Article for Feb. 7

[★Julie★규연★]

Recall in China a big headache for Toyota By Kevin Voigt, CNN

January 29, 2010 -- Updated 1234 GMT (2034 HKT)

Hong Kong, China (CNN) -- Toyota's vehicle recall in China pales in comparison to the world's largest automaker's recalls in the United States in recent months.

But the long-term impact of the recall in China -- now the world's largest auto market -- may be huge as Toyota tries to grow its foothold here.

Thursday's recall in China of 75,500 sport utility vehicles because of potential accelerator pad problems is part of a global recall that includes 5.3 million cars in the United States. But this is Toyota's fifth vehicle recall in China since January 2009.

"This is monumental for Toyota," said auto analyst Michael Dunne, president of Dunne & Co. based in Hong Kong. "It's almost like a hex has descended on them in China. It makes Chinese consumers begin to doubt the invincibility of Toyota product quality."

Does the recall hurt the Toyota brand?

Other recalls this past year include a 690,000-car recall in August because of faulty window controls and a 259,000-vehicle recall in April to fix brake systems.

Toyota may be the top seller in the world, but in the all-important Chinese market the company ranks a distant fourth in passenger vehicle sales. Toyota has a 7.8 percent market share in China compared to the Volkswagen Group, which accounted for 16.5 percent of passenger vehicle sold here last year, according to J.D. Power and Associates.

"China's very important to Toyota, but they've had their problems in China --- the market's boomed here, but we're not seeing Toyota grow as fast," said John Bonnell, director of forecasting for J.D. Power and Associates Asia-Pacific.

The passenger car market in China grew 48 percent last year, Bonnell said. Toyota's sales grew 21 percent in 2009, a company spokesperson said.

The world's top automakers are jockeying for position in China to build brand and customer loyalty.

"(China) is a car market that's (a) very recent market, which means Chinese consumers are only now discovering new cars, so it's an open book, you can write the story now in China," Carlos Ghosn, chairman and CEO of Renault-Nissan, told CNN's Richard Quest on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

"When I say we are writing the book, they are not deciding out of memory -- they are deciding what they see in front of them."

In Tokyo on Friday, Toyota remained tight-lipped on plans to deal with the global recall which involve two separate problems -- gas pedals that stick on their on, or get caught on removable car floor mats. In the U.S., 5.3 million cars have been recalled due to either problem, and the recall expanded to China and Europe on Thursday. It's not immediately known how many vehicles will be affected in Europe.

The Japanese government, however, weighed in on the issue Friday.

"The scale of this is large," said Masayuki Naoshima, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry. "We want Toyota to deal with this problem seriously and maintain consumer trust."

Q1. Did you have brand royalty for Toyota? Did it change after Toyota’s global recall?

Q2. Toyota uses the same parts for many different cars in order to reduce cost. This means that if one part is faulty, all car models will have the same problem. What do you think about this fact?

Q3. After hearing about Toyota’s global recall would you feel comfortable to buy a Toyota car? Do you think this recall will hurt Toyota’s credibility in the world?

Selling South Korea

Lee Myung-bak wants to move his country to the center of the world.

For the first time in modern history, South Korea is laying claim to lead the club of rich nations. South Korea became the first member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development—the group of 30 wealthy nations—to emerge from the global recession when it recorded 0.4 percent growth in the third quarter of last year. This year the OECD expects South Korea's GDP to expand by 4.4 percent, the highest growth rate of any of its members.

Now President Lee Myung-bak wants to turn the end of the economic crisis into an opportunity. He knows the crash has accelerated the decline of American might, as well as the rise of China and other emerging powers, and he aims to exploit the gap between them. His goal is to transform South Korea from a successful but self-involved economic power into a respected global soft power with the clout to mediate between rich and poor nations on global issues such as climate change and financial regulation. In particular, Lee is pushing to revive momentum on a global free-trade deal—stalled in large part due to hostility from poor nations—while defending the poor by pushing for more international supervision of the global financial system. At the same time, he is trying to establish South Korea as a leader in the fight against global warming by agreeing that the country will cut emissions by 30 percent by 2020—one of the most aggressive targets in the world—even though it is not obligated to do so because it is still considered a developing nation under the Kyoto Protocol. To many in South Korea, the selection of Seoul as the site of the November 2010 summit of the G20—the group of 20 leading economic powers—is an acknowledgment of how well it has managed the current economic and environmental crises. "The old order is being dismantled and replaced by the new order," Lee said from the Blue House in a televised New Year's speech. "We have to make our vision the world's vision."

