Korean Political and Economic Development: crisis, security and institutional rebalancing

摘要

Sometime in the latter half of the 1980s, a few keen-eyed observers discerned an economic miracle in the making. By then, Japan's success was an old story, and the development profession was eagerly scanning the horizon for new case material to refresh the growth literature and to identify credible policy recipes for aspiring late starters; many of which had been severely buffeted by hard economic times brought on by debt, banking, and oil price-induced crises. East Asia presented four gleaming points of light: Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, each offering relief in the general gloom and hope for numerous developing economies. The prowess of these emergent 'tiger economies' was made doubly compelling by their demonstrated ability to render growth inclusive and to lay the institutional groundwork for democratic political activity. From among these, Korea and Taiwan struck observers as the more noteworthy because of their size, the sweep, and speed of the structural changes that had transformed their economies, and their relatively painless melding of economic with political freedoms. Of the two, Korea adopted the more daring industrialisation strategy. As a consequence, it experienced two serious crisis episodes and emerged in the 2000s as a card-carrying member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), with one of the strongest, most industrially diversified, and innovative economies in the developed world.