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Law and Development: Lessons from South Korea

  • Yong-Shik Lee EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: April 21, 2018

Abstract

South Korea has achieved unprecedented economic and social development in history. This country, which had been among the poorest in the world until the early 1960s, became one of the world’s leading economies by the mid-1990s as demonstrated by high per-capita income and world-class industries. In the early 1960s, Korea had much of the characteristics shared by many developing countries today, such as prevalent poverty, low economic productivity, low levels of technology and entrepreneurship in society, insufficient capital, poor endowment of natural resources, over-population in a relatively small territory, and internal political instability and external threats to its security. Korea has successfully overcome these obstacles and achieved economic development within a single generation. Korea’s success in economic development was also accompanied by the advancement of the rule of law and elective democracy by the 1990s. What are the causes of this unprecedented success? This article, applying a recently developed theory of law and development, explores the legal and institutional dimensions of Korea’s development and draws lessons from its successful development.

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Published Online: 2018-04-21
Published in Print: 2018-06-26

© 2018 Law and Development Review

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Introduction
  3. Mapping Law and Development from African Perspectives: An Overview
  4. Legal Pluralism and Effective Governance for Development in Africa
  5. The African Union Agenda 2063 and the Imperative of Democratic Governance
  6. Unpacking Legal Pluralism in Commonwealth Africa – Towards Strengthening Methods for Rule of Law Programming for Development
  7. Demand for Law in the African Private Sector
  8. OHADA and the Making of Transnational Commercial Law in Africa
  9. Corruption in Public Procurement in Lesotho
  10. Law and Industrial Promotion
  11. Law and Development: Lessons from South Korea
  12. Has it Reinvented Iron Law? South Africa’s Social Industrialisation, not Iron Industrialisation
  13. Law–Finance–Growth Nexus in the Context of Africa
  14. Inclusive Industrialization: The Interplay Between Investment Incentives and SME Promotion Policies in Sub-Saharan Africa
  15. Intellectual Property Rights for Development
  16. The Creative Industry and South African Intellectual Property Law
  17. Digital Rights Management System and Administration: A Wake-up Call for Nigeria!
  18. Enforcing Intellectual Property Rights in Nigerian Courts
  19. Poverty and Sustainable Development
  20. De-Growth and Sustainable Development: Rethinking Human Rights Law and Poverty Alleviation
  21. Macro Aid: Applying Microcredit’s Group Liability Principle to Foreign Aid
  22. Law as a Tool for Ensuring Contributions of Small-Scale Women Farmers to Food Security in Nigeria
  23. Law and Natural Resources
  24. The Protection and Promotion of a People’s Right to Mineral Resources in Africa: International and Municipal Perspectives
  25. Justifying Water Rights in Nigeria: Fiction or Achievable Panacea?
  26. Three Mining Charters and a Draft: How the Politics and Rhetoric of Development in the South African Mining Sector are Keeping Communities in Poverty
  27. Addressing Human Rights Concerns in the Extractive Resource Industry in Sub-Saharan Africa using the Lens of Article 46 (C) of the Malabo Protocol
  28. Wildlife Poaching and Rule of Law in Kenya
  29. Good Governance and Development in Botswana – The Democracy Conundrum
  30. Book Review
  31. Yong-Shik Lee: Reclaiming Development in the World Trading System
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