Malaysia Will Continue Sending Students To Japan And Korea - PM Najib

KUALA LUMPUR, March 6 (Bernama) -- Malaysia has sent many of its students to Japan and South Korea, and will continue to do so, as well as to almost parts of the world, said Prime Minister Najib Tun Abdul Razak. He said sending Malaysian students to study in Japanese and Korean universities, for instance, had helped them to acquire the Japanese work ethics. "I can tell you that this step has contributed to the achievement of our development, but it was not only limited to the adoption of economic policies, there are other reasons to which we owe the success achieved in our country today," he said in an exclusive interview with Al Arabiya News Channel in conjunction with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman Abdulaziz al Saud’s recent historical visit to Malaysia. Starting from 1981, Malaysia has adopted the 'Look East' policy. This policy looked at Korea and Japan and sought to use these countries as examples. In the interview which was conducted by Al Arabiya general manager Turki Aldakhil recently, Najib was asked to what degree has the Japanese model helped in the success of Malaysia's experience. "Yes, in the beginning we have benefited from theirs and we have adopted a policy that echoed the two Japanese and Korean experiences because they were the success stories of the seventies and eighties of the last century. "We believed that these were the economic plans that we should follow in their footsteps. We have learned from these two experiments and embraced some of their components. We focused on economic policies and work ethic in both," he said. Commenting on ethnic and religios diversity, the Prime Minister said although the Malaysian society is characterized by great diversity the people had been successful in working together as one nation. He said despite facing many challenges, Malaysia still made a great success because its relied on the strengths of each ethnic group and had adopted a policy to build a national unity. "When I assumed my duty I launched the concept of '1Malaysia' in order to emphasize some of the core values that promote a sense of loyalty and collaboration. "When we have won our independence, many people were not optimistic about our ability to achieve success as a nation but we proved our critics wrong," he said. Najib said the diversity had its merits but it also posed challenges and the most important of these challenges was to avoid internal conflicts between different ethnic groups. "We have succeeded in that to a large extent. But most importantly we need to move forward as one synergistic nation. "This is what we must work on and I realize that despite the peace and harmony which we enjoy today we need to work to promote national integration and national unity," he added. -- BERNAMA