Korea's Five-Year Economic Plans and Their Impacts

When we examine the process of economic development in Korea, focusing on the five-year economic plans and their impacts, we find that the Korean economy has succeeded in achieving remarkable growth under the leadership of the government through an export-oriented development strategy based on imported capital and technology. The positive effects were rapid growth, the modernization of industrial and export structures, and increases in exports and saving. On the other hand, the negative features of export-oriented development strategies were the high dependency on foreign countries, the disparity between agriculture and manufacture, the inequality of income, the uneven growth between large and small firms, import-augmenting export, the low level of domestic technology, and inflation. In particular, given the current state of the Korean economy, the importance of technological development is highly and appropriately emphasized.