http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5257-3770
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Abstract
The Korean government has strategically promoted the country’s development assistance policies as an alternative to traditional donors’ failed development promises and disguised neo-imperialist policies. This article questions the adequacy of fit between this narrative of exceptionalism and the reality of Korea’s developmental policy prescriptions. Based on field interviews and an analysis of policy recommendation reports produced by the Economic Development Cooperation Fund’s Knowledge Sharing Program, this article shows that Korea is actually ‘kicking away the ladder’ by offering neoliberal prescriptions that are much more in line with global developmental liberalism than its own promotional narrative suggests. Korea is merely aligning itself with the global development status quo. But these prescriptions ease chaebols’ entry in developing markets and contribute to exporting an oppressive chaebol-led transnational labour regime, notably in the Philippines.
Acknowledgements
I thank an anonymous reviewer of Asian Labour Review as well as the two anonymous reviewers of Third World Quarterly for very constructive comments on an earlier version of this article. I thank the organiser of the interview with the Filipino workers; I am indebted to this person’s friendship and availability.
Notes
1 World Bank, East Asian Miracle.
2 A. E. Kim and Park, “Nationalism, Confucianism.”
3 Stubbs, Rethinking Asia’s Miracle; Glassman and Choi, “Chaebol and the US Military–Industrial Complex.”
4 Amsden, Asia’s Next Giant; H.-J. Chang, East Asian Development Experience; Woo-Cumings, Developmental State.
5 Radice, “Developmental State under Global Neoliberalism,” 1154.
6 Glassman and Choi, “Chaebol and the US Military–Industrial Complex.”
7 Hundt, “Legitimate Paradox”; Y-T. Kim, “Neoliberalism and the Decline”; Pirie, Korean Developmental State; and Pirie, “Korea and Taiwan.”
8 Dent, “East Asia’s New Developmentalism.”
9 Thurbon, Developmental Mindset.
10 Hundt, “Legitimate Paradox,” 249.
11 S-M. Kim, “International Perceptions of South Korea.”
12 H.-J. Chang, Kicking Away the Ladder.
13 Cammack, “G20, the Crisis and the Rise,” 3.
14 Abdelal and Ruggie, “Principles of Embedded Liberalism,” 153.
15 Fairclough, “Critical Discourse Analysis.”
16 Kalinowski and Cho, “Korea’s Search for a Global Role”; and Naím, “Rogue Aid.”
17 Interview, Quezon City, April 2015.
18 Hart-Landsberg, Jeong and Westra, Marxist Perspectives, 212.
19 Retrieved from www.odakorea.gov.kr (accessed March 2, 2017).
20 KOICA, Annual Report, 9.
21 Chung, Moon and Lee, “Saemaul Undong,” 51.
22 Eyben and Savage, “Emerging and Submerging Powers,” 463.
23 Cooper and Mo, Middle Power Leadership; and Schwak, “Branding South Korea.”
24 ECOSOC, Trends in South–South.
25 Jojin, “Becoming and Being a Middle Power,” 332; and see S. Kim, “Bridging Troubled Worlds?,” 805.
26 Interview, KOICA officials, Seongnam, August 2014.
27 Ainslie, “Korean Overseas Investment.”
28 Han, “If You Don’t Work,” 147.
29 Interview, Manila, June 2015, my emphasis.
30 World Bank, East Asian Miracle.
31 Interview, Seongnam, August 2014.
32 KDI, Modularisation of Korea’s Development Experience. See KOICA, Annual Report, 28.
33 KOICA, Annual Report, 28.
34 Y.-T. Kim, “Djnomics,” 478–9.
35 Ibid., 472.
36 See ‘Capitalism of the Barracks’ in Schober, Base Encounters; also Lie, Han Unbound, 64; and Lee, “Surrogate Military,” 657.
37 KOICA, Annual Report, 25.
38 Interview, Seoul, April 2016.
39 Doucette, “Occult of Personality”; Moon, “Cultural Politics of Remembering”; and Kang, “Democratic Performance.”
40 Chun, Munyi, and Lee, “South Korea as an Emerging Donor”; and E.-M. Kim, Kim, and Kim, “Development to Development Cooperation.”
41 Interview with Korean scholar, Paris, January 2014.
42 Kalinowski and Cho, “Korea’s Search for a Global Role”; and Kalinowski and Park, “South Korean Development Cooperation.”
43 Watson, “Global Korea,” 64.
44 The reports were produced between 2014 and 2017, and their selection aimed to guarantee geographical diversity. The number of reports was not predefined; rather, the detailed analysis of reports stopped when data saturation was reached. See Onwuegbuzie and Collins, “Typology of Mixed Methods,” 283–5.
