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LAW AND DEVELOPMENT: THE KOREAN EXPERIENCE : Law & Development
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- Authors
- Issue Date
- 2011-09
- Publisher
- 서울대학교 법학연구소
- Citation
- 법학, Vol.52 No.3, pp. 37-62
- Keywords
- Democratization ; Authoritarianism ; the Rule of Law ; Instrumental Legislations ; (government-led) Economic Development (growth) ; Industrialization ; Market Economy ; Legal Stability ; Predictability ; Farmland Reform ; Saemaul Undong ; Haengjong jido
- Abstract
- There is a plenty of literature in which economic development is related to law
ever since Max Weber had related the rise of capitalism to formal rationality of
legal system. The Koreas successful rapid economic development, along with industrialization,
from its economy of per capita income less than 100 dollars to that
of around 20,000 dollars less than a half century later, especially its take-off
stage, however, seems to put us to a puzzle in relating its experience to the rule
of law. For authoritarianism is understood usually as being not friendly to the rule
of law. Then the question is on how to meaningfully relate the Korean experience
of economic development to law.
During its authoritarian period, korea (the Republic of Korea) might be characterized
perhaps as having a dual legal structure consisting of a series of instrumental
special legislations (e.g, presidential decrees, The Foreign Capital
Inducement act of 1966, etc.) to support the government-led economic development
policy along with the authoritarianism that was a deviation from the
full-fledged rule of law and of a limited rule of law. For Korea have held its formal
framework of the rule of law even during authoritarian time ever since it
started as the country ordained with the liberal democratic constitution in 1948.
Generally authoritarianism tends to respect autonomies of other areas than politics
for the sake of its image unless its power is threatened. Consequently, the kind of
legal stability and ones planning for the future that is favorable for business enterprises (savings and investment) may well be fostered even under authoritarianism,
as attested with the Korean experience in the past and that of China today.
It was administrative officials armed with the instrumental special legislations
and with the concepts of haengjong jido, administrative guidances, to support the
government-led import-substituting, export-oriented, heavy-chemical industry fostering,
and other development policies, rather than lawyers involving in after-the-fact situation, who had actually led Koreas rapid industrialization and economic
development. The development thus achieved has been accompanied by the waves of liberalism including the rise of the middle class, which in turn led eventually
to Koreas democratization in 1987. Now along with the democratization, the gap
between the written liberal democratic constitution and the authoritarian political
practices is erased and a full-fledged substantive rule of law is finally obtained in Korea.
- ISSN
- 1598-222X
- Language
- Korean
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