South Korea has had enough of being called an emerging market

In the 1960s South Korea was a poor, backward country recovering from a devastating war. Now it is the 12th-largest economy in the world. Its 52m people earn an average of $35,000 a year, nearly as much as Italians and way more than Iberians. Its stockmarket is the 16th-biggest globally, with a capitalisation of $1.8trn, and the seventh-busiest by daily traded volumes. The IMF has deemed South Korea an advanced economy since 1997. Anyone still describing it as an emerging market might therefore appear to have been asleep for the past half-century.