Introduction: why Korea in the new millennium? Jesook Song The Economist’s January 2009 special issue on Asia spells out the tenets of Western-centered free-market ideology, and blames Asian countries and their anti-market tendencies of under-consumption, export-oriented trade and yet-to- be-privatized property for the global fnancial crisis that began in fall 2008. 1 A condescending, dissatisfed tone is evident throughout the issue. The Economist states that “Asian governments must introduce structural reforms that encourage people to spend and reduce the need for them to save. In China, farmers must be given reliable title to their land so that they can borrow money against it or sell it” (2009b); “It seems so unfair. Most Asian economies have been models of prudence. While American and European households were borrowing up to the hilt, Asian ones were tucking away their savings” (2009a: 75); and “Asia’s low rate of consumption and borrowing means that it has huge scope to make consumption the engine of growth over the next decade. In previous downturns, Asians were forced to take nasty medicine. Having to go out and spend would surely make a nice change” (ibid.: 77). It is remarkable to fnd such confdence in the free-market economy. After all, the IMF and World Bank’s pressure on the non-West and global South to mini- mize government regulation has been a failure that has deprived the working poor of subsistence and a means of making a living. As Kwang-Yeong Shin, Kang-Kook Lee, and Jin-Ho Jang demonstrate in this volume, in their respective discussions of the social, macroeconomic, and microfnancial effects of neoliberalism in South Korea, the most recent example of the failure of these international fnancial institutions is the bailout of the formerly prosperous late-industrializing East and Southeast Asian countries during the Asian fnancial crisis (1997–2001). The Economist’s confdent free-market perspective is especially surprising at this point in the global fnancial crisis because many consider the regulations of fnancial and insurance markets that have been imposed and the protectionist moves of leading liberal capitalist states in response to the crisis to be a demonstration of the limits of neoliberal market ideology. It seems contradictory to insist that Asian countries should become models of deregulation, open markets, and import-driven economies when liberal capitalist states are strongly intervening in their domestic economies by nationalizing banks and bailing out major corporations and insurance companies. The US government, for example, is taking the “protectionist” position of prohibiting the use of foreign products in the US manufacturing process when domestic products are available. 2