Speeches and Transcripts
Taking the U.S.-Korea Economic Relationship To a New Level
Remarks Before American Chamber of Commerce in Korea
October 10, 2008
Thank you very much, Dave, for that kind introduction.
I’m delighted to be here in Seoul, and I’m especially delighted to be here for my first meeting with the General Membership of the American Chamber of Commerce. This is my first speech in English since arriving here on Sept. 23. The good news is I am going to be speaking in English. The bad news is I have a lot to say. It is my first speech, really, to try to talk about some of the issues since I presented my credentials to President Lee on Monday.
During my time in Washington, especially over the past three years, as Dave mentioned, I was working on issues related to U.S.-Korea and U.S.-Asian affairs. One of my great pleasures was getting to know American Chambers of Commerce throughout the Asia-Pacific region as I traveled, and several delegations, including this one, came to Washington. Now that I have the privilege of being the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea, I can say out loud what I thought all along: This American Chamber of Commerce – our AmCham - is the strongest, most effective AmCham in the region. Huge kudos to your wonderful, wonderful leadership. I can also tell you that I am not alone in that assessment. Policymakers in Washington view this AmCham as the standard against which other AmChams’ performances should be measured.
It really is a huge pleasure for me, as U.S. Ambassador, to serve as Honorary Chairman of AmCham, and to work with so many distinguished business representatives, including some I’ve known for many years, who are committed to a closer U.S.-Korea relationship. I look forward to getting to know many more of you in the days and months ahead.
It’s particularly timely for us to meet today, at the end of a week – I’m glad it’s Friday too. It’s another week in which the state of the economy – the U.S. economy, the world economy, the Korean economy - has been breaking news every day. I was traveling outside of Seoul for much of this week. I thought I’d left all the press on a mountain in Chungcheongnam-do yesterday but they showed up here again today. Every time I looked at a newspaper or turned on the television, the news led off as we all know with several stories about different aspects of the financial upheaval the global economy is currently experiencing.
Obviously there’s a lot going on. What began as a downturn in the U.S. real estate market is having an impact on mortgage assets, on confidence in the soundness of the financial institutions holding those assets, and more broadly on liquidity, and on access to the credit on which our modern economies depend. I don’t think I have to tell this audience, but I’ll say it anyway - the credit market freeze is being felt in different ways around the world, including here in Korea.
Clearly addressing these four key challenges – confidence, capital, systemic risk and liquidity – is going to take time. But I think we all know that the United States remains a strong and wealthy nation, with the resources to address the needs we face. The bipartisan Emergency Economic Stabilization Act that was passed by Congress and signed into law last week gives the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve and the FDIC important new tools to address this situation – to acquire financial assets, to make capital available, and to strengthen the balance sheet of individual institutions.
The challenges we see are not just in the United States, of course, but around the globe – in Europe, in Hong Kong, and of course here in Korea. There is strong and active coordination among leading central banks in providing liquidity to the markets and stabilizing financial markets. This turmoil will not end quickly. Significant challenges remain ahead, but we have taken the bold steps that will enable us to deal with this situation, and we are in close contact with our international partners, including here in Korea, to ensure an effective, coordinated response.
I think the authorities here in Korea also understand what factors are driving the turmoil here. We had a good discussion around the table just now about it, and I think authorities here are also working hard to take steps quickly, cutting interest rates, injecting liquidity, that will reassure the public and calm the financial markets. We’ll all be watching this global situation closely in the days and weeks ahead. That’s why today in particular I was very glad to sit with such an excellent round table of experts to help me think these things through as well as we look forward.
But I thought today what I could do most usefully is share with you some perspectives on the relationship between the United States and Korea, some of the perspectives that I bring to this job, and some of my goals as U.S. Ambassador. Again, it’s kind of a lengthy list, so I may jump around a little bit. I want to take this chance to put it all out there on the table.
As Dave mentioned, until last year when I began preparing for this new job, I worked at the State Department’s East Asia and Pacific Affairs Bureau, along with Chris Hill, who was here as an economic officer in the 1980s while I was a political officer, and that’s where we first met. My portfolio starting in 2005 was as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and I assumed it after some years working in post-Cold War Europe.
