P^3; Poldermodel or Pali Pali?!

One of the most conspicuous characteristic which distinct the Netherlands from Korea is SPEED. Korea has developed rapidly during the last couple of decades, and used to be known as one of the Asian tigers. Even the last 10 years, after the Asian Crisis (in Korea they name it the IMF crisis) in 1997 Korea managed to recover rapidly from this impactful financial crisis. One of the biggest Korean conglomerates Samsung managed to develop so rapidly and this company is currently competing on global scale with world brands as Sony and Philips which developed more incrementally. So did the Dutch Poldermodel, it just evolved over time and rapid change was not involved. The Poldermodel is the Dutch version of consensus policy in economics, and could also be described as consensus decision-making.

The Poldermodel is definitely a great achievement where the most densely populated European country must be proud of. Aligning different opinions and policies in consensus policy used to be the key to a livable society, especially in one which is so crowded. It is one of the secrets of growing prosperity of a relatively huge population on an incredibly small piece of the earth. In Korea Pali-Pali policy drove economic growth and that deserves credits as well, hence the fast paced development of (Korean) technology and the Korean economy over the last decades. Pali-Pali means something like Fast-Fast or Speed-Speed. And fast are they here in Korea!

Koreans are managing to organize everything fast. On the KAIST campus they are able to build a Burger King in two weeks (!). On a similar campus in the Netherlands it would have taken months. Eating lunch and dinner is also done incredibly fast, as a westerner you should not talk too much during the meal, even without talking it is hard to catch up with Koreans. Transport is fast as well, the KTX (high-speed train) managed to get over 300km an hour and that only for domestic transport (Korean landmass is only 2 times the Netherlands). To cut long stories short, everything in Korea is fast!

Poldermodel requires a lot of talks and consumes a lot of time. Pali-Pali policy does not need that much talk and the term of CONSENSUS is unprecedented (ongekend) terminology in Pali-Pali. Personally I think that the Dutch bureaucracy and the Dutch Poldermodel is a bit to extravagant (te ver doorgeschoten) and the Korean Pali-Pali policy contains to less democracy. Why not combining the best of the two worlds?