Global Pressure, Local Adjustment: The Political Economy of Telecommunication Liberalization in Korea in the 1990s

Abstract

This paper examines the political and economic implications of the liberalization of international telecommunications in South Korea in the 1990s and the changing roles of the South Koran state. Until the end of the 1980s, the South Korean telecommunications sector was controlled by a public monopoly. With the internal political and economic need for industrial restructuring, various external forces have driven liberalization of the telecommunications industry since the late 1980s. Intertwined with the national political economy, those external forces and, more generally, structural transformations in the global political economy have also significantly affected the nature and roles of the South Korean state.