Lee is one of only two former CEOs to lead a major trading power—Italy's Silvio Berlusconi is the other—and he runs South Korea like the just-do-it boss he was at Hyundai, where staff called him "the Bulldozer." At Hyundai he led a company known for fearless forays into foreign markets, whether it was building huge bridges in Malaysia or selling cars with stunning success in the crowded U.S. market. Now he is trying to make South Korean culture—still on the defensive after a long history of colonial occupations—as cosmopolitan as Hyundai's culture. He's pushing for greater use of English and generally trying to open up South Korea to the world. In his first big political job, as mayor of Seoul, he created a huge ruckus when he ripped up the downtown to expose a boarded-up stream—but it is now a major draw for commerce and tourism. Lee's grand domestic ambition as president is a multibillion-dollar plan to refurbish South Korea's four major rivers despite protests from environmentalists and opposition members. Lee believes the project will boost local economies by creating jobs and promoting tourism and commerce. Lee's popularity ratings, after an early plummet driven by a decision to allow U.S. imports of beef, are now at more than 50 percent as voters warm to his vision of newly developed South Korea as a model nation to be emulated by many developing countries.

South Korea's successful management of the economic crisis surely helps. Early on, the country was battered like the rest of the world. The South Korean won dropped 30 percent in the first three months of the crisis, the stock market dropped by half, and foreign investors left in droves. But unlike most other rich nations, South Korea had recent experience with a major financial meltdown. Many of its current leaders are veterans of the Asian crisis that crippled the country's economy in 1998, and they knew how to manage a free fall. Lee's team immediately moved to save threatened banks and companies by setting up $200 billion in various funds to guarantee payment of their debts and for other forms of emergency aid. They struck currency-swap deals with major economies such as the U.S. to secure dwindling reserves of foreign currency and front-loaded public spending so that 65 percent of the country's $250 billion budget was spent during the first half of 2009, ensuring that the money got into the economy rapidly—but without adding new debts. A government focus on protecting jobs kept consumer sentiment relatively high, and the Bank of Korea cut interest rates by 3.25 percentage points to 2 percent, a historic low.

All the while, Lee worked relentlessly to quiet calls for protectionism at home and abroad, at a time when many other leaders, including Barack Obama and Hu Jintao, were beginning to succumb. Lee's administration is pushing for a slew of free-trade agreements with the U.S., the European Union, Peru, Colombia, Canada, Australia, and even China and Japan, if possible, says Abraham Kim, a Korea analyst at the political-risk consultancy Eurasia Group. Lee also lobbied hard at the Pittsburgh meeting of the G20 last year to have Seoul selected as the site of the next summit this autumn, an event he hopes to organize as a coming-out party. "He is trying to use the crisis to enhance the reputation of South Korea and help it to be widely recognized as a developed-world state," says Kim. "This is partly a nationalism thing, but more importantly, they are trying to get out from under Japan's and China's shadow. South Korea needs to find its niche for its long-term competitive survival."

South Korea was further protected from the crisis because its economy was built on pillars other than the collapsing financial-services industry. Decades of government efforts to nurture globally competitive conglomerates through massive infusion of capital had helped build export machines such as Samsung, Hyundai, and LG. As the crisis unfolded, the weakening currency allowed these companies to expand global market share, especially against key Japanese and other rich-world competitors. As a result, South Korea registered a record trade surplus of $42 billion last year, surpassing that of Japan for the first time. South Korean companies and banks were also ready to compete because the crisis of the 1990s had forced them to improve corporate governance, get their finances in order, and invest heavily in new technology. "We just had to dust off the old measures we used a decade ago and use them again," says Vice Finance Minister Hur Kyung-wook.