Now, as I returned to this part of the world after, in a sense, an absence of a decade or so, I was reminded every day of what this audience knows so well: East Asia is the most dynamic region in the world, and is of vital and increasing importance to U.S. strategic and economic interests, with our five treaty allies in the region – including the Republic of Korea; our trillion dollars in two-way trade with Asia each year; and the need to manage some of the world’s most sensitive flashpoints, including here on the Korean Peninsula.
You know, East Asia is sometimes crowded off the front pages of the U.S. newspapers. These days it’s the economic news and the election news but in terms of foreign policy obviously there’s always a lot of news from the Middle East. I do want to say that from my experience over the last several years in Washington, it is well and increasingly understood that there is nothing more important in American foreign policy than getting U.S.-Asian relations right. And getting Asia right means getting Korea right.
Dave mentioned that my own experience in Korea goes back quite a ways – back to 1975, when I came here to work in the province of Chungcheongnam-do teaching at Yesan Middle School and then returning in the 1980s at a time of great political change. As I mentioned, with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, I ended up working on issues like Yugoslavia at various stages of its violent fragmentation, and Northern Ireland. I mention these because these were areas where the problems often seemed to get worse rather than better and where quick solutions were nowhere to be found. I went to those issues inspired by my experience in Korea in the 1970s and 80s. We Americans think of ourselves as can-do people, but I think the Koreans match us and exceed our can-do spirit in so many ways. I learned that while I was here in Korea. As I learned that on the ground here, as I had the good fortune to watch these very decisive moments in Korea’s own economic and democratic transformation, it really was a great help to me as I went to work on other issues, in other parts of the world.
Now I hope I bring back to Korea some of that experience in other parts of the world, as well as my earlier, now somewhat dated, experiences in Korea. To this new challenge that our two presidents have given us, to make real the vision a 21st century strategic alliance between our two countries.
This has been a fairly emotional and very heartwarming experience for me to come back. I was, as I mentioned, in Chungcheongnam-do earlier this week. There are lots of changes there – not only in Seoul – and I’m still processing all those changes. Both in the countryside and here in Seoul, I’m really struck by the extent to which the transformations that were begun during my earlier time here have really been realized now. Most places change over time, but all of us who know Korea know that the pace of change here can be breathtaking.
The most obvious changes of course are economic. I don’t need to belabor these but I would say that when I first arrived in 1975 – I know some people in this room weren’t born then - here in the Republic of Korea, it is important to remember that per-capita figures, which are very unreliable especially when you try to compare North and South, were more or less on a par with per capita incomes in North Korea. It really is so hard to imagine today that for the first couple of decades after the Korean War, the average South Korean was not as well-fed and prosperous as his North Korean counterpart by many standards.
When I lived in Chungcheongnam-do my former students, some of whom I saw yesterday -- and some of them have grey hair now themselves, at that time they were crowded 70 to a classroom. I come from Arizona, and one of my memories I have to say, in addition to the beautiful autumn in Chungcheongnam-do and in Korea, was being very cold at times. One of my students was reminding me that there was this little stove with soft coal or wood in the back of our classrooms filled with 70 students. It never seemed to be heated, but the rule was you could only light the stove on when the temperature went below three degrees Celsius. I never remember seeing it lit. My former student also told me a secret, after these 33 years, that sometimes students would take parts of the old desks and break them up so they could light the stove. But they never told the teachers. Restaurants at that time did not serve white rice twice a week - some people will remember this, the old timers – in order to conserve rice. We had kind of a barley mixture which was actually quite delicious but not so appreciated by my Korean colleagues, I found.
