Developmental Citizenship and Its Discontents

Abstract

© 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.This chapter explains how developmental citizenship in South Korea has been conceived, protracted, and habitually renewed amid the dynamic interplay between political democratization and capitalist economic development, and also analyzes what social practices have constituted such historical constructions and reconstructions of developmental citizenship. The primacy of developmental citizenship does not necessarily preclude a political commitment to social citizenship, but the former at least tends to delay the latter for the sake of maximum national economic growth, epitomized by the political slogan of growth first, distribution later. Besides, the political pursuit of national economic development has often been accompanied by a self-serving emphasis of the state leadership on political stability, often implying serious infringements on civil and political rights.