Muscle Power

The Middle East, for centuries a crossroads for warring peoples from East and West, is now being invaded by jobseekers from around the world eager--for a fee--to help newly rich nations with their development programs. But by far the most unusual newcomers are the growing numbers of South Korean contractors, who bring with them legions of disciplined workers from their homeland. Although scores of countries are cashing in on the Arab world's desperate need for labor, the Koreans have come farther and profited faster than most in the push to modernize the oil-rich sheikdoms. In 1973 South Korea earned $24 million in the Middle East. The score a mere two years later: $770 million. So far this year South Korean entrepreneurs have pocketed contracts worth $1.5 billion, including one for the construction of a $944 million industrial harbor at Jubail in Saudi Arabia.

South Korean President Park Chung Hee provides government financing and tax breaks to encourage South Korean salesmen trying to win business in the Middle East, but it is the availability and quality of Korean labor that is enabling the South Koreans to win out. Labor recruitment is the big headache in most contract negotiations throughout the area. But manpower is an abundant and exportable Korean resource. In Iran, where South Korean contracts have zoomed from zero in 1974 to $72.6 million in 1976, a thousand Koreans work as long-haul truck drivers. The 1,200 Koreans building a 100-mile stretch of highway in Saudi Arabia work ten hours a day, 28 days a month for $1,100 (five times their pay back home) and fly to Cairo every two months for three riotous days of rest and relaxation.

Little Brain. Korean technical know-how is in demand too; Seoul Architect S.G. Kim, for example, is designing a 4,200-unit apartment house in Tehran for a fee of $1 million. But Americans and Europeans are better at providing technical services, admits Seoul Businessman Chongwhan Choi, and on the whole, he says, he and his compatriots are content "doing jobs that require a lot of muscle power but little brain." To meet the construction deadline for the Jubail harbor, for example, Hyundai Co. is flying in 300 workers a week for an eventual total of 3,300, and Korean Air Lines has begun twice-weekly flights direct from Seoul to Bahrain. Business leaders expect the volume of contracts for this year to top $2 billion and to reach $10 billion by 1981.

South Korea's growing but still fragile economy needs the foreign exchange and bargaining clout that the contracts bring. Totally dependent on imported oil and relying heavily on trade with Japan, South Korea's 35 million people suffered badly from the 1973 Arab oil embargo. The slackening pace of Japan's economic growth also contributed to a South Korean trade deficit of $2.4 billion in 1974. But largely as a result of what Businessman Choi calls the kiri-komi (swashbuckling assault) on the Middle East, South Korea's trade deficit for the first quarter of 1976 is down to only $100 million, and the prospects look bright for still more improvement: Saudi Arabia alone will need a million foreign workers for its fiveyear, $60 billion development plan.

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