The Soyang River Dam, in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province, discharges water in this July 19, 2006 file photo. The construction of multi-purpose dams was a milestone in Korea’s economic growth. Compared to other countries under similar economic conditions, Korea not only achieved successful national development in a short period of time, but also managed to sustain the growth rate in spite of a slight setback in 1997 during the Asian financial crisis. / Korea Times

By Kim Pan-suk
Professor of Public Administration at Yonsei University, Wonju Campus

Korea is one of the success stories in development administration. Korea has become a major economic powerhouse. Its growth is a good example of late industrialization, a process in which a nation's industries learn from earlier innovating nations.

The government itself led the industrialization drive. It took on developmental functions to catch up with developed countries.

In general, Korean development was made through concerted efforts of government, business, and an educated labor force. A steady inflow of foreign investment and a favorable international environment are also attributable to this successful development.

In Korea's industrialization, however, the government played a critical role through its industrial policy and state control of finance.

During the period of rapid economic growth, the relationship between government and business has been unusually close, with government clearly in the driver's seat.

The elite bureaucrats within the central government envisaged and mapped the course of industrial, urban and land development.

In fact, Korea was one of the poorest 25 countries in the world in 1960. Its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita was just $82, in 1960 prices. After five decades of rapid growth, Korean GDP based on purchasing-power-parity (PPP) per capita in 2009 was around $20,000, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Consequently, it is fair to say that Korea has accomplished a very compressed form of economic growth in a relatively short period. Korean development also fueled by international aid that . But it is not the key reason for the successful development.

Korea attained the economic growth through its own policy framework and systems.

Alice Amsden, currently professor of economics at MIT, explained the reasons for Korea's phenomenal growth.

She noted Korea's adoption of the principle of reciprocity. The government imposes strict performance standards on those industries and companies that receive state subsidy. discussing state intervention, shop floor management, and chaebol.

In other words, Korea in the five past decades has been a noticeable example of the developmental state, which refers to the phenomenon of state-led macroeconomic planning in the late 20th century.

A developmental country had strong state intervention, extensive regulation and planning. It intervened directly in the economy to promote new industries.

Major characteristics of the developmental state include: protection of fledging domestic industries, focus on foreign technology transfer, a relatively large government bureaucracy, corporatism (alliance between the state, labor and industry), and emphasis on technical education.

For example, the public spending for education was concentrated on primary and secondary education.

A high-level of education (that is, a well educated population in general and a plentiful supply of trained engineers in particular) has been a key determinant of industrialization.

Korean growth was also sparked and sustained by an intensive industrial export-promotion drive. The Korean policy switch was dramatic and vivid.

The incentives for such policy were the adjustment of the exchange rate to a realistic level; tariff exemptions on raw materials for production; preferential export credits; links between import and export performance (those who reached export targets were given permission to import); accelerated depreciation allowances; and tariff exemptions for intermediate goods for export.

The growth of Korean exports was accomplished by the expansion of highly entrepreneurial big business groups. The political leadership also mobilized the leadership of the private sector to work toward the desired goals.

In 1960, W. W. Rostow published a book entitled “The Stages of Economic Growth: A non-communist manifesto” and he developed the Rostovian take-off model of economic growth. According to the model, economic modernization occurs in five basic stages: traditional society, preconditions for take-off, take-off, drive to maturity, and high-mass consumption.

This became one of the core concepts in the theory of modernization and it was widely discussed in many developing countries including Korea.

Overall, the historical development of Korean politics and public administration encompasses four phases: (1) state-building (1948 to 1960) to design a constitutional framework and institutional arrangement; (2) developmental state (1961 to 1979) to industrialize and urbanize society for economic prosperity; (3) democratization (1980 to 1999), which involves enhancing civil and political society simultaneously in order to articulate the citizens’ voices and enhance interaction with other countries across national borders; and (4) advancement (2000 to present) toward more advanced levels. Throughout these phases, the Korean government has made a crucial role in many ways.

Today’s Korean society has become much more mature and democratic than what it was decades ago.

Various, often contradictory, evaluations can be made about a period of the rapid economic growth. Some critics could pinpoint various problems of sociopolitical issues in the past several decades.

David Steinberg, professor at Georgetown University, however, asserts that the Korean government in the 1960s-1970s, although it was an authoritarian government, made a significant contribution for economic development.