Of course when I arrived in the mid-1970’s, Korea was just getting started on its ambitious push into steelmaking and shipbuilding and electronics. I read a recent interview with the POSCO founder, Park Tae Joon. Some of you may have heard this story, I thought he told it so well, he’s now in his 80s. He recounted being turned down by the World Bank for a loan in the 1960s to start the steelmaking industry in Korea. It was turned down because almost all of the “experts” thought at the time that maybe the push into heavy industry and technology was not the best path forward for a very poor country with a limited technology base. But of course, he got the funding from elsewhere, not from the World Bank, and started what became POSCO. He recounted that about 20 years later in the 1980s at a conference in London he met the World Bank official who had turned down that initial loan in the 1960s, so he sort of said – although I’m sure he’s too polite a man – “what do you think now?” The World Bank official said, with typical World Bank confidence, “Well, I made the right decision in the 1960s, and I would make the right decision now, given those same facts that were presented in the application.” But the official added, “There was one fact that was not in your application, and that was you, Mr. Park, and by extension, the human capital that was brought to this.” That of course is what all of us who were fortunate enough to be in Korea during those years saw, and maybe even more than the experts, because we knew first hand the Koreans’ drive and determination. Maybe we were a little bit more optimistic about where Korea might go. But still, as I came back in the 1980s and saw Korea post year after year eight percent and above growth, as Korean producers began to muscle into markets dominated by the advanced economies, it was becoming clear even then that Korea was forcing some of the development experts to reconsider some of their assumptions.
I remember also in the past listening to Koreans consistently benchmarking their economy against that of Japan’s. At that time, again I’m talking 20 years ago now or more, if you had said, “In a few short decades, Samsung will have a bigger market capitalization than Sony, Korean cell phones and semiconductors will outpace Japanese products on global markets, and the Hyundai/Kia Automotive Group will be bigger than any Japanese carmaker except Toyota” – well, even I wouldn’t have been able to believe that. It really has been extraordinary.
And of course, the real benefit of this development has been the improvement in people’s day to day lives. I could tell you so many anecdotes about it, and I will, if you give me time, but I actually have one thing that was given to me yesterday by my former co-teacher at Yesan who still teaches English in Chungcheongnam-do near Daejeon. I saw her a couple of weeks ago when I first got back to Seoul. She knew I was going to come down and visit Yesan, and I said, “You know, it would be very interesting to know what through your eyes do you see as the changes in being a teacher in Chungcheongnam-do between 1975 and now?” Yesterday, last night, she gave me a chart, and the title is, “Welcome Back to Korea.” She has a comparison of items past and present, and so I’m just going to read you a couple of them, they’re really great: “The number of students in a classroom: past – 70, present – 30. Air conditioning: past – none, present – yes. Locker: past – none, present – yes. And it goes on… internet… Top world products: past – none, present – 86. Cars: past – 820,000, present – 17 million.” That was her list. I’m sure we all have lists.
The other transformation that I’ve witnessed that has been equally profound, of course, is the democratization of Korean political life, of Korean life. Just within the past year, Korea had a Presidential election and a legislative election. I know everyone takes it for granted now, but they were both were fair elections that led to the peaceful transfer of power between political parties – the first time the progressive political parties had lost the majority in modern Korea and the conservatives had returned to office. It really completed the first full rotation of political power in modern Korea. I think back to the years when I covered the political scene in Korea in the 1980s, the many Koreans who risked much to establish democratic institutions and strengthen human rights here in Korea. I have to salute them – I salute all Koreans who have made this such an extraordinary, extraordinary democracy.
Of course, I’ve also reflected, as I look at these transformations, on the role the United States has played over the past decades. All of these historical accomplishments of course reflect the choices that Koreans made, the risks they took, the sacrifices they made, the opportunities they seized. As I’ve met Koreans during my admittedly still brief less than three weeks in Korea, I have been struck by the number of Koreans, young and old, who have told me they appreciate the support and commitment of the United States throughout these years. They might not always agree with what we’ve done in every particular instant, but they really appreciate the commitment and have expressed to me their hope for even better relations as we go forward.
U.S. support for Korea has taken many forms - the sacrifices of more than 35,000 Americans who lost their lives in the Korean War, the contributions of hundreds of thousands of other U.S. service members who have served here since, the economic assistance we provided here to help Korea re-start its economy after the war and to build it. Since 1949, we had a huge economic program in the Republic of Korea, especially in the 1950s and 60s, worth I am told about 30 billion dollars, just the economic assistance alone, in today’s dollars. What a great investment. You don’t have to be a businessman to think that was a great investment.
The U.S. also consistently remained committed to providing open markets for Korean products as the Korean economy grew, making the U.S. Korea’s most important export market until recently, but it’s still pretty important now.
So these are the perspectives I bring to this job. Firsthand experience of having witnessed Korea’s great economic and democratic transformations. A sense of pride – with humility, but pride too – that the U.S. has played a part in supporting this extraordinary story.
