Globalization and the institutional persistence of the developmental state in Korea

Abstract

Today's economic crisis in Korea was brought about by a failure to properly respond to globalization, which began in the early 1990s. Confronted with economic difficulties and globalization, the country invested a great deal of efforts to restructure both private and public sectors with relatively effective outcomes. The current process of structural adjustment, however, reveals that a pattern of a developmental state is maintained. The governments restructuring efforts have, in fact, sustained and even reinforced the institutional structure suitable for a strong state in Korea. Such institutional persistence of the strong state was caused by the economic crisis, which resulted from a drastically changed international environment, namely globalization, the domestic political dynamics, and the institutional characteristics embedded in the state apparatus.