Public Sentiment and Politics of Composition of Developmental Strategy: Korea’s Economic Liberalization in the Early 1980s

This paper analyses the change of developmental strategy in Korea’s economic liberalization during the early 1980s through discursive institutionalism. The prevalent views regard Korea’s economic liberalization during this period as a turning point to neoliberalism, meaning the retreat of the state. However, despite austerity and openness, Korea’s economic reform has sustained industrial policy in a modified form, unlike structural monetarism in most Latin American countries. Economic Planning Board’s reformists leading the economic liberalization accepted promotion of strategic industries contradictory to orthodox liberalism strategy based on socially shared developmentalism to persuade other major actors but modified industrial policies for new conditions by reinterpreting it from their neoclassical economics’ idea. This paper argues that change of developmental strategy can be understood through the politics of composition in which major actors form an interactive consensus collectively by changing and adjusting one’s initial policy discourse based on public sentiment.