Outposted

Starting with his first steps as a banker in Belgium and his move to London in 1989, the book then takes us to South Korea, where the country's chaebols were aggressively building their international presence, and North Korea first threatened to turn Seoul into a "Sea of Fire." In Indonesia, Versavel and his family experience the violence and financial collapse surrounding the ousting of President Suharto in 1998. Having joined the World Trade Organisation in 2001, China was accelerating its so-called opening up, but like a flower—not by opening its doors, as the world misunderstood—and international companies were struggling to formulate their China strategies. In 2004, the author returns to South Korea to find a highly developed and ultra-competitive country, but a geopolitical situation still stuck in a lukewarm Sunshine Policy towards North Korea. After a brief intermezzo in Belgium, where he was responsible for Asian clients in Europe, we follow the author to Ukraine, where the Euromaidan revolution results in the flight of President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014. After Ukraine, the reader is taken to Mongolia, where stubborn poverty levels persist despite increases in GDP, and a fraught relationship with foreign investment plays into the hands of the political clans running the country. The last chapter plays out in Sri Lanka, which bankrupted early 2022, and where a people's revolution resulted in the flight of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.