Researcher ORCID Identifier
0009-0006-5988-9491
Graduation Year
2026
Date of Submission
5-2026
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
History
Reader 1
Dr. Wendy Lower
Reader 2
Dr. Albert Park
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
@2026ChristopherJChung
Abstract
This thesis investigates the historical evolution of South Korea's developmental trajectory during the Park Chung-hee era (1961-1979), a period that left an indelible mark on the country's political economy and industrial landscape. Rather than treating Park's regime as its own starting point, this thesis situates it within a longer historical arc beginning with Japanese colonial rule and continuing through Syngman Rhee's aid-dependent republic, arguing that Korea's developmental success was neither institutionally inevitable nor externally engineered, but the product of a historically specific and ideologically driven state-building project. Four primary questions guide this research: what historical conditions shaped the institutional landscape Park inherited and why were those conditions foundational but insufficient on their own; how Rhee's government navigated postwar dependency and whether his economic model constituted deliberate state-building rather than simple mismanagement; how Park constructed his developmental regime and how coercive political structures, including the suppression of labor rights, civil liberties, and political participation, functioned as integral rather than incidental features of Korea's industrialization; and how Park implemented his export-led strategy in practice and what the limits of that strategy reveal about how his legacy should be understood today. Drawing on U.S. diplomatic records, Korean economic planning publications, and Park's ideological writings alongside secondary literature in political economy and East Asian history, this thesis argues that Korea's trajectory was the product of a unique set of circumstances that came together in a specific time and place. Taking this seriously on its own terms and in its full historical context is essential both for how Korea reckons with Park's legacy and for what the rest of the world can realistically learn from it.
Recommended Citation
Chung, Christopher J., "Authoritarian Development & Political Economy of East Asia: The Making of South Korea’s Developmental Regime" (2026). CMC Senior Theses. 4121.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/4121