46 Fairclough, Language and Globalisation, 24.
47 Ibid., 37–9.
48 Fairclough, “Critical Discourse Analysis,” 183.
49 Ibid., 190.
50 Carroll, “Working on, through and around the State.”
51 Interdiscursive hybridity is a combination of discourses, including multiple (and sometimes contradictory) genres and styles of discourse. Fairclough, “Discursive Hybridity and Social Change,” 1.
52 Carroll and Jarvis, “Introduction: Financialisation and Development,” 537–8.
53 Ibid., 537.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid.
56 KSP #3, 24.
57 KSP #5, 1.
58 KSP #2, 19.
59 KSP #9, 14.
60 Fairclough, “Critical Discourse Analysis,” 183.
61 Ibid., 110.
62 KSP #3, 127.
63 KSP #12, 80.
64 KSP #10, 49.
65 EDCF, Shaping the Future, 14, 32.
66 Watson, “Beyond the Aid Trap,” 234.
67 Fairclough, Language and Globalisation, 33.
68 KSP #6, 28.
69 KSP #12, 49.
70 KSP #13, 97.
71 KSP #12, 92.
72 KSP #12, 177.
73 KSP #4, 163.
74 KSP #12, 49.
75 Fairclough, “Critical Discourse Analysis,” 35.
76 H.-J. Chang, Kicking Away the Ladder.
77 Hanlon, “Governance as ‘Kicking away the Ladder.’”
78 Wade, “What Strategies Are Viable.”
79 Schwak, “Dangerous Liaisons?,” 117–8.
80 Ibid., 114.
81 Ibid., 121. See also Y.-T. Kim, “Korean Elites,” 25.
82 Y.-T. Kim, Bureaucrats and Entrepreneurs, 448, 450; and Kalinowski, “Politics of Market Reforms.”
83 Schwak, “Dangerous Liaisons?,” 6.
84 Dent and Randerson, “Korean Foreign Direct Investment”; Jeong, Crisis and Restructuring; and Sachwald, Going Multinational.
85 D.-O. Chang, Labour in Globalising Asian Corporations.
86 Last available data published by the Korean government. Available at: http://www.odakorea.go.kr/eng.result.RegionCountry_Overview.do (accessed February 18, 2019).
87 Kalinowski and Park, “South Korean Development Cooperation”; and Schwak, “Dangerous Liaisons?”
88 Available at: http://www.odakorea.go.kr/eng.result.RegionCountry_Overview.do (accessed February 18, 2019). In 2018, total ODA to the Philippines amounted to 1 billion USD according to the Philippines News Agency.
89 Seachon and Kyla,”South Korean ODA.”
90 Schober, “Building a City,” 495.
91 Schober, “Between a Rock and a Stormy Place,” 475.
92 Hyun Ju Ock, “Locals Call for Stop to Korea’s ODA Project in Philippines.” Korea Herald, April 15, 2018; author’s interview with representative of a national platform of Korean CSOs working in the development sector, KofiD, Seoul, November 2015.
93 Louise Maureen Simeon, “Philippines Gets Single Biggest ODA from Korea,” The Philippine Star, September 4, 2018.
94 Philippines News Agency, “PH, SoKor Discuss USD191-M Projects under ODA,” June 5, 2018.
95 Kwon, “Is It too Early to Talk.”
96 Interview, Quezon City, April 2015.
97 Fairclough, Language and Globalisation, 43.
98 Interview, Quezon City, April 2015.
99 S. Kim and Gray, “Overseas Development Aid,” 651.
100 Hart-Landsberg, Rush to Development.
101 Gray, “Global Uprising of Labour?,” 483.
102 Pirie, Korean Developmental State, 183.
103 Author’s calculations based on the latest statistics released by Statistics Korea, available at http://kostat.go.kr/portal/eng/pressReleases/5/1/index.board (accessed February 23, 2018). Temporary employees, daily workers and self-employed workers were categorised as irregular workers (11,604), while the total employed population reached 25,247. Unpaid family workers were excluded from the calculation.
104 http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2018/07/23/2018072301344.html (accessed September 2, 2018).
105 Kim and Gray, “Overseas Development Aid,” 656.
106 Interview, Quezon City, April 2015.
107 J. Kim, Chinese Labour in a Korean Factory.
108 Schober, “Building a City,” 496.
109 Schober, “Precarity, by Comparison,” 4, 6.
110 Interview, Quezon City, April 2015.
111 Interview, Seoul, November 2015.
112 Interview, Seoul, November 2015.
113 Cammack, “G20, the Crisis and the Rise,” 2–3.
114 Banks and Hulme, “New Development Alternatives,” 193; and DeHart, “Remodeling the Global Development Landscape,” 1371.
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Juliette Schwak
Juliette Schwak is an Assistant Professor of International Relations and Political Science at Franklin University Switzerland. She has published work on nation branding and Korea’s development assistance policies.