Consolidating Public Sector Reform through Policy Transfer in Korea: Global Diffusion and Local Control

Abstract

In Korea, demands for economic and social democratization increased after 2000, as the country dealt with economic recession after the 1997 Asian financial crisis and with other problems resulting from mismanaged domestic policies. In response, the Korean state carried out unprecedented reform of the public sector to address these problems by streamlining state capacity. The primary objectives of this article are to understand Korean public sector reform together with its domestic political factors from a policy transfer perspective, and to suggest an alternate model for the reforms. The reforms, which took place during the Kim Dae-Jung and the Roh Mu-Hyun administrations, were consolidated through proactive policy transfer by politico-bureaucratic decisions in order to establish a new statecraft despite the global diffusion of policy trends. Investigation of its domestic political circumstances and historical context reveals that the reforms were not direct emulations of global norms, but rather an attempt to use a mixture of models to raise the quality of government.