In short, the South Korean model is a more mature cousin of China's—a hybrid economy, part free market, part state-controlled—but with more freedom for the market and for political dissent. Now Lee is positioning South Korea within Asia as a dynamic alternative to both China's mighty command economy and Japan's no-growth economy. In Southeast Asia, South Korea has long been admired for completing an economic miracle in just one generation, moving its 48 million people out of poverty and entering the ranks of fully industrialized nations, with average per capita income that surpassed $20,000 in 2007. And, unlike China, South Korea has achieved economic and political growth at the same time, with an increasingly well-established multiparty democracy that respects free speech and election results. South Korea, says U.S. Ambassador Kathleen Stephens, is "the best example in the post–World War II era of a country that has overcome enormous obstacles to achieve this kind of success."

Many Southeast Asian nations, alarmed by the harsh sides of the China model, look to South Korea as an alternative. Vietnam is sending civil servants there, studying how in the 1970s and '80s Seoul used massive government support, such as cheap loans, to develop strategic industries such as steel and petrochemicals as the backbone of its export economy. As part of Vietnam's effort to develop capital markets, it also now runs a stock exchange in Hanoi, built with the help of the Korea Stock Exchange. Officials from Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Uzbekistan regularly visit South Korea to join training programs that teach economic and business management. "Developing countries are eager to learn South Korea's economic model because of its relevance to them," says Euh Yoon-dae, a Korea University economist currently heading a presidential committee to promote the national brand. "Our open economic system is more appealing to them than, say, that of China."

Surrounded by bigger powers—China, Russia, and Japan—South Korea needs to carve out a global role for itself to "ensure its prosperity and security," says David Straub, a Korea expert at Stanford University. So, in his first year in office, Lee made a point of systematically reaching out to foreign leaders in the United States and other major powers. The following year he headed to Europe. This year, Straub says, Lee is expected to target Africa. At the same time, he is upping South Korea's profile abroad, posting 3,000 volunteers from its version of the Peace Corps to Asia and Africa, where they will focus on public health and childhood education, with plans to increase that number to 20,000 by 2013. Last year South Korea officially became the first former recipient of international aid to graduate to the donor ranks, sending $1 billion to dozens of poor countries, and it plans to triple that sum within five years. Likewise, the number of troops it commits to U.N. peacekeeping operations will jump from 400 in 2009 to 1,000 this year and will work in roughly 10 nations, including Lebanon and Pakistan.

Lee has big plans for Brand South Korea, too. At Hyundai, he turned what had been a small contractor into a global manufacturing powerhouse. He speaks English, unlike his predecessor as president, and he is comfortable playing national pitchman. Just after Christmas, following six rounds of telephone calls with United Arab Emirates President Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan and a last-minute visit to the country, Lee helped South Korea beat out a French and a joint U.S.-Japan consortium to win its biggest foreign contract ever: a $40 billion nuclear-power-plant contract in the U.A.E. While Hyundai and Samsung have overcome the perception abroad that "made in South Korea" still means poorly made, many other South Korean brands have not. According to a survey by Simon Anholt, a British expert on national branding, the country ranks 33rd in global branding power, although its economic size ranks 13th in the world. What's more, more than half of U.S. college students believe Hyundai and Samsung are Japanese brands. "Our job is to narrow the perception gap between the national and corporate brands," says Euh, the head of the branding committee.

Lee plans to build on that success at the G20 summit. He has already distinguished himself from his predecessors by embracing foreign investment and free trade, rather than focusing on rigid ideology, and he intends to use the meeting to showcase the rewards of that strategy. Lee's hope is that he can send a message to smaller, poorer countries, particularly in Asia, that South Korea's less insular, more global approach can be a model they can follow, too. Of course, as his opponents are quick to point out, the fate of his country will not change because the leaders of 20 advanced nations get together for a few days. But Lee says it is part of a larger effort to move his country "away from the periphery of Asia," as he put it recently, "and into the center of the world."

© 2010

Q.1 What kind of things and manifestos do leader of countries in the world try to do for their own country or global?

Q.2 What is your view of a reputation of Korea from abroad?

Q.3 As article above, will president Lee's working be a good effort to korea?

