South Korea is a great example of having economic freedom. They can easily be compared to their neighbor North Korea who has almost no economic freedom. 60 years ago Korea was one country and now that we have two Koreas we can see how powerful it can be to have economic freedom. Many people do not know that before the split that the north side of Korea was the rich part of Korea. So this gap happened very quickly.
Digital Currency = Economic Freedom
So why does having economic freedom allow countries to strive? The answer is simple. Economic freedom leads to higher income for all, higher life expectancy, higher education, and an overall higher standard of living.
Digital Currency has already brought a lot of economic freedom into the world. It is a new technology that is not fully being embraced by the Korean government. However, if they do they will be able to give even more economic freedom to the people.
Digital currencies like Bitcoin, Etereum, etc will make it easier to start a business, enforce property rights, promote trade outside of the country, and gives power to the Korean citizens to have an alternative to the current corrupt systems.
What is the Korean Government Afraid of?
However, there is a reality we need to face. There are people and financial institutions that do not want to lose control of money. Also, governments could be scared of their role in all this. As blockchain technologies develop, people will rely less and less on a middleman. The government is the biggest middleman of them all. The Korean government is the perfect example. They do not want to lose control of their citizens.
However, Korea needs to understand that a digital currency like Bitcoin is a worldwide distributed network. This means that there is no single place the government can go to, there is no CEO of Bitcoin that they can arrest, and most importantly there is no server that they can unplug. There is nothing the Korean government can do to stop it. They banned ICOs in Korea and limited digital currency exchanges in Korea. This just limits Korea’s economic freedom compared to the rest of the world. The lessons learned in the past by Korea should hopefully lead them in the right direction when it comes to this new and innovative technology.