I’m going to get to the heart of the speech here in a minute, because Secretary Rice and President Bush did not send me to Korea to be a custodian of historical memories. I know that for the half of the Korean population that reached adulthood since the early 1990s – median age I’m told in Korea now is 37, which means born in 1972, three years before I got here – so lots of these people do not remember a Korea – this is a wonderful thing - that is not democratic, or prosperous. They have a lot of other concerns on their mind, and we all do. The challenge for as complex and wide-ranging a relationship as that between the United States and Korea is to adjust and update the bilateral partnership so that it fully and accurately reflects the concerns and aspirations of our two peoples today, the realities of our two countries – and the world – today. There are a lot of areas where we can take the U.S.-Korea relationship to a new level. That’s why I think it’s such a privilege and such a responsibility to take the job I now have at this time. I’m going to just reel off a couple areas where I’m going to be concentrating my efforts and those of our Embassy here.
I would start, because it is the traditional foundation of our relationship, with the U.S.-Korea security alliance. Much has changed, but of course there is one Korean transformation that remains sadly incomplete – the establishment of a real normalcy on the Korean peninsula, a lasting peace that reflects the aspirations of the Korean people. Helping to ensure the security of the Republic of Korea – our ally – remains at the core of our bilateral relationship.
But even as deterring aggression from the North remains a principal priority of our alliance, we are updating our alliance to reflect the challenges we face today. The work underway in Pyongtaek for a replacement for the Yongsan Army Garrison, the project to consolidate all U.S. troops here in Korea in a smaller number of hub bases south of the Han River. The agreement is there, but there is a lot of hard work to make it reality, and it’s a very high priority for us.
Transitioning our command relations, beginning in 2012, a sensible and timely step that I think reflects rightly Korea’s military strength and its stature.
I want to particularly mention that both Houses of Congress having passed legislation – this is what we were talking about with Bill just a moment ago - upgrading Korea’s Foreign Military Sales status to that of other key allies. This is an overdue, in my view, recognition of the robust relationship U.S. defense suppliers have developed with the Korean armed forces. We’re looking forward to the President signing that if he hasn’t already. I find that everyone at my table is more up-to-date on the news than I was.
Next week (Friday, October 17), our two defense ministers, Secretary Gates and Defense Minister Lee Sang-hee, will be meeting for their annual Security Consultative Meeting (or SCM) in Washington, to discuss further ways to strengthen the US-ROK Alliance.
Another area where we have deepened our alliance cooperation is our efforts, in the context of the Six Party Process. We could talk all afternoon about that. The full implementation of the Joint Statement of Principles agreed to in September 2005 is the core of our approach. I was in New York, actually, in September 2005 at the UN General Assembly when Secretary Rice was there meeting with then Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon, her counterpart, and others, as Chris Hill and his team were in Beijing to negotiate this joint statement of principles. It was an accomplishment which, in a sense, has stood the test of time, because we still look at it and say, this is where we need to go. The path to get there, we knew all along, was going to be a bit rough, lots of uphill, and it’s turning out to be that way. But, the vision is there, and the only way that we know that we’re going to reach it is if the process is right, and the only way that we’re going to reach it is through very deep cooperation, particularly with our ally here in Seoul. We are committed to doing that, and I am committed to doing my part.
Another transformation in recent years is to expand some of our cooperation even beyond the Korean peninsula. I would have to make mention here of Korea’s really extraordinary contributions to alliance efforts in Iraq, for example, and in Afghanistan are well known and much appreciated. In the case of Irbil, not least by the people of Iraq, where I understand those who have had the chance to meet the Korean forces there have developed great abilities in Korean singing and taekwondo -- the kinds of things you can do when you have a more secure environment. We also appreciate Korean contributions to U.N. peacekeeping efforts in Lebanon and elsewhere.
We are trying to have more frequent policy coordination on a variety global hotspots. I would note that, if not for the first time, but more regularly we are having our Assistant Secretaries for various regional areas in the State Department come through Seoul. My colleague who is the Assistant Secretary for Latin American Affairs – we call it Western Hemisphere Affairs now - will be here next week consulting with his Korean counterpart. Similarly, our Assistant Secretary for African affairs will be here shortly thereafter. I think this again really reflects Korea’s global engagement.
