Political Perception of Bureaucratic Elite in South Korea

Abstract

It is generally accepted that the senior bureaucrats play a critical role in the political processes of developing countries. The instrumental, implementative, and unfiunctional view of their role is no longer enable for they are deeply and actively engaged in determining the direction and substance of political development and in formulating public policies directly relevant to the whole political system. As Almond and Powell suggest, they are bound to affect both the output gates and the input functions of the political conversion process. Moreover, Harris attributes a wide range of possible role sets to the senior bureaucrats-namely, policy maker, policy adviser, program formulator, program manager, program implementor, interest aggregator, interest articulator, agent of political communication, adjudicator, and agent of political socialization. The senior civilian bureaucrats in South Korea, too, seem to enjoy a variety of role sets in the political process. Historically, Korea had the long Confucian tradition of "strong, centralized, uncontested bureaucratic rule." Even if the Confucian-inspired Yi Dynasty collapsed in 1910, the central role of the bureaucracy in Korean politics persisted during the Japanese colonial administration and thereafter. Especially since the military leaders seized South Korea's governing power in 1961 and adopted the ambitious five-year economic development plans, the bureaucracy has substantially expanded both in its size and in its control over national resource allocation. The degree of structural differentiation and functional specialization has increased in government agencies.