Late Industrialization, Tradition, and Social Change South Korea

Drawing on interviews with bureaucrats in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry as well as workers and others, Yong-Chool Ha demonstrates how the state propelled industrialization by using kinship networks to channel investments and capital into corporations. What Ha calls "neofamilism" was the central force behind South Korea's economic transformation as the state used preindustrial social patterns to facilitate industrialization. Ha's account of bureaucracy, democratization, and the middle class challenges assumptions about the universal outcomes of industrialization.