Weaving through Paradoxes: Democratization, Globalization and Environment Politics in South Korea

Abstract

South Korea has undergone a profound economic transformation over the past five decades. From a dirt poor country of per capita income of $89 in 1961, it has emerged as one of the most powerful economies in the world. Per capita income had risen to almost $10 000 by the year 2000. It now has the thirteenth largest economy in the world. Beneath the miraculous economic transformation lie the workings of the developmentalist coalition that has crafted the political and institutional foundation for rapid economic growth (Lee, 1992; Evans, 1995; Weiss and Hobson, 1995; Maxfield and Schneider, 1997; Moon, 1998). It is through the developmentalist coalition that the South Korean government had been able to implement the policies of ‘growth first, distribution later’ and ‘growth first, environmental integrity later’. Such orientation might have been inevitable in order to overcome the vicious circle of poverty and underdevelopment, to mobilize resources, and to expedite the process of industrialization.