The neoliberal transformation of the developmental state in South Korea: The financial sector, reform politics, and global capital

This study addresses the neoliberal transformation of the developmental state in South Korea since from the 1960s through the present focusing on the financial sector, reform politics, and global capital. Chapter One provides a general description of research questions and approaches for the study. Chapter Two examines existing studies of 'neoliberalism' to construct an analytical framework of the South Korean case. This study adopts the analytical perspective to see neoliberalism as 'global financial hegemony' in the postwar period, and it focuses on the relationship and dynamics between neoliberalism as such and the transformation of a 'national economic and financial system'. In Chapter Three, theories of the 'developmental state' and the shaping and transition of the South Korean developmental state between the 1960s and the mid-1990s are discussed. Above all, this study focuses on the financial sector in the historically changing institutional configuration of the developmental state in the country. Chapter Four examines recent historical events such as the 1997 financial crisis in South Korea and swift neoliberal transformations in its political economy following the crisis. This chapter is mainly about 'politics of neoliberal reforms', and it analyzes the socio-political conditions and outcomes of swift neoliberalization in Korea during the post-1997 period. Chapter Five examines post-1997 neoliberal transformations in Korean financial sectors including banks, NBFIs, and securities markets. This chapter focuses on the situation and role of transnational economic actors in the neoliberal transformation of the domestic economy during the post-1997 period. Here, transnational institutional investors in the Korean economic and financial sectors are analyzed. This chapter deals with the questions of establishing 'global financial hegemony' in the process of the intensive neoliberal transformations of a national economic system that had been formerly considered a 'non-liberal and production-oriented' political economy, such as the Korean developmental state. The final chapter summarizes discussions in this study and suggests its implications for further studies.