“South Korea’s market-initiated corporate restructuring turned into a state-driven system reform — and the target of that reform, the giant family-owned business groups known as chaebŏl, ended up instead being rejuvenated.”

South Korea remains a puzzle for political economists. The country has experienced phenomenal economic growth since the 1960s, yet its upward trajectory has been repeatedly diverted by serious systemic crises, followed by spectacular recoveries. The recoveries are often the result of vigorous structural reforms that nonetheless retain many of South Korea’s traditional economic institutions. How, then, can South Korea suffer from persistent systemic instability and yet prove so resilient? What remains the same and what changes?

The contributors to this volume offer insight into these questions by considering the South Korean economy in its larger political context. Moving beyond the easy dichotomies — equilibrium vs. disequilibrium and stability vs. instability — they describe a complex and surprisingly robust economic and political system. Further, they argue that neither systemic challenges nor political pressures alone determine South Korea’s stability and capacity for change. Instead, it is distinct patterns of interaction that shape this system’s characteristics, development, and evolution.

 Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Between Functional and Political Explanations | Byung-Kook Kim

SECTION I Patterns and Processes of Change

2. A Search for Institutionally Complementary Reform | Byung-Kook Kim

3. Continuity and Change in South Korea’s Chaebŏl Reform Since the Asian Financial Crisis | Dukjin Chang, Eun Mee Kim, and Chunwoong Park

SECTION II Forces of Change in Corporate Restructuring

4. Presidential Power, Political Parties, and Corporate Restructuring in South Korea | Jung Kim

5. State Coordination in Transition and Corporate Restructuring in South Korea | Joo-Youn Jung

6. Financial Regulation and Corporate Restructuring in Korea | Heon Joo Jung

7. The Role of Foreign (Direct) Investment in Corporate Governance Reform in South Korea | Eun Mee Kim, Nahee Kang, and Ji Hyun Kim

SECTION III Consequences of Change

8. Enterprise Unions and the Segmentation of the Labor Market | Jiyeoun Song

9. Welfare Institutional Change in South Korea | Ito Peng

 Editors

Byung-Kook Kim is chancellor of the Korea National Diplomatic Academy. He has taught at the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Korea University, and was also the Founding director of the East Asia Institute.

Eun Mee Kim is dean and professor at the Graduate School of International Studies and the director of the Institute for Development and Human Security at Ewha Womans University. She is currently the president of the Korea Association of International Development and Cooperation.

Jean C. Oi is the William Hass Professor in Chinese Politics in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. A senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, she directs the Stanford China Program at the Walter H Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and is the director of the newly-established Stanford Center at Peking University.