This book critically examines the geopolitical and economic contexts of the region's export-oriented industrialization. The first part of the book focuses on the global and regional elements of the economic system and recent geo-politics. The second part of the book focuses on the domestic actors and institutions which played critical roles in the miracle economies of East Asia. This collection of original papers describes the economic developments and environment that underlie the East Asian NICs. Through a comparison of the Four Tigers - South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore - the contributors deliver a case-oriented study that explains the region's most successful economies. This book is the first region-wide comparative study to provide readers with country-specific information about economic environments and development. The authors examine the transferability of this region's experience to others. It charts the successful dynamic relationships between geopolitical, economic, and social resources. It is relevant to sociological and economic studies. There are in-depth case studies combined with comparative analysis within the region. There is incorporation of global security and economic contexts in the analysis of economic development and democratization.

This book takes up a wide variety of human security challenges beyond the dimension of human conflict, and looks at both natural and human disasters that the East Asian region faces or is attempting to resolve. While discussing various human security issues, the case studies offer practical lessons to address serious human security challenges in the framework of the ASEAN Plus Three and beyond. Against the backdrop of multifaceted globalization and parochial reactions thereto, this book is a powerful contribution to universal human security.

This book offers a new approach to studying foreign aid in the 21st century. While most analysts focus on the differences between traditional and emerging donors, Stallings and Kim here argue that a more important distinction is between East Asian donors and their western counterparts. Asian donors - Japan, South Korea, and China - cross the traditional and emerging divide and demonstrate a particular approach to development that draws on their own dramatic success. As East Asia continues its upward trajectory of economic development, the politics of aid can reveal surprising truths about the objectives and mechanisms of soft power and diplomacy in creating new networks in the region. This book will be of interest to NGO workers, scholars, and students of international relations, a critical part of research into Asia's rise and the emerging spheres of influence.

Focuses on the paradox of development in the newly industrializing country of South Korea.

This book debunks the rosy success story about South Korean economic development by analyzing how the state and businesses formed an alliance, while excluding labor, in order to attain economic development, and how these three entities were transformed in the process. The author analyzes the paradox of South Korean development from 1960 to 1990 -- a period during which the country experienced dramatic social, economic, and political changes. By reexamining South Korea's development through the collaboration and conflict between the state and the chaebol (big businesses), she illuminates the inherent limitations and problems of the developmental state.

"Among the many books that have been written on Korea's "economic miracle", none does a better job than this one of chronicling the growth of the giant industrial conglomerates that have come to dominate the Korean economy and setting out the evolution of their relations to the state. Eun Mee Kim harnesses an unusually rich set of data to a nicely nuanced analysis of the changing structure of business-state relations in Korea. Anyone trying to understand the dynamics of East Asian industrialization needs to read Big Business, Strong State". -- Peter Evans, University of California, Berkeley

"Big Business, Strong State is an important book on an important subject. Based on careful empirical research, Eun Mee Kim analyzes the changing roles of state and business conglomerates in the dramatic development of South Korea that within a generation turned one of the world's poorest countries into an industrial society. Kim illuminates the Korean storyby discussing it in a comparative context, and she identifies critical unresolved issues in Korea's future". -- Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Asa Messer Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for the Comparative Study of Development at Brown University

In 1961 South Korea was mired in poverty. By 1979 it had a powerful industrial economy and a vibrant civil society in the making, which would lead to a democratic breakthrough eight years later. The transformation took place during the years of Park Chung Hee's presidency. Park seized power in a coup in 1961 and ruled as a virtual dictator until his assassination in October 1979. He is credited with modernizing South Korea, but at a huge political and social cost. South Korea's political landscape under Park defies easy categorization. The state was predatory yet technocratic, reform-minded yet quick to crack down on dissidents in the name of political order. The nation was balanced uneasily between opposition forces calling for democratic reforms and the Park government's obsession with economic growth. The chaebol (a powerful conglomerate of multinationals based in South Korea) received massive government support to pioneer new growth industries, even as a nationwide campaign of economic shock therapy-interest hikes, devaluation, and wage cuts-met strong public resistance and caused considerable hardship. This landmark volume examines South Korea's era of development as a study in the complex politics of modernization. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources in both English and Korean, these essays recover and contextualize many of the ambiguities in South Korea's trajectory from poverty to a sustainable high rate of economic growth.

This book takes up a wide variety of human security challenges beyond the dimension of human conflict, and looks at both natural and human disasters that the East Asian region faces or is attempting to resolve. While discussing various human security issues, the case studies offer practical lessons to address serious human security challenges in the framework of the ASEAN Plus Three and beyond. Against the backdrop of multifaceted globalization and parochial reactions thereto, this book is a powerful contribution to universal human security.

This book offers a new approach to studying foreign aid in the 21st century. While most analysts focus on the differences between traditional and emerging donors, Stallings and Kim here argue that a more important distinction is between East Asian donors and their western counterparts. Asian donors - Japan, South Korea, and China - cross the traditional and emerging divide and demonstrate a particular approach to development that draws on their own dramatic success. As East Asia continues its upward trajectory of economic development, the politics of aid can reveal surprising truths about the objectives and mechanisms of soft power and diplomacy in creating new networks in the region. This book will be of interest to NGO workers, scholars, and students of international relations, a critical part of research into Asia's rise and the emerging spheres of influence.

South Korea remains a puzzle for political economists. The country has experienced phenomenal economic growth since the 1960s, but its upward trajectory has been repeatedly diverted by serious systemic crises, followed by spectacular recoveries. The recoveries are often the result of vigorous structural reforms that nonetheless retain many of South Korea's traditional economic institutions. How, then, can South Korea suffer from persistent systemic instability and yet prove so resilient? What remains the same and what changes?

The contributors to this volume consider the South Korean economy in its larger political context. Moving beyond the easy dichotomies --equilibrium vs. disequilibrium and stability vs. instability --they describe a complex and surprisingly robust economic and political system. Further, they argue that neither systemic challenges nor political pressures alone determine South Korea's stability and capacity for change. Instead, it is distinct patterns of interaction that shape this system's characteristics, development, and evolution.