ABSTRACT
South Korea appeared to be entering the heyday of its modernity since the late 1980s thanks to both rapid economic development and robust political democratization. However, neoliberal globalization – both imposed from outside and embraced from inside – immediately put the country in chilling econosocial crises and transformations that have structurally bipolarized its population and society. This chapter presents a broad overview of South Korea's transformative modernity in citizenship perspective by focusing on its people's transformative contributory rights. Institutional and techno-scientific modernization has been far from an easy task to any postcolonial nation, but even its successful accomplishment has been no guarantee for stable and dignified survival of each nation, especially on the material front. South Korea's developmental political economy has been distinguished by the state's active industrial initiative and managerial intervention, chaebol's state-dependent formation and growth, labor's subordinate yet zealous collaboration, and families' aggressive savings and educational investment.
