[In depth interview]Separating aid from economic goals

Shin Jang-bum

President Lee Myung-bak has promised to dramatically increase aid for poor countries, but Shin Jang-bum, the president of the Korea International Cooperation Agency, says the country has a long way to go before it will be considered a generous and sophisticated aid donor by the international community.
Founded in 1991, Koica is a government agency charged with implementing the country’s grant aid and other overseas development assistance programs. Its work includes organizing training opportunities for technocrats from developing countries, sending experts in various fields and volunteers to those countries, supporting nongovernmental organizations and providing emergency aid.
Shin, a former diplomat, has been leading the agency since 2005. In an interview with the JoongAng Daily he said well-intentioned and well-planned spending on aid can create a favorable image of Korea in the international community.
ODA, or official development assistance, is a general term that covers contributions by a developed country to multilateral organizations such as the Asian Development Bank, as well as direct bilateral assistance to promote the development of less-developed countries.

Q. What does the Korean government’s recently announced plan to dramatically expand its official development assistance, or ODA, mean to the work of Koica?
A. President Lee, in his inaugural speech, officially declared to the whole world that we will expand our international development aid, so this no longer is just a campaign promise. In the long term, I think the total [yearly] volume of our ODA should be at least $3.5 billion by the time the current administration ends, from the currently planned 1.9 trillion won ($2 billion) for this year. But that is still far short of the United Nations-recommended 0.7 percent of the gross national income or the average among leading member states of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, so one cannot say it is a surprising jump. [Korea’s ODA was about 0.05 percent of GNI in 2006; average aid by leading OECD members is 0.3 percent of GNI.]

Much of the Korean ODA to developing countries is in the form of loans, not grant aid, that carry no payback obligations.
Providing free grants instead of loans is a worldwide trend by leading ODA donors, like many European countries and Japan. Korea offers a lot of aid in the form of technological transfers, training and sharing our own development experience with developing countries. That kind of assistance can hardly be made in the form of loans. Offering grants instead of a mere debt write-off is also in line with the United Nations’ Millennium Developmental Goals and is a more efficient way for us to help developing countries.
Also, though we are a member of OECD, we have not yet joined the Development Assistance Committee, a group of advanced countries that donates major amounts of international aid. Joining the group will help gain international recognition of our work and help us coordinate activities and policies with other major donors, which is critical in this day and age. For instance, countries like China that give away aid with little coordination with the international community are likely to get suspicious eyes from other international donors. And in order for us to join the DAC, we need to offer more grants and address our intent to join efforts for poverty reduction.

Tell us what you think ideal ODA policies should look like and what you think are the major benefits when we give more foreign aid. For instance, many government agencies here seem to view ODA as a major tool to curry favor from governments of developing countries to take part in mining exploration and secure energy resources.
There are only three things we have to keep in mind when it comes to ODA policies. First, we need to build up the size of our aid. Second, we have to provide grant aid instead of loans, which is a worldwide trend among major donor states. Third, we have to view ODA as part of foreign policy, not a part of international economic policies.
I see many government officials who view ODA as simply international loans or a part of economic policies with an ulterior motive to reap benefits, like energy resources, from the beneficiary countries in the future. Such an idea is neither right nor mature. We need to take a more mature stance about offering aid. What does this mean? It means we have to be more humble, reserved and quiet when giving to other countries.
It is no secret that one of the very fundamental purposes of giving ODA is for the benefit of our own country. But still, bragging about our donations and officially indicating that we do it for our own benefit is not sophisticated behavior. It will only cause emotional rejection from the beneficiary countries. No matter how much in grants we give away, it will be to no avail if the beneficiary countries emotionally reject it.
Political scientist Joseph Nye has coined a term, “soft power,” which is a country’s ability to indirectly influence behaviors and interests of other countries through non-military and non-economic tools, for instance through culture and values. In a way, ODA is one of the ways to achieve such soft power, by making other developing countries have good feelings about Korea. So ODA that fails to garner such emotion from a beneficiary country is not truly successful ODA, no matter how much money we give away.

What are the greatest assets Korea has to offer when providing aid to other countries?
It is our own development experience, which many currently developing countries can follow. Other advanced countries that are major ODA donors are way far ahead of poor countries, while our position is relatively closer to the developing nations, not to mention that we have so much in common. I, myself, was one of the kids back in the 1950s who followed around U.S. soldiers, asking for candy. So Korea is the first country that turned from a foreign aid beneficiary to a donor and our own experience over the past decades can be our most outstanding asset in helping the developing countries.
But again, it would be unseemly to brag about our “success story” to developing countries, so I never use the term when meeting my peers from developing countries. It is better for us to show the world we just intend to “share our experiences of successes and even bitter failures.” Our own failures can also be used as good learning experiences for developing countries.

How would you evaluate our current ODA and what are Koica’s future plans?
Frankly, our ODA contributions have been so pitifully small there is little to evaluate. Of our meager ODA contributions of less than $124 million until 2003, even that amount was totally scattered among 130 countries, which I found grossly inefficient. So I decided to focus on 50 particularly poor countries with an annual per capita income of less than $3,000.
Also, currently we have about 1,500 volunteers working in 32 countries. But we will increase the number of workers in the field up to an average of more than 2,000 within five years. Then that is quite a big number that would make Korea one of the top five sources of volunteer workers worldwide.

By Jung Ha-won Staff Reporter [hawon@joongang.co.kr]