Sagong Il, economic aide for ex-President Chun Doo-hwan

Sagong Il, economic aide for ex-President Chun Doo-hwan. January. 04, 2017 07:10. by Young-Hae Choi yhchoi65@donga.com.

Former President Chun Doo-hwan said in the New Year’s meeting, “I hope an economic expert like Sagong Il can be a president. I don’t know well about the economy, but Sagong Il helped me so much and I could not even make a mistake.” And he said straightforwardly about President Park, “She does not know the economy at all.” His comment has a lot of implications given that the occasion was to making good wishes for each other on the first day of a new year.

When he served as vice president of the Korea Development Institute, Sagong Il had a discussion with famous scholars such as Paul Samuelson on KBS, the public network television. Chun who watched the program carefully decided to pick him as his economic aid because he liked Sagong’s fluent English. Sagong was a person who achieved all three goals – growth, inflation and trade balance – while serving as a presidential economic aid in 1983 through 1987. In the run-up to the presidential election, it is interesting to see that former president named Sagong, who is now leading the Institute of Global Management, and nobody thinks as a presidential candidate, as a good presidential material.

In fact, Chun had an economic president. He is Kim Jae-ik who died in the Rangoon bombing in Oct. 1983. Chun, who gained power in a coup in 1980, was concerned about economy, not politics or society. It was fortunate for him to have an aid like Kim, a former economic planning director of the finance ministry, when the country was reeling from the second oil shock in 1979. Chun famously told Kim, “No need to say more. You are the president for the economy.” Officials talk about this even now. After he became an economic aide, the government-led economic policy under former President Park Chung-hee turned into a market-driven policy, helping the country flourish more than ever since the foundation of this country.

Had Kim been alive, Chun would have mentioned him first as a presidential candidate for the economy. Kim and Sagong who laid the foundation of Korea’s rapid growth cannot be compared with Ahn Jong-beom who ran money errands for President Park and large companies. When it comes to the economy, President Park Geun-hye cannot say anything to Chun’s comment. What if an economic expert such as Sagong runs for this presidential election?