ABSTRACT
This edited volume is about South Korea (hereafter Korea). More specifically, it offers a critical examination of Korea’s past growth; recent crisis; and contemporary restructuring, struggles, and challenges. Most neoliberal as well as left-Keynesian/ statist economists celebrate Korea as a capitalist success story, although they have different explanations for the country’s success. We disagree with this characterization of the Korean experience. In brief, as we argue below, the country’s past growth was heavily dependent on historically specific conditions (including a powerful state and a supportive international economic environment), and came at high cost for most Koreans (based as it was on dictatorship and exploitation). Eventually, contradictions generated by this growth, which were intensified by changing international conditions, triggered a crisis that has undermined past industrial achievements and increased competitiveness pressures, leading to deteriorating living and working conditions for the majority of Koreans. In short, we believe that our collective examination of the Korean experience offers important insights into the limits of and contradictions inherent in capitalist growth.
