Dennis L. McNamara

The Keisho and the Korean Business Elite

A successful pattern of close ties between the state and large-scale private enterprise in Japan and Korea has attracted the attention of scholars, policymakers, and businessmen. The prewar Japanese state (Moulton 1931; Lockwood 1955; Nakagawa 1983) with its distinctive methods of promoting private enterprise played a major role in this eminently successful case of a “late developing” (Gerschenkron 1966; Rosovsky 1961) society. It also provides an early example of what has recently been termed a “capitalist development state” (Johnson 1987). Studies of prewar business-state relations have distinguished business policy associations as major loci of state ties with Japanese firms (Ishida 1968; Tiedemann 1971; Heidenheimer and Langdon 1968), thereby offering insight into the formation of an entrepreneurial elite and the role of private enterprise in state-directed development efforts.

Business innovation in Asia : knowledge and technology networks from Japan

1. Business, Knowledge, and Networks 2. Insulation versus Regional Integration 3. Commerce and the East Asian Community 4. National Interest versus Regional Innovation 5. Electronics Sector: Global Modules and Local Minds 6. Automotive Sector: Global Models and Local Minds 7. Textiles and Fashion: Global Designs and Local Minds 8. Mapping Knowledge Networks

Reincorporation and the American State in South Korea: The Textile Industry in the 1950s:

The development of South Koreas cotton manufacturing industry during the First Republic (1948–1960) is examined as a way to better understand the process of “reincorporation” of a peripheral state into the postwar capitalist world system. An examination of the character of cotton manufacturing in South Korea, and the role played by the United States in reincorporating the former Japanese colony into an American-dominated world system, suggests the process was largely one of “constrained bureaucratic expansion.” The study illustrates how the earlier process of incorporation under Japanese hegemony shaped subsequent reincorporation under American suzerainty. Additionally, the analysis underscores the importance of geopolitical factors, and the interaction of the local situation with the world system in shaping the process of reincorporation.

Comparative Colonial Response: Korea and Taiwan

A comparison of the responses of Korea and Taiwan to Japanese colonization during the early years of the twentieth century does much to clarify the distinctiveness of the Korean reaction to Japanese rule. The presence and strength of structural bases for ethnic autonomy in Korea, at least through 1919, encouraged the survival of an indigenous racial identity, despite the imposition of colonial structures. This survival reflected a history of political and economic autonomy in Korea, and was central to the subsequent evolution of Korean nationalism.

Global Adjustment in Korean Textiles

A combination of chronological compression and coordination of serial production has distinguished global adjustment in Korean textiles. Compression denotes the rapid progression from origins to maturity and then decline in what has become one of the world’s leading textile manufacturing and exporting nations. One consequence of rapid development has been inconsistencies in the formation of independent industry institutions necessary for adjustment, such as industry associations. Coordination denotes matching supply and demand along a long domestic line of production for export. This line stretches from upstream synthetics and spinners, all the way down to fashion and garments. Three distinct patterns of coordination have dominated the Korean production line. 1) Intra-firm coordination within textile chaebol such as Kabool, Kolon, or Tongkook demand extensive investments upstream and downstream, but permit economies of scale and scope, and facilitate planning and quality control. 2) Inter-firm coordination by the Korean Federation of Textile Industries [KOFOTI] mobilizes state and industry support for extending and refocusing the production line, but remains hampered by excessive competition within the industry, and by conflicting demands between smaller and larger producers. 3) Industry-level supervision of the production line through state control of quotas, trade relations, prices, labor, and on raw material imports, as well as through macrolevel state controls in finance and trade. This paper focuses on the role of associations in global adjustment. Three levels of co-ordination were critical in addressing the market imperfections of a fast-growing industry, particularly in finance and in balancing production for domestic and foreign markets until recently. I conclude that without a greater role for industry associations in the face of state withdrawal from industry-level coordination, contention rather than productive competition will hamper adjustment along South Korea’s long production line.

Imperialism, Resistance, and Reform in Late Nineteenth-Century Korea: Enlightenment and the Independence Club (review)

neoclassical argument goes, to reduced saving, misallocation of scarce funds, and rent-seeking activities which have no directly productive role in the economy. The puzzle is, therefore, how Korea has managed to achieve rapid economic growth when the government employed various selective incentives throughout the 1960s and 1970s. As an answer to this puzzle it has been suggested that the Korean economy would have done better if there had been no selective incentives. Such a counterfactual argument would hardly convince anybody but those with a dogmatic faith in the efficacy of a free-market system. What this World Bank report fails to do is to enlighten the reader on the advisability of using selective incentives. Clearly if the report is going to be read by policy makers in developing countries for possible lessons to be drawn from the experience of Korea, they should be able to decide after reading it whether or not the path taken by the Korean government—reliance on selective incentives initially and then on functional incentives later—is the optimum path to follow. There is neither theoretical nor empirical guidance on this issue in the literature on economic development, and those looking for it in this report will find none here either.