South Korea was unknown 5 decades ago. If it was known, it was for a bad reason. It was in hard core poverty and extreme backward. Nothing shining about South Korea then. Nothing that a South Korean can be proud of.

To cut the story short, it produced a good and far-reaching and impactful series of drama known as Winter Sonata which was filmed at beautiful Nami island. It was later supplied to many neighbouring countries. Malaysian caught the Korean drama bug too.

From that moment, Korea was known for her supply of good production of drama. It managed to create the supply to the international market before it produces and sold cars and introduced their mobile giant, Samsung. South Korea learnt the hard way the law of demand and supply. A great nation must create supply production line.

Got hit badly in Asian currency crisis in 1997, South Korean went few notches down. New 'poverty' reemerged. Many assets were sold to foreigners. This time, they knew how to go over it. They had only one option. What was that? Research and development (R&D) on new technology. By the way R&D does not mean 'rest and die'. R&D is not the place to rest, enjoy and time wasting as many people understand and do, unfortunately.

Samsung and many other great brands were the direct products of R&D. Samsung started as the noodle shop and it grew big and diversify. They put the whole trust and money they have on R&D.

It doesnt matter what you do or plan to do to develop a country, you just need to invest in R&D....to have better genome to have better crop for CPO and cereals....better electricity energy generation for cheaper cost and environmentally sustainable...better raw water catchment and treatment...better curriculum at higher learning institutions.

Written while I was on board a bus on our way to the hotel for check in, Seoul, South Korea.

MDB