Considering Korea

Reading William Pesek's Bloomberg column -- How to Get Buffetts of the World Excited About Korea -- reminded me of something I read years ago in Grant's Interest Rate Observer. (Or at least that where I think I read it.)

Talking about the abundance of red tape and lack of shareholder rights on the Korean peninsula, Grant's quoted an investor saying something like: "The communists are in the South, the people in the North are like mental patients who refuse to take their medication."

I'm sure things are better than a decade ago -- and they'd better improve more still if Seoul is to rival Singapore or Hong Kong as a regional financial hub.

I've owned exactly two Korea-specific investments in my life. One is Korea Electric Power (KEP), which I still hold partially. The other Korean-specific investment was a closed-end fund I brilliantly bought just in time for the Asian crisis in the 1990s. I eventually did okay. But, man, it was one heck of a wild roller coaster ride with a steep drop on the way to profitability.