East Asia Research

Published 08/09/2023 in Scholar Travel Stipend

Written by Hanah Jun | 08/09/2023

Growing up low-income and going into a very high-income career in finance is a path riddled with conflicts and questions. What does it mean to enter a career that follows capitalism blindly, an economic system that ascribes value to people based on their earnings and future earning potential?

Watching my family struggle through the same cycles of poverty, living in strife from paycheck to paycheck, while learning about transactions worth billions of dollars happening in the upper echelon of business and society puts me in a place where I am able to see both ends of the economic spectrum. International economic development makes this picture blurrier.

There are some personal anecdotes I will start with in thinking about the interplay between the economic and financial systems of South Korea, Japan, China, Singapore, and America. These personal anecdotes will primarily concern Korea, given my ethnic background. My family immigrated to the United States starting in the 1970s, when my father moved to New York with my paternal grandparents and his sister. My paternal grandparents were escapees from North Korea during the Korean War, and after struggling to achieve economic mobility in South Korea given the backdrop of post-war political instability, high unemployment, and discrimination against North Koreans, they decided to give life a second shot abroad. They first moved to Argentina, but given similar difficulties, my family soon moved to New York City, which was also hit hard by economic stagnation and sharp rises in violence. Tumultuous times followed, and after several busts and booms of their fish market in Astoria, Queens, as well as several other business closures, they settled more or less into a steady life in a very low-income bracket. My father later became a chef, a profession looked down upon mostly in the Asian American community due to the difficulty of the job. 

It was a huge shock, then, after decades of only having a few spare dollars in my wallet at a time, to return to South Korea and see the state of my family abroad. I did not know I had so much family abroad until I returned for the first time in over a decade. My paternal grandmother was the youngest of four siblings, and her three older brothers had stayed in South Korea while my grandmother was abroad. Their optimistic perspective of Korea’s future paid off, because their children had largely prospered where their American counterparts had not, having seamlessly been integrated into the cultural and economic growth post the tumultuous political period.

This was the blue collar history, however. Many of those who were able to flee to the United States from South Korea during that period were highly educated, and on average, well-off families who were able to pave a promising economic path for themselves in America. The rise of Korean American professionals in the world of American finance is a significant one, paralleling the growth of the Jewish community in the finance sector during the 20th century, just a few decades later.

None of this is coincidental, per sé. The relationship between East Asia and the United States has become a significant one in the past century, particularly through American involvement in the region during World War II. The U.S. played a large role in the development of Japan and South Korea, particularly through its contribution of financial aid, technological access, and opening of American financial markets to the region. South Korea in particular was a clear beneficiary of such economic expansion, as it rapidly industrialized into a major exporter in the region shortly afterwards. U.S. businesses were also able to gain a much wider consumer base abroad, and this led to the expansion of outsourcing means of production abroad. Theoretical perspectives aside, I met someone during my travels with an interesting story that illuminates such relationships between the regions. American-born, he was exposed to East Asia when his business got pulled into the warfront. He was selling general consumer goods — toothpaste, bandages, and other general health-related supplies — to the U.S. military. His business migrated to Okinawa, Japan, during and after World War II, supplying the military. He married abroad and settled his commercial activities in Japan.

The economic relationship between the two regions is demonstrated no more clearly than in the domain of trade. Many Asian products appear on American shelves and vice versa, a large proportion in the consumer segment but also extremely important in the manufactured goods and services segment, which broadly applies to the domains of electronics, cars, and textiles, for instance. There was a significant corporate presence of multinational brands abroad, including familiar faces like McDonald’s, and brands featured in Asian product aisles commanded large segments of department stores, like Sulwhasoo and Paris Baguette.

Yet, there is still room for greater alignment on a stricter economic and monetary basis. Korean, Japanese, and Chinese monetary policy, from what I could gather in local news, prioritized beneficial foreign exchange ratios for export-purposes, whereas America is focused on controlling inflation. This was easily experienced in the day-to-day life of an American living abroad and spending in American dollars, as most goods were much cheaper abroad than in the U.S. Organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are focused on enhancing financial stability in the region, but there is more room for alignment on these fronts. The Milken Institute’s Asia Summit will likely touch upon these issues in the discussion of capital access and globalization policies.

Some of the keystones for global financial interaction recently have been in the domain of digital transformation, from fintech initiatives ranging from mobile payments to online banking, and more innovations in new spaces such as in blockchain, which have increased facilitation of international transactions and inclusion.

Of course, technology and financial innovations are not the only bottlenecks to greater international financial fluency. Technologies such as WeChat Pay are blocked in various places, such as Chinese WeChat Pay in Hong Kong (in Hong Kong, you must be registered with a Hong Kong bank), due to political reasons. There are also regional conflicts, such as recent migrations of Hong Kong citizens to Singapore, for these same political reasons. And of course, inter-ethnic discrimination is still a looming factor in cross-collaboration. Products are still very clearly marketed as being distinctly Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, for instance, in their respective countries, whereas these lines begin to blur in more ethnically inclusive spaces such as Singapore (to an extent, although it is not without its problems of discrimination), going as far as the United States.

That all still lies in the world of multinational corporations and large economies of scale. In the lived experiences of locals, the so-called “trickle down” of the benefits of economic integration are far and few between. The conversation becomes even more complicated for immigrants abroad, who are somehow part of conversations about geographic integration but are simultaneously locked out of the economic mobility being afforded to those directly part of this economic transition. Take my dad, for instance, who has been working as a chef for nearly thirty years, and only gets paid about $30,000 a year a few years from retirement, with no annual bonus or retirement benefits. This is even higher than the salaries of hawker stall workers in Singapore, where cheap food abounds in the company of large corporate high-rises next door.

Thus, in the conversations of maintaining stable global financial markets and growing international economies, there has to be greater promotion of mutual understanding between the East and the West in order to create a sustainable and prosperous future for both groups. But also, there has to be increased consideration of voices who fall between and outside of these identities, whose economic realities fall outside of the conversations of growth and improvement. Otherwise, economic development will happen in a limited vacuum where “trickle down” is all but a drop of water in a dry bucket.