Korean Workers
Korean Workers

Author: Hagen Koo

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-09-05

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1501731777

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Forty years of rapid industrialization have transformed millions of South Korean peasants and their sons and daughters into urban factory workers. Hagen Koo explores the experiences of this first generation of industrial workers and describes its struggles to improve working conditions in the factory and to search for justice in society. The working class in South Korea was born in a cultural and political environment extremely hostile to its development, Koo says. Korean workers forged their collective identity much more rapidly, however, than did their counterparts in other newly industrialized countries in East Asia. This book investigates how South Korea's once-docile and submissive workers reinvented themselves so quickly into a class with a distinct identity and consciousness. Based on sources ranging from workers' personal writings to union reports to in-depth interviews, this book is a penetrating analysis of the South Korean working-class experience. Koo reveals how culture and politics simultaneously suppressed and facilitated class formation in South Korea. With chapters exploring the roles of women, students, and church organizations in the struggle, the book reflects Koo's broader interest in the social and cultural dimensions of industrial transformation.

Asia's Next Giant
Asia's Next Giant

Author: Alice Hoffenberg Amsden

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 9780195076035

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South Korea has been quietly growing into a major economic force, even challenging Japan in some industries. This growth may be seen as an example of "late industrialization" and this book discusses this point.

The Economic Development of South Korea
The Economic Development of South Korea

Author: Seung-hun Chun

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-01-29

Total Pages: 460

ISBN-13: 1351215728

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How did a country with a dearth of natural resources, a sprawling population congested in a limited arable land transform itself to a modern industrial state within a generation? How could these have been achieved given the lingering geopolitical threats to its very survival as a state, as evidenced by the Korean War and the internecine aggressive posturing of its neighbor from the north? This book looks at strategies, institutional arrangement, role of entrepreneurs and workers in this odyssey, and on how those factors have worked together through effective leadership to transform South Korea’s economic fortunes.

Strategic Coupling
Strategic Coupling

Author: Henry Wai-chung Yeung

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2016-05-24

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1501704265

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In Strategic Coupling, Henry Wai-chung Yeung examines economic development and state-firm relations in East Asia, focusing in particular on South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. As a result of the massive changes of the last twenty-five years, new explanations must be found for the economic success and industrial transformation in the region. State-assisted startups and incubator firms in East Asia have become major players in the manufacture of products with a global reach: Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision has assembled more than 500 million iPhones, for instance, and South Korea’s Samsung provides the iPhone’s semiconductor chips and retina displays.Drawing on extensive interviews with top executives and senior government officials, Yeung argues that since the late 1980s, many East Asian firms have outgrown their home states, and are no longer dependent on state support; as a result the developmental state has lost much of its capacity to steer and direct industrialization. We cannot read the performance of national firms as a direct outcome of state action. Yeung calls for a thorough renovation of the still-dominant view that states are the primary engine of industrial transformation. He stresses action by national firms and traces various global production networks to incorporate both firm-specific activities and the international political economy. He identifies two sets of dynamics in these national-global articulations known as strategic coupling: coevolution in the confluence of state, firm, and global production networks, and the various strategies pursued by East Asian firms to attain competitive positions in the global marketplace.

Korean Politics
Korean Politics

Author: John Kie-chiang Oh

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9780801484582

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The 'trial of the century'

Developmental Mindset
Developmental Mindset

Author: Elizabeth Thurbon

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2016-06-09

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 1501704168

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The Asian financial crisis of 1997–1998 was supposed to be the death knell for the developmental state. The International Monetary Fund supplied emergency funds for shattered economies but demanded that states liberalize financial markets and withdraw from direct involvement in the economy. Financial liberalization was meant to spell the end of strategic industry policy and the state-directed "policy lending" it involved. Yet, largely unremarked by analysts, South Korea has since seen a striking revival of financial activism. Policy lending by state-owned development banks has returned the state to the core of the financial system. Korean development banks now account for one quarter of all loans and take the lead in providing low-cost finance to local manufacturing firms in strategic industries.Elizabeth Thurbon argues that an ideational analysis can help explain this renewed financial activism. She demonstrates the presence of a "developmental mindset" on the part of political leaders and policy elites in Korea. This mindset involves shared ways of thinking about the purpose of finance and its relationship to the productive economy. The developmental mindset has a long history in Korea but is subject to the vicissitudes of political and economic circumstances. Thurbon traces the structural, institutional, political, and ideational factors that have strengthened and at times weakened the developmental consensus, culminating in the revival of financial activism in Korea. In doing so, Thurbon offers a novel defense of the developmental state idea and a new framework for investigating the emergence and evolution of developmental states. She also canvasses the implications of the Korean experience for wider debates concerning the future of financial activism in an era of financialization, energy insecurity, and climate change.

