Korea’s development assistance approach focused on loans is wrong-headed and, instead, it should extend grants to poor countries, a former top official of the Korea International Cooperation Agency said.

Song In-yeup, who has been a top KOICA official and a country-level representative in eight poor nations around the world, said Korea’s current emphasis on loans over grants both tarnishes Korea’s image abroad and, worst of all, does little to pull countries out of poverty.

Song is experienced in overseas development assistance and made development policy the core of his 20-year career in KOICA. He helped guide Korea as it first became a donor country when KOICA was established in 1991 within the purvey of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the same year Korea became a member of the United Nations.

“Korea should change its policy. Loans are too much of a burden for poor countries. Plus, we cannot guarantee they can even repay the loans. So, we must stop the loan policy and instead pursue a grant policy in ODA,” Song said in an interview with The Korea Herald on Tuesday. 

“Even if we maintain the loan policy we can’t really expect repayment, because they are too poor. On top of that, we will have to pressure the countries to collect the repayments. This creates a sour impression of Korea among poor developing countries,” he said.

With little more than two decades of experience, Korea is a newcomer in development aid. It is the only former aid recipient to become a donor nation, and Korea also stands out as one of just two East Asian nations on the ultra-exclusive Development Assistance Committee, the arm of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development that coordinates wealthy nations’ ODA policies. Korea was welcomed into the DAC on Nov. 25, 2009.

The government will commemorate its third anniversary as a DAC member this coming Sunday.

Low interest rates on development assistance loans at about 0.1 percent make collecting on them not worth the trouble. Collecting on such loans merely casts Korea in a light of a miserly and selfish nation more concerned with profiting a penny and on the backs of the neediest of nations, like Haiti and Ethiopia, according to Song.

And Song appears as perhaps the least likely diplomat; he resembles a religious zealot more than a Foreign Service officer. He sports an unkempt, bushy white beard and a sharp fire in his eye.

The 58-year-old career KOICA official completed recent postings in such hot spots as Ethiopia and Iraq. He insisted Korea escaped the cycle of poverty that has confounded development experts in other countries on the basis of Korea’s “Sae Maul Undong,” or New Village Movement philosophy, and he is just as convinced Korea can teach the developing world how to follow Korea’s example and escape poverty once and for all.

“Every country, including the eight countries I worked in, has the ‘sae maeul’ spirit,” said Song, with the conviction of an acolyte. “A little bit of that spirit exists in every person anywhere in the world ― all of the countries have that potential, but the leaders should ignite this potential in the minds of their people.”

Song returned to Seoul for a three-week break on Nov. 5 from Isabela Province in the Philippines, where he leads KOICA as a contracted general manager overseeing the Basa dam project, a $22 million flood abatement and farm irrigation plan and one of KOICA’s three largest. He returns to that remote rural area in the Philippines on Nov. 24.

KOICA extends overseas development assistance to 125 countries around the world with country-level offices in 44 of them. Until recently, more than half its budget was focused on Asia. KOICA is now increasing its attention on Latin America and the Caribbean.

Song was the official who opened KOICA’s 44th country office in Haiti immediately following a devastating earthquake that struck the poor island nation in 2010.

He said he brought a tough-love message of self-reliance, diligence and Korea’s signature “can-do spirit” to Haiti, and wherever he went.

Over a bowl of chicken soup on a crisp autumn day in a cramped and crowded restaurant in downtown Seoul, Song spoke in loud, staccato sentences and with a burning passion for development issues, brimming with ideas on how poor nations can develop their economies and escape poverty.

Song said that at about 0.12 percent of GDP ― about $1.5 billion ― Korean ODA is relatively small compared to the United States, Britain, France or even Japan. The OECD average is 0.35 percent. Korea pledged during a 2008 DAC meeting to increase its ODA to 0.25 percent by 2015, doubling its 2012 ODA over the next three years.

“You know Korea was the poorest country in the world in the 1950s,” he said. “How did we achieve so much? We started with a mental revolution. We changed our thinking first.”

“The people should be diligent and self-reliant, and be ignited with determination. They should value cooperation. This is the spirit of the Sae Maul Movement,” he said.

“Money is not the most important thing; it’s maybe the last thing. Mental attitude must be first. Diligence and determination will transform you. It will transform your country. With diligence you can be another Korea. Inspiration is most important: the mental revolution.”

By Philip lglauer (ephilip2011@heraldcorp.com)