Some of you may have read that there is a group of former Peace Corps volunteers here this week, and they went out to see KOICA to see some of the work that is being done there as Korea engages more globally around the world. Again, there is a lot I can say about Peace Corps, but as far as I know, Korea is the only country that was once a recipient of Peace Corps volunteers which now has a program that I think has many similarities to Peace Corps which is being deployed with extraordinary effectiveness and enthusiasm. Well, really not so extraordinary – we expect that from Korea throughout the world. Very inspiring.
With all of these diplomatic exchanges going on, we can’t just focus on them. We want to ensure that people-to-people contacts expand as well. Of course one of the most effective ways to do this will be by implementation of our long-awaited accession for Korea to the U.S. Visa Waiver Program. I’m following this every day, as is our Embassy staff, and we very much hope and expect that it will be in place by early 2009. I think that is going to greatly expand the flow of visitors between our countries, and I hope it will make life easier for a lot of you and your families and your businesses.
Another important initiative, just announced by Secretary Rice and Foreign Minister Yu at the U.N. General Assembly in New York just a couple of weeks ago, is something called the WEST program, for Work, English Study, Travel. This program foresees up to 5000 university students and graduates entering the U.S. as exchange visitors for 18-month programs for English study, internships, and independent study; and I understand Korea plans to establish a comparable Working Holiday Program for Americans to pursue similar opportunities in Korea. If we get this implemented right, I think we could really see a big pick-up in the number and range of Koreans and Americans who are able to have this kind of experience. As a former Peace Corps volunteer, I think this is terrific.
I’d now like to turn to what is the biggest priority for the American Chamber of Commerce, but also the biggest, most transformational initiative in our U.S.-Korea alliance today, and that of course is the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement.
I know I don’t need to explain to this audience the FTA. AmCham has been there every step of the way – from building support to launch the process, to sustaining momentum during the - at times - rather difficult negotiations, and in trying to build momentum for ratification over the past year. The U.S. Government could not hope for a more active, more effective partner on the FTA than this AmCham.
I know this crowd is very familiar with the incredibly compelling economic arguments for the FTA. This is the biggest free trade agreement Korea has ever negotiated, and the biggest for the U.S. in 15 years. Ninety-five percent of manufactured goods trade between our two countries will become duty free within three years. I think you can never repeat these things too much, so I want to go through them with you a little bit again. Most agricultural products will become duty free within ten years. New sectors of the Korean economy will be opened to foreign investment.
And all the reliable economic analysis says the economic impact will be huge – more exports, economic growth, foreign investment and job creation in both countries.
And of course, the strategic importance of the FTA goes beyond that. This Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement will establish a privileged economic partnership between our two countries, and create a strong, binding reciprocal economic pillar for our bilateral relationship, standing right alongside our security alliance.
As this audience well knows, each side took a different perspective and different motivations in coming to agreement on this free trade agreement.
For Korea, despite the great economic growth of the last few decades, there has been increasing concern about economic performance in recent years -- concern that the Korean economy isn’t creating the sort of jobs Korea’s graduates need, that Korea isn’t attracting as much foreign investment as it should, that the service sector remains a little underdeveloped compared to Korea’s peers, and that Korea risks being displaced in its important export markets by lower wage competition. Our free trade agreement addresses all of those issues.
For the U.S., of course, we had reached several FTAs with smaller or less developed economies, but we hadn’t concluded a major FTA with one of our largest trading partners in over a decade. We saw that the U.S. share of Asian markets was declining, and that some East Asian countries were floating ideas to formalize this in plans for the “regional economic architecture” that would exclude the United States, despite our long history of trade and investment with the countries of the Pacific Rim. And at a time when a lot of countries were beginning to negotiate low-standards trade agreements, we wanted to reach a high standards trade agreement that would set a benchmark for other countries to emulate. And our FTA does all of that.
But the point is, even if we came at it a little differently with perhaps some different motivations, we turned out, as we have in so many things, to be natural partners. And despite the skeptics who said the U.S. and Korea could never complete such an ambitious negotiation, and certainly not within the limited timeframe available, that can-do spirit that our two countries share enabled us to defy the skeptics and reach a strong agreement, one that I know many of us refer to as the “gold standard” of all FTAs. The gold standard is sounding better all of the time – that’s a joke.
