INSTITUTIONALIZING A LIBERAL ECONOMIC ORDER IN KOREA: THE STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT OF ECONOMIC CHANGE.

摘要

This thesis seeks to provide a more accurate understanding of Korea's politico-economic system than existing research by way of a detailed case study of its recent economic liberalization policies (including import liberalization and financial sector deregulation), which represent the most substantial economic policy shift toward a more market-driven economic system in the history of Korean economic development. The exogenous variables and contextual events which help explain the policy shift include: challenges to the macropolitical order of the Yushin/heavy industrialization regime, which preceded the economic liberalization attempts; escalating inflation; various expressions and causes of social discontent; and the assassination of President Park Chung Hee and the transition in government in the midst of this economic policy reform. In linking these variables causally to the specific policy outcomes, this thesis has focused on the strategic analyses and actions of a small number of reform-minded policymakers and the particular configuration of economic policy-making institutions and processes within which they played strategic managerial roles. In institutionalizing a liberal economic order in Korea, the Economic Planning Board (EPB) has held the center. This thesis has identified the institutional characteristics of the EPB--its autonomy from any groups in society, its consequent institutional flexibility, and its vision of economic policy coordination, which it has come to embody over two decades of economic development--as important factors in explaining EPB leaders' strategic analyses and strategic managerial actions: its specific relation to the President and society, its indirect management of other economic agencies, its strategic use of administrative devices and organizational resources. Also stressing the institutional capacities of other economic agencies, this study has warned against the EPB's recent tendency to embrace new operating functions which would deflect its central mission and impair its distinctive service to the President and to the nation.