Graham Bell: South Korea's prosperity template one to copy

After a week in South Korea I hear Robert Burns: "O wad some Power the giftie gie us/to see oursels as others see us." Whilst international travel enables us to see how others do things it also gives us a window into our own strengths and weaknesses.

Seoul houses some 11 million people framed by hills and rivers, arranged according to the principles of pungsu-jiri-seol (the Korean version of feng shui). The auspiciousness of this arrangement is borne out by ranks of high-rise buildings and construction continues apace amidst a clean efficient network of six-lane freeways, subways and buses colour-coded for travel range. There are palaces dating back over 1,000 years in graceful parks, but overall the effect is stunningly modern. Coming from Scotland I ask myself: "Can we have too much history?"

A Korean asks me: "What do you notice about Korea." I reply: "Everything works!" The transport is cheap and efficient – the outer circle subway takes an hour and cost 50p to go round. The 500 miles to Busan by high speed rail takes three hours, runs every 10 minutes from 5:30am to midnight and costs 25. You can eat out well for 4.

What is Korea doing that we aren't? They thrive on manufacturing and agriculture – the two things which create wealth. They've worked harder than we can imagine for 60 years to build their country. State intervention is focused where it matters most. As a consequence they now have fantastic university and research capability (the campus I am visiting is a square mile of facilities, lake and parkland in the city centre with its own subway station).

The infrastructure is a powerful framework of mega-corporations (Samsung, Hyundai and their ilk are branded everywhere) and small independent businesses.

As they prepare to buy up UK companies and invest in our offshore wind power they are winning because they are determined and see the world as their market.

"It's ae been" will not build our future prosperity. We really should learn from these people – now, fast.

• Graham Bell is an independent policy advisor