Book Launch: Outposted (Life is Good, Potentially)

INVITATION
IN-PERSON EVENT

BOOK LAUNCH
Outposted
(Life is Good, Potentially) 
 

Date:  Wednesday, 7 May 2025
Time: 16:30 – 18:00 CET
Venue: EIAS, Rue de la Loi 26, B-1040 Brussels
*The Book Launch will be followed by a networking reception

The European Institute for Asian Studies (EIAS) has the pleasure of cordially inviting you to the Book Launch of “Outposted (Life is Good, Potentially)“, written by Erik Versavel. The event will be held on Wednesday, 7 May 2025 from 16:30 to 18:00 at the European Institute for Asian Studies, Rue de la Loi 26, 10th floor, B-1040 Brussels, Belgium. The event will be followed by a networking reception.

The Book

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.

The order form and more information on the book can be found on the Amazon webpage.

The Author 

Erik Versavel is a Belgian national, holding a Master of Law diploma of the University of Antwerp, and a director’s diploma of the Singapore Management University. He has been a senior international banker for four decades and lived in London, Seoul, Jakarta, Shanghai, Kyiv, Ulaanbaatar, and Colombo. He travelled extensively across Asia and Europe and prefers eating with chopsticks and spoons rather than with fork and knife.

He became a Knight in the Order of the Crown of the Kingdom of Belgium in 2009 for his contribution to international trade and industry, for chairing chambers of commerce and representing his country and Flemish region. In 2019 he was appointed as Honorary Consul for Belgium to Mongolia, until Covid locked him out of the country in 2020. For the last four years he has lived and worked in Sri Lanka, but now resides in Belgium.

He has published two books in a series called “Life is Good, Potentially”, one about Mongolia in 2021 and one more broadly covering his international work called “Outposted” in 2024. Many countries where he lived went through financial, economic, and political crises, revolutions, IMF programs, currency devaluations and other upheaval. In his lectures, he brings back his extensive experience and international scope to some fascinating and sometimes disturbing topics, like mono-culturalism versus globalisation, why some countries do not realise their economic potential, how presidents go on the run (and how they get back), why it is so difficult to generate and distribute the wealth of natural resources, how corruption works in different shades of grey, how the strategies of international banks can be flawed and indeed contribute to economic collapse of a country, and how it is for families with children to move all the time.

Programme

16:00 – 16:30 Registration and Welcome Refreshments

16:30 – 16:40 Opening Remarks by the Chair

• Erik Famaey, EIAS Senior Associate

16:40 – 17:20 Presentation of the Book 

• Erik Versavel, Author of the Book

17:20 – 18:00 Interactive Q&A Session with the Audience

18:00 – 19:00 Networking Reception

The Author ‘s First Book

“Mongolia: Cracks in the Eternal Blue Sky” is the first book in the series “Life is Good, Potentially.” Versavel takes us on a journey starting in 2016 when he arrives in Mongolia and ends in 2020 after abruptly being locked out of the country because of the Covid-19 pandemic. With deep emotional engagement, he writes about the state of the country with painful accuracy why presidents and politicians are the reason why Mongolia is not the rich country it could – and should – be. He describes in painful accuracy how chicanery in the banking sector destroyed what little international credibility the country had, and why the number of people living below the poverty line does not reduce when the economy booms. He paints a picture of political, financial economic crises with devastating detail and a cool sense of humor.

The order form and more information on the book can be found here

Photo Credits: Erik Versavel