theodore Friend
Theodore Friend is Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is president emeritus of the Eisenhower Exchange Fellowships and former president of Swarthmore College.

The distress in the Asian economies may be bottoming out. The APEC meeting of 21 Pacific Rim nations has been held, and gone flat. Time now to look at economico-political matters in a way that configures phenomena before and beyond recent waves and troughs. Think from present incoherence toward future community. Read the rest of this entry »