When President Bush and President Lee met at Camp David in April, and then here in Seoul in August, they both agreed to try to get the FTA ratified as quickly as possible.
I think it’s probably fair to say that, at least right now, President Lee probably has a slightly easier job of it at this point, with Korea’s major elections are behind him now, and his party with a majority in the National Assembly. I understand the Government has announced it will submit the FTA in the National Assembly. I think it has done it this week, and that’s encouraging.
In the United States, of course, we’re facing a unique set of circumstances. It can be hard – to say the least - to ratify a major trade agreement during an election year. It’s a lesson that Korea learned last year, during its own Presidential and parliamentary elections, and we’re re-learning that now in the United States.
President Bush and his Administration – Ambassador Schwab, Secretary Rice, Commerce Secretary Gutierrez – are trying hard to build support for our FTA in the business community and in Congress, in the hope that the FTA might be taken up in a Congressional session – so-called lame-duck session - after the election. I know there is still speculation about whether or not there will be a lame-duck session, and if so, if it will address sensitive trade legislation. And of course the current situation in the financial markets is an added variable that no one had planned on. But if the Administration sees a window of opportunity to try to get the FTA ratified this year, we will pursue it, although everyone does understand that will be very difficult.
Still, as I made the rounds of Capitol Hill this past year, and I made quite a few rounds, I really came to realize in a new way that there is a lot of support for this FTA. The supporters are often quieter than the opponents – trade experts tell me that it’s often that way on the Hill. But there are many supporters – the business coalition for the KORUS FTA has over 500 members, and I met with many of them, that’s the largest business coalition for any U.S. FTA, ever. And they are active.
The FTA’s supporters point to the fact that this agreement will generate far more economic benefits for the United States than any other FTA the U.S. has signed recently, as I mentioned already in so many sectors. They go through the arguments I just made again, because I think they are so compelling. It’s just an argument that we need to get out there, again and again, in as clear a language as we possibly can.
The logic is so compelling, that if we can make this case, I think many supporters of this FTA including me believe that if it isn’t ratified by this Congress this year, we will have a good opportunity in the new year. This is an FTA that has the potential to create an entirely new economic relationship between our two countries – one based on openness, and transparency and reciprocity. A relationship that fully reflects the U.S.-Korea alliance as a partnership of equals, between two of the most technologically advanced societies on earth. A partnership between two countries that have not only shared interests, but increasingly shared perspectives on the pressing economic issues of the day. I believe that we’ll see that in the coming days, as well.
Finally, if I may, just to close this out, I do want to thank and commend the American Chamber of Commerce here in Seoul for the critical role it has played in helping to transform the U.S.-Korea economic relationship and to bring us to this point. When I look backwards at the very difficult bilateral trade relations we had when I worked at the Embassy in the 1980s – I was glad that was Chris Hill’s job and I just had to deal with the tear gas and the students - on how infrequently I saw U.S. products when I worked in Busan in the 1980s, or in Yesan in the 1970s, really, the transformation has been incredible. Even someone like me, I have a well-developed appreciation for Korea’s ability to change, I would have found it hard to believe back then that today Korea would have the most aggressive trade liberalization agenda in northeast Asia. Again, what a tribute to the Korean people and its leadership.
But I know AmCham, through these patient, constructive efforts, has played a huge role in bringing this transformation about. That is why you are held in such high regard, not just in Washington, but here in Korea, at the most senior levels of government and society.
And while AmCham’s efforts to support the FTA and other policy initiatives have been outstanding, I also want to thank you and the businesses represented here for the day-to-day efforts you make to build bridges between the United States and Korea. Every office you open in Korea, every Korean you hire, every U.S. product or brand you introduce into this market, help to strengthen the ties between our countries.
I know it can be hard to quantify the effect of that sort of interaction. But throughout my diplomatic career, including here in Korea but also in places like Northern Ireland or the Balkans post-conflict, I have really come to appreciate the key role the U.S. business community plays, not only in building confidence but in being overall the best natural diplomats America produces.
I want to assure you that as I look ahead, taking the U.S.-Korea economic relationship to a new level, and helping it realize its full potential, its full extraordinary potential, is one of my highest priorities. I will rely so much on your support as we work together, and I assure you, you can count on mine.
Thank you very much.