Industrial Development in Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea
Industrial Development in Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea

Author: Kai-Sun Kwong

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 9812810064

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Economic analysis of the industrial experiences of the newly industrialized economies in Asia is generally lacking in the literature. This study attempts to fill that void by providing an in-depth discussion on the economic impact of the industrial policies of Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea in the three-and-a-half decades after 1960. Throughout the study, a broad perspective of macroeconomic development is maintained. It is highly critical of the narrow-minded objective of certain governments in maximizing the pace of industrialization at the expense of general economic well-being. A comparative analysis of the industrial experiences of the three economies also shows a diversity of constraints and processes. Singapore relied on multinational corporations, Taiwan on returned engineers, and South Korea on chaebols. There appears to be no Asian formula for industrialization. In Hong Kong, there is an ongoing debate on whether some form of industrial policy should be introduced, in view of the perception that Hong Kong is lagging behind the other economies in terms of technology. Drawing on the experiences of the other economies, the concluding chapter of the book provides an informed and balanced answer to this question. Contents: Singapore: Dominance of Multinational Corporations; Taiwan: Thriving High-Technology Industries and SME; South Korea: Government-Led Development and the Dominance of Giant Corporations; Comparison Among Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea; Strategic Considerations in the Hong Kong Context. Readership: Researchers, policy-makers and undergraduates in economics and East Asian Studies.

Embedded Autonomy
Embedded Autonomy

Author: Peter B. Evans

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2012-01-12

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 140082172X

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In recent years, debate on the state's economic role has too often devolved into diatribes against intervention. Peter Evans questions such simplistic views, offering a new vision of why state involvement works in some cases and produces disasters in others. To illustrate, he looks at how state agencies, local entrepreneurs, and transnational corporations shaped the emergence of computer industries in Brazil, India, and Korea during the seventies and eighties. Evans starts with the idea that states vary in the way they are organized and tied to society. In some nations, like Zaire, the state is predatory, ruthlessly extracting and providing nothing of value in return. In others, like Korea, it is developmental, promoting industrial transformation. In still others, like Brazil and India, it is in between, sometimes helping, sometimes hindering. Evans's years of comparative research on the successes and failures of state involvement in the process of industrialization have here been crafted into a persuasive and entertaining work, which demonstrates that successful state action requires an understanding of its own limits, a realistic relationship to the global economy, and the combination of coherent internal organization and close links to society that Evans called "embedded autonomy."

Korea's Growth and Industrial Transformation
Korea's Growth and Industrial Transformation

Author: H. Lim

Publisher: Springer

Published: 1998-08-19

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 0230377939

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This book seeks to explore the role of domestic politics in the selection of industrial policy and the different patterns of industrial transformation in East Asia. The approach taken in this book partly draws on earlier studies of industrial transformation, product cycle theory and statist theory, but combines and complements them by emphasizing the role of coalition in industrial policy and industrial transformation.

Technology Transfer and International Production
Technology Transfer and International Production

Author: Jin W. Cyhn

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2002-03-27

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 9781782542254

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"This book analyses the technology development efforts of Korea's electronics industry (the country's largest exporter). It asks how the Korean electronics industry was able to develop, both in terms of production and technology, despite low inflows of licensing and foreign direct investments. The books argues that the key to its spectacular growth has been through its participation and learning from an inter-firm arrangement called original equipment manufacturing arrangement (OEM). A number of firm-level case studies on the Korean electronics industry support this argument. The role of the government, especially related to its technology policy, has also been analysed. The government was effective in providing financial incentives for the firms' technological upgrading efforts, but its supplying of direct technological assistance had limited success. Overall, this book argues that contrary to many previous studies, the role of multinational enterprises has been significant in the development of Korea's electronics industry, and that they have acted as a 'technological tutor' for Korea through OEM"--P. xiv.tributors, world 0̲.