Engineering the Korean developmental state: geopolitics, transnational networks, and the origins of export-led industrialization

• In Event: 2129 - Section on Comparative-Historical Sociology Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 2. Economy and Development

Abstract

This paper unpacks the origins of the Korean developmental state’s formation (1960s-1970s) by studying the first generation of Korean engineers and scientists who, returning from abroad, joined the Korean Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), established in 1966. KIST played a pivotal role in Korean science and technology development and the heavy chemical industrialization (HCI) in the 1970s. A study of this group and their relationship with the state bureaucracy addresses a gap in the literature. Current research focuses on the variations in the state’s capacities to coordinate economic development among late industrializers, but there is little discussion concerning the instigation of a developmental state. In the limited amount of research that tackles the question of origins, the conventional wisdom attributes the formation of the Korean developmental state to exogenous factors such as post-war geopolitics and US aid/connection, or indigenous factors such as the role of developmental will, nationalism, and the great man thesis that emphasizes the political leader of President Park Chung Hee. But not much is known about the micro foundations of the state and how particular policy directions were chosen.
Through interviews and archival research of the key engineers who helped to draft the heavy industrialization programs of the 1960s and 1970s, this paper illustrates how these KIST engineers, through their transnational connections and relationships with President Park and with the Economic Planning Board, helped to shape the specific patterns of industrial development in Korea, an industrialization that was propelled by geopolitics of the cold war.

Author

• Michelle Fei-yu Hsieh, Academia Sinica