It accepted economic development as its first priority. The government was able to maintain economic stability, and capable of making difficult economic policy decisions.

During the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, however, Korea faced a serious challenge.

While the severe recession was relatively short-lived, Korea had no choice but to reform.

Since then, the systems of dirigisme control that lay at the heart of the old growth regime have been gradually dismantled.

The public sector as well as the financial sector has undergone rigorous market-oriented reforms.

Under the neoliberal wind of new public management (NPM), the government also assumed that market-oriented operation of public sector will lead to greater cost-efficiency for governments. Since the government is different from simple market forms, NPM received substantial criticisms around the world. More in-depth analysis must be done on crisis and post-crisis restructuring. But it is noticeable to see the fact that the Asian financial crisis did mark the end of the era of state-led development in Korea.

The changes taking place in Korea are as dense as the compressed growth of the past half century. Globalization and market competition continue to intensify, and the fast transition to a knowledge‐based economy and an aging society with a low-birth rate appears to be the order of the day.

As the Korean national economy faces difficulties following the so-called “growth-first policy,” the government needs to expand a social safety net. In order to meet new challenges stemming from rapid development in globalization and diversification in domestic and international arenas, the government must adopt proactive and creative approaches.

Indicators show that Korea is reaching a level close to that of advanced nations. But there are many new challenges.

For example, the existing current social safety net is not sufficient to cover all the population and tackle the aging population, low fertility, long-term unemployment problems, and the gulf between rich and poor.

The general public demands more participatory and transparent public governance through better communication.

Policymakers must exercise transformational as well as collaborative leadership to gain public trust.

Korea has tried to catch up with advanced countries for the past decades and became an OECD member country in 1996, but it did not simply follow the way the Western countries are managed.

International technical assistance made a substantial contribution to the nation’s growth, but many other important factors made it possible for Korea to grow rapidly: strong leadership with a clear vision for economic development, a high-level of education, nearly homogeneous cultural identity, and hard-working hungry spirits.

One common problem in developing countries, however, is a tendency to try to imitate foreign experiences that have many differences from those of developing countries without a fully independent assessment of the reality.

If a country simply follows the experiences of the advanced countries and mechanically imitates their systems without indigenizing efforts, it is likely to make mistakes or fail.

Some reasons for such problems might include lack of understanding of sociopolitical dynamics between developing countries and advanced countries, and a failure to recognize that every country has a different background in tradition, history, culture and religion and a different path of nation building, industrialization, democratization, modernization, and institutionalization. Therefore, public officials need to develop better competencies and capacities for more collaborative public management in order to handle diverse demands and complicated challenges in an age of collaborative governance and globalization.

Korean development is unique Korean development is unique. Compared with to most countries, Korea has not only achieved successful national development, but has also managed to sustain the growth rate in spite of the decline in growth around 1997 during the Asian financial crisis. Korea in turn saw an accelerated growth. The booming growth in the GDP per capita was registered around the late 1970s followed by robust growth in 1980s. It is quite interesting to see the beginning of the development. Korea was at a lower level ($295) compared with countries like Mexico ($9,964), Argentina ($1,306) which had a much higher GDP per capita in 1970 compared with Korea. For the years until the late 1970s, Korea’s GDP was booming with average GDP annual growth rate set at 8.4 percent (World Bank Estimates) with a slight shift in the middle of 1970s (Korean GDP annual growth rate in 1975 was 6 percent), in contrast, Mexico's average GDP annual growth rate for the 1970s was 6 percent with a sharp decline in the period 1973-1977 from 7.9 percent to 3.4 percent and Argentina's average GDP annual growth rate was 3 percent with an unstable growth pattern and sharp decline, from 5.5 percent to minus 2 percent in 1974 to 1976 respectively. This growth rate put the countries in different categories of GDP per capita. For Korea with a high growth rate, the GDP per capita grew from $295 in beginning of the 1970s to $1,852 at the end of the 1970s (1979), while for Mexico the GDP decreased substantially from $9,964 to $5,371 for the same years. The 1980s were a marking point for Korean development. Korea's GDP per capita became much higher than countries like the Philippines, Egypt and Brazil that were at similar level in the 1970s and Mexico and Argentina that were above Korea in 1970. The Average GDP growth for Korea in the 1980s, with double digit growth rate from 1986 to 1988, was 7.6 percent while for Argentina -0.73 percent, Mexico 2.3 percent, Philippines 2.02 percent, Brazil 3 percent, and Egypt 5 percent. These rates significantly affected the countries development. Korea's GDP per capita changed from $1,776 to $5,645 from 1980 to 1989 respectively (in similar period, Mexico from $4,779 to $2,988 (decline), and Argentina from $2,681 to $2,392 (decline). In addition to the change in GDP per capita, sustaining the growth was also very crucial in Korean development history which makes this country's development exceptional, especially in the years before the 1997 financial crisis. According to U.N. data, most countries have difficulty in achieving and maintaining a sustainable growth pattern. In addition, from the graph and the World Bank estimates, it can easily be understood that countries like Argentina, Mexico, Brazil and Egypt had a fluctuating growth pattern that impacted the economic performances of the respective countries. However, Korea led with a sustainable and steady GDP annual growth without facing a middle income trap until the middle of the 1990s that brought Korea to the forefront of countries, as ranked by GDP per capita.