California: America’s First Failed State

In the latest Intelligence Squared US debate, the audience agreed that the Golden State has lost its luster.

Sometime last summer—around the time California's budget crisis led it to begin paying state workers in scrip—a meme took off in the media, that of California as a "failed state." Of course, it is nothing like the textbook definition of a failed state, a nation whose central government does not possess a monopoly on military force within its borders. But it was a humbling comedown for the Golden State to bear the stigma of the lowest credit rating in the nation, with a government virtually immobilized by its experiment with direct democracy, staggering under the incompatible demands of decades of citizen ballot initiatives.

The latest Intelligence Squared US debate at New York University focused on the proposition: "California Is the First Failed State." Arguing for the proposition were Andreas Kluth, the California correspondent for The Economist; Bobby Shriver, a Santa Monica city councilman, activist and brother-in-law of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger; and Sharon Waxman, journalist and founder of TheWrap.com. On the other side were former California Gov. Gray Davis, who lost his job in a recall referendum in 2003; Van Jones, a human-rights and environmental activist; and Lawrence O'Donnell Jr., a television writer and producer and MSNBC senior political analyst. The moderator was ABC correspondent John Donvan. Edited excerpts:

Kluth:

If a state can no longer address or solve the problems it faces, then it has failed. California easily meets that criterion. Prisons: California has the worst recidivism rate in the country. Water: it's an infrastructure and a climate issue but it's also a governance issue. Education: California built the best public university system in the country, which it is currently dismantling because it is now a failed state. Budgets: a state is supposed to have a budget, to pass it on time, and California never does. That started well before the recession. Our opponents may argue that as soon as there's a recovery these problems will recede. It's not true. Warren Buffett says it's only when the tide goes out that you learn who's swimming naked. Calfornia has been undressing since the 1970s…since the infamous Proposition 13. This is something called direct democracy that the founders of the nation were very afraid of. Twenty-four states have [citizen] initiatives. Only one does not allow its legislature to amend initiatives that its voters have passed, no matter how insane. In only one state do the inmates run the asylum.

Davis:

Let me acknowledge there are problems in Sacramento. But the shortcomings of our elected officials should not detract from the creative contributions of our 37 million citizens. Our [gross domestic product] is $1.9 trillion, the eighth largest in the world, larger than Russia, India, or Canada. With all of its problems it still managed to nurture some of the most innovative companies in the world: Google, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Cisco, Intel, Disney, eBay, and many others. California is all about change: it likes to get there first, and it frequently does. It was the first state to regulate greenhouse gases, to allow full-scale stem-cell research, to establish renewable energy portfolio standards. Our electricity growth has been nada, zero, over 30 years as we became the largest state in America.

Waxman:

Let's start with the area I know best, that I deal with every day, Hollywood, a symbol to the world of California's industry, creativity, prosperity, and the values of American culture. Here's the only problem with that. Hollywood's not in Hollywood anymore. It's gone to New Mexico, Arizona, New York, Vancouver, and London. Avatar, the movie breaking all box-office records, was filmed in New Zealand, and Twilight was filmed in Vancouver. Film production is down to half what it was in California in 1996.

One of my big observations about California, after having lived around the world for much of my adult life, is that there isn't a sense of connectedness, of community. In California we live largely in gated communities, we live in isolation. You can go to a place like Koreatown which has the largest ethnic community of Koreans outside Korea: 800,000 people. That community feels extremely Korean, connected to the country of their ancestors. I don't think they feel Californian. And I think that's true of many of the ethnic groups that have come to live in enclaves in California, and I see that as a failure of the state to create a sense of identity.

Jones:

What our [opponents] haven't told you is that every single one of the problems, structural and otherwise, they have pointed to, have solutions, and the solutions are on the way. We are the biggest state, we have some of the biggest problems and we also have the largest number of problem solvers. To say that California is a failed state is different from saying it has some failings.

Shriver:

I want to point out that the answers are on the way, they are not here now. In local government, where I serve, things are bad. In Santa Monica, our redevelopment agency had a budget this year of $30 million—the state took $22 million of that. How can you work on that basis?

There is no art education in the state in the public schools. We are the last among all the 50 states. We are below Guam in arts education.

