W. W. Rostow et son discours sur l'économie en Corée du Sud dans les années 1960

Abstract

Walt W. Rostow became famous through his book “the stages of economic growth” : an anticommunist manifest that was published in 1960. As an economic adviser to American presidents Kennedy and Johnson, he developed the idea that American aid to development, by providing economic growth in the Third World, was the best defence against economic threat. In this perspective Third World elites had to be educated and first the military. Efforts had to be made toward countries having accumulated before the “take-off” : Greece, Philippines, Taiwan, Turkey and South Korea. In that last countries, Rostow’s ideas reverberated to an important echo, to the point that the “take-off” became a major theme of political action in Korea. The success of Rostow’s ideas contributed to both the Americanization of Korean society and to the affirmation of a Korean way of development. Rostow himself considered South Korea indeed as the most suitable example for makings his theories valid.