Invitational development or projected development? Dependency, state and national capital in capitalist development in South Korea

Abstract

South Korea is always pointed out as an example of a country that overcame the middle-income trap, with the upgrading of the productive structure dominated by national conglomerates (chaebols) and a highly competitive international insertion. How this occurred is the subject of heated academic debate. In this article, we identify three lines of interpretation: i) neoclassical/neoliberal, which argues that the South Korean economy was governed by the free-market, mainly since the 1980s; ii) endogenist heterodox, which points to the protagonism of the State; iii) radical dependentist, which emphasizes the positive and determining characteristic of the external context. Alternatively, we emphasize a form of dependent association with the hegemonic power (the United States of America) that propitiated the oligopolistic control of national capital companies in the leading branches of the manufacturing industry. Such association cannot be understood without reference to social conflicts in the Korean peninsula and, in particular, to the policy of the Park Chung-hee government (1961-1979) regarding the capital ownership structure and the project of achieving technological autonomy. Even after the liberalizing reforms forced in part by the hegemonic power in the 1980s and 1990s, the oligopolistic control of national companies in the leading branches of manufacturing industry remained a strategic factor for the maintenance of technological autonomy and for the alliance between the chaebols and the State in the global dispute for markets.