Assessing the Role of US Aid in the Emergence South Korea’s Developmental State

• In Event: International History and Politics in East Asia

Abstract

The South Korean case is a widely recited tale in the developmental state literature. The emergence of the Korean developmental state is tied to the Park Chung Hee regime, particularly the period between the 1960s and 1970s, when the country began experiencing its rapid growth. Among the two key pillars that constitute a developmental state, namely a capable and autonomous bureaucracy and public-private embeddedness, the latter has received the bulk of attention in the Korean case. That is, the unique power of the state over its private sector conglomerates, the chaebols, has been regarded as the principal distinguishing characteristic of this success story. However, this tendency has led many to overlook the first pillar of bureaucratic capacity and how it was acquired. Until the late 1950s, the Korean government lacked both a unified strategy and public administrative capacity. How is it, then, that such efficient and effective state governance rapidly emerged in the ensuing years? To answer this question, this paper examines the widely overlooked role of US foreign aid in the development of South Korea’s bureaucratic autonomy during the Park regime.

Beginning in the 1960s, the amount of foreign aid flowing into Korea diminished significantly relative to the decades preceding it. For this reason, little attention has been devoted to understanding the role of aid in the construction of the South Korean developmental state, while some scholars assert outright that its impact was minimal. One clear reason for the reduction of aid flows into Korea beginning in the 1960s was changing US policy under the new Kennedy administration. The strategic objective of US aid policy towards Korea began shifting away from a purely military security focus towards an economic development perspective. At the same time, while this did translate into a reduction of the absolute amount of aid, it also led to the active use of aid for vigorous American intervention into Korean economic policy. Against this backdrop, this paper illustrates how the US used its aid policy and machinery to influence the development of Korea's economic bureaucracy through historical and archival analysis. Specifically, the focus is placed on the early years of the Park regime, and the role of the US Operations Mission (USOM) in advising and supervising South Korean bureaucrats. Borrowing and adapting ideas from the concept of the democratic developmental state by Robinson and White (1998), I argue that US aid played an important role in increasing the accountability and autonomy of the Korean bureaucracy, which later contributed to the emergence and success of the developmental state.

Author

• Kyu Yeong Christine Kim, Seoul National University