South Korea, home to Samsung, LG, Pantech, and many other firms, is facing the same sort of problems that other developed nations are currently experiencing. Namely, the country is getting old as people are having less and less children.

According to The Korea Times, President Park Geun-hye created the National Economic Advisory Council, which is made up of 30 “economic scholars and experts”, to tackle the nation’s issues. Today she gave a talk to the council, pleading them to make a plan to make sure Korea’s future is secure.

Here’s one quote that immediately stood out:

“To overcome the challenges and achieve an employment rate of 70 percent, I ask you to help transform our economy from a follower to a trendsetter.”

Samsung is often called a “fast follower”, meaning they see an innovation that was done by another company and then quickly shove it into one of their own products. Park wants Korea to shed this image, and to be seen as a country that has some genuine innovation.

Honestly, I think Samsung doesn’t get enough credit for what they do. Scientists have to work tirelessly to create new display technologies, invent new forms of memory chips (both storage and DRAM), and so on and so forth. Now granted, where Samsung, and other Korean companies, stumble is software and services.

Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Facebook, Google, Amazon, these are all American companies and innovations. Europe has Skype (Estonia), and little else comes to mind. Korea obviously wants to earn some respect for themselves. Will they with their new OS, Tizen?

I highly doubt that, but I’ll keep an open mind.