In Los Angeles, we have the biggest homeless population in America, 80,000-plus people. In little old Santa Monica, a man burnt to death in a dumpster, a homeless man. And a senior official of the state said to me, Bob, why are you so hopped up about this homeless thing? I said, I'm afraid my mom, God rest her soul, is going to hear that a homeless guy burnt to death in a dumpster in my jurisdiction, and she would be enraged.

The L.A. County Jail is the largest mental-health facility in the world. If you went there you would be sickened. You can't have that many homeless people, you can't have that underfunding of education and say that the state has created a culture of political compassion.

O'Donnell:

As we sit here in the lower end of Manhattan, is it conceivable that a homeless person has died in gruesome circumstances in this ZIP code? Ever? Or, maybe, how often? The delicious irony of having this debate in this state. Today's New York Times has one in a seemingly endless editorial series called "The Failed State." It stars, as usual: Albany.

I worked with Sen. [Daniel Patrick] Moynihan. We discovered that New York sends more money to the federal government than it gets back, hence all of its budget problems. Well, the problem is much worse in California. California gets 79 cents back for every dollar it sends to the federal government. So the reason you don't have 40 other so-called failed states is that California tax money is paying for Alabama, it's paying to keep Alaska running, it's paying to keep Arkansas afloat.

There are 43 states that have cut their enacted budgets for 2009. Tomorrow's newspaper will reveal that the governor's latest idea—New York's governor—is the largest cut in school aid in more than two decades. And in searching for new areas of revenue, the brilliant idea that your governor in New York is proposing is to legalize Ultimate Fighting. Congratulations.

Donvan:

A question to the team that is arguing that California is the first failed state. You have been arguing primarily that this is a political failure, and the other team is listing successes in innovation, in technology, in the environment. Andreas [Kluth], what's wrong with that argument?

Kluth:

Let's take a larger period of history, a few hundred years. The most elegant leather shoes come from a town near Bologna in northern Italy. The best violins come from another town in northern Italy. It's been that way for hundreds of years. Would you make the case that in postwar Europe Italy was not a failed state within the European Union because they had a great shoe industry and a great violin industry?

Davis:

But the state is not an abstraction. It is the sum total of the energy and the innovation of 37 million people. It is an exciting place to live because when we have problems we say we're going to figure it out, we're going to do something different.

As in all Intelligence Squared US debates, the audience was polled twice, before and after the debate, and the side that swung the most votes to its side was declared the winner. Before the debate, 31 percent of the audience agreed that California was the first failed state, 25 percent disagreed, and 44 percent was undecided. At the end, the vote was 58 percent agreeing, 37 percent disagreeing, and 5 percent undecided.

© 2010

Q.1 Every country have their own problems and try to find solutions. What kind of problems the big cities in Korea and Japan such as Seoul, Tokyo, Pusan or Kyoto have?

Q.2 What was your impression of California? After reading the article, how do you think about California? Did you change your mind?

[★Julie★규연★]

지난주에 남은 기사 하나랑 두개 더 올렸습니다.
저의 또 하나의 취약점인 작문....아..ㅠ.ㅠ 질문 만드는게 이렇게 어려울 줄이야..ㅠ.ㅠ 문법적으로 이상한 부분도 있는데요..ㅠ.ㅠ 지적 부탁바람- 눈물이 멈추질 않아요..ㅠ.ㅠ 흑흑 =ㅁ=

[이정원(LeeSan)]

굿잡! 딸내미 미술학원 바레다 주고 오는데 자전거 체인이 자꾸 빠지네 이거. 버리고 새로 하나 사야 할때 인가 보네. 아티클 오다상 한테 보내주고 자전거 사러 나가야 겠다.

[서선영]

자상한 아빨세~오늘 그럼 새자전거 사시는 거여요? 벌써 샀남?

[서선영]

수고 하셨네요. ^^ 그게 작문은 누구에게나 다 어려워요...넘 자책마셔요~

[Silver(종은)]

착한 줄리. 잘 볼께. 늘 한결같길. 바라는 꿈도 머지 않았으니 간바레. 되면 남편도 가끔 델구 나오고.