Korea: Authoritarian Growth with Equality

Abstract

In the company of Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea has earned the title of being a member of the ‘gang of four’. The East Asian model of development represents an innovative approach toward economic growth at the vanguard of countries attempting to develop within the new international division of labor. The new emphasis in these attempts has been, since the 1960s, on labor-intensive exports for markets in the advanced industrial countries. The success of this model is easily recognised when one identifies Korea and Taiwan as ‘miracles’ among the newly industrialising countries (NICs). The ‘gang of four’, however, is only one subgroup of NICs, perhaps the most dramatic. Balassa identifies the NICs as those countries whose per capita incomes ranged between $1100 and $3500 in 1978, and whose share of manufacturing in GDP in 1977 exceeded 20 per cent.1 The gang of four’ falls into a group of eleven developing countries (with Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Israel, Mexico, Uruguay and Yugoslavia). Two other groups are made up of four OECD countries and three socialist countries.KeywordsForeign Direct InvestmentIncome InequalityForeign CapitalDependency TheoryImport SubstitutionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.