Big Business, Strong State: Collusion and Conflict in South Korean Development, 1960-1990 (review)

150KOREAN STUDIES, VOL. 23 undertheorized themes and evidence-lacking assertions, combined with editorial gaffs and inconsistent romanizations (Kim Yong Sam, Kim Young Sam, Kim Young-Sam), leave the reader searching for signs in the church-state wilderness. The author and academic press bear full responsibility for failing to review this work, a review that would have indicated the author's plagiaristic reprint, his uneven assessment of church-state history, and his student's abysmal editing! William A. Hayes University of California-Berkeley Big Business, Strong State: Collusion and Conflict in South Korean Development, 1960-1990, by Eun Mee Kim. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. 280 pp. Since the early 1990s, a plethora of new studies have emerged challenging, or at least problematizing, the role of the so-called developmental state in South Korea (and in East Asia more generally). None of these studies, however, has sought to completely or even mostly deny that the state played a central role in helping to create the basis for rapid economic growth; instead, they have generally attempted to provide a more nuanced and dynamic understanding of the relationship between state and capital (or, more specifically, between the state and chaebol). Eun Mee Kim's Big Business, Strong State: Collusion and Conflict in South Korean Development, 1960-1990, falls squarely into this new mode of analysis. Kim, in fact, is quite clear on this point: as she puts it, "A central assumption in the analysis ofthe state and the chaebol in . . . [my] book is that these institutions changed in their internal structure and in the relations between the two institutions as economic development proceeded" (p. 4). To her credit, Kim is also interested in showing how the interplay of the state and the chaebol fit into the "broader context of geopolitics and international economy " (p. 5). In this regard, Kim's objective is to show not only how external factors shaped South Korea's development but how the state and capital in South Korea took advantage of the structural obstacles presented by "international actors and contexts" (p. 8). In short, Kim wants to provide a comprehensive , yet carefully balanced reinterpretation of capitalist development in South Korea. To a significant degree, the author carries through on her promise, although Kim does far less than she could (or should) have done. Big Business, Strong State begins with a discussion ofthe two main institutions ofrapid development in South Korea: the state and the chaebol (in chapters 2 and 3 respectively). While Kim breaks little or no theoretical ground in either of these two chapters, she does provide a very useful analysis of the BOOK REVIEWS151 developmental state. In chapter 2, for example, Kim notes that we should think of the developmental state as existing along a continuum, from comprehensive to limited. The "comprehensive developmental state," in Kim's framework , is the one most of us are familiar with: economic development is its raison d'être and economic leadership is its primary mode of operation (p. 33). By leadership, Kim means that the state plays a critical role not only in designating the specific sectors to be developed in the economy, but in using its control over economic resources to get businesses to invest in state-designated sectors, even when they "are reluctant to do so . . ." (p. 32). More important (and more interesting) than Kim's description of the comprehensive developmental state, however, is her discussion ofhow and why developmental states change. In this respect, Kim argues that the comprehensive developmental state is inherently unstable: as economic development goals are met, it necessarily becomes less powerful and less capable of leadership; that is, it moves along the continuum toward a more limited role—this is true even for a "developmental-authoritarian state." The reason for this, according to the author, stems from two unavoidable contradictions: the "contradiction of institution" and the "contradiction of autonomy" (p. 43). The former contradiction "lies in the fact that the services provided by the comprehensive developmental state are not inherently against the interests of the private sector" (p. 45), while the latter contradiction "lies in the fact that the autonomy of the state will face increasing erosion ifit is successful...