ABSTRACT
Along with Taiwan Province of China, Korea ranked among the first of the newly industrializing economies (NIEs) in the 1970s, when it became a model of the rapid growth to be achieved through exports. Many have told the story of Korea's success with this industrialization strategy, parti cularly in the period from 1 96 1 , when Park Chung Hee came to power in a coup d'etat, to the mid-1 980s. 1 But as Korea's current crisis demonstrates, the future cannot be simply extrapolated from this past.