What is development administration? The growth of development administration as a field of study and practice was well institutionalized by the 1960s. The Comparative Administration Group (CAG) was organized in the United States under the auspices of the Ford Foundation in 1962 and led by professor Fred Riggs. Development administration was a popular subject in the 1960-1980s. In Korea, Professor Lee Hahn-been, who became the Dean of the Graduate School of Public Administration at Seoul National University in 1968, introduced a handbook of development administration curriculum. After that, a development administration course has been widely introduced at some universities. According to Fred Riggs, a pioneer of development administration in the U.S., development administration refers to organized efforts to carry out programs or projects to serve developmental objectives. Development administration refers to a government’s efforts not only to carry out programs designed to reshape its physical, human, and cultural environment, but also to enlarge a government’s capacity to engage in such programs. Development administration implies a question of how the ideas and mechanisms of public administration can be used as instruments of social and economic development. The aim of development administration was to distinguish the focus of administration on the support and management of development as separate from the administration of law and order. Development was also often treated as a facet of comparative administration. In the beginning, development administration was viewed as the administration of development, but it is now more or less regarded as both of the administration of development and the development of administration (administrative development). Ali Farazmand, professor of public administration at Florida Atlantic University, says that development administration focuses on: (1) the development needs, mainly economic; (2) the difference in needs of developing and developed nations; (3) the possibility of administering development; (4) transferability of development know-how; (5) the changeability or alterability of the political, social, economic, and cultural conditions of less developed countries; and (6) the developed nations of the industrial West as the model to adopt for achieving developmental goals by the developing nations, with the desired goal to become like the advanced nations. At present, many development experts take note of good governance than development administration. Good governance is crucial for economic development and checking the selfish interests of wealthy elites. For example, many experts view that reliance on trickle-down economic development and a host of other strategies without good governance will not work in less developed countries. Therefore, it is fair to say that a discourse on good governance is currently prevailing widely around the world, while development administration is gradually disappearing from college curricula in many countries including Korea. Nonetheless, development studies or development management as an academic discipline did not disappear because of increasing concern about economic prospects for the developing countries. An increasing number of development experts felt that politics, administration, economics alone could not fully address such issues as political effectiveness and educational provision. Accordingly, development studies or development management re-arose as a result of this, initially aiming to integrate ideas of politics, administration, and economics. Since then, it has become a multidisciplinary branch of social science which addresses issues of concern to developing countries.

Who is the writer? Kim Pan-suk is the director of the Institute for Poverty Alleviation and International Development (IPAID) and Professor of Public Administration in the College of Government and Business (Wonju Campus) at Yonsei University in Korea. After completing his Ph.D. degree in public administration at the American University in Washington, DC, he was an assistant professor at Old Dominion University in Virginia for several years. He has broad experience as an expert in governmental affairs. He had been Secretary to the President for Personnel Policy in the Office of the President of Korea. In 2010, he was elected as the President of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences (IIAS), which is the leading global professional organization in the field of public administration located in Brussels. He is also currently a vice chairman of the United Nations Committee of Experts on Public Administration (UN/CEPA). He has been a Deputy Editor of the International Review of Administrative Sciences (IRAS), the Editor-in-Chief of the Korean Policy Studies Review and the International Review of Public Administration, and an editorial board member of several major international journals. He received several awards including the International Public Administration Award from the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) in 2009.