Routledge Advances in Korean Studies, no. 25. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2018. xiii, 313 pp. (Tables, graphs, figures, maps.) US$140.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-415-78789-5.
South Korea (henceforth Korea) is one of the great global success stories of the second half of the twentieth century. A dirty, poor, and ravaged nation in the 1950s and 1960s, it has become a major economy with a vibrant democracy within only two generations. At present, Korean products, and increasingly culture such as K-pop, are part of the daily lives of people around the world. What role did public administrators and public policy play in the remarkable transformation of Korea is the question likely to motivate scholars and others to read Public Administration and Policy in Korea: Its Evolution and Challenges. However, once reaching the end of the volume, the reader is struck by how little explanation is found for the compressed modernity that characterizes Korea.
This is not to say that the book is not a valuable addition to the rapidly growing literature on contemporary Korea. It is a useful albeit uneven collection for those wishing a general overview of public administration and policy in Korea, especially those interested in the presidents that have ruled the nation since 1948. The role of a strong presidency in Korea means that the individual elected to this position has largely unfettered domestic power during a single five-year term in comparison to other democracies; a consequence, which finds expression in many chapters, is to attribute all policy and administrative reforms to that individual and his or her personal ideology.
The second strength of the volume is the effort to combine discussion of public administration (how government works or its mechanics) with public policy (what government does and its priorities). This avoids the artificial boundary between administration and policy that quickly falls apart when examining any real-world situation. The second part of the book (chapters 4 to 9) is largely on the mechanics of government, while both the first part and the last part combine discussion of the mechanics with the ideology that motivated particular state actions.
The final strength of the book are the last four chapters on the key problems facing the Korean government with regard to social, environmental, information technology, and urban policies. For example, chapter 13 on urban and regional development illustrates how successive administrative tactics, including construction of new cities and a thwarted effort to build a new capital city, have sought to limit the population growth of the mammoth Seoul metropolitan region.
Largely missing in the book is a discussion of how Korean public administration has been shaped by the long history of the Korean Peninsula, notably the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910) and Japanese rule (1910–1945). Only in chapter 7 on administrative culture is the reader granted insight on the impact of traditional and Confucian values—such as paternalism and nepotism—on public administration. This chapter compellingly argues that public administration in Korea must be understood “as a product of the clashing and blending of traditional (authoritarian) and modern (democratic) cultures and of Eastern and Western administrative cultures” (153).
The role of the military from which many high-ranking public administrators were recruited in the 1960s and 1980s receives no attention in the book. There is no analysis or even mention of how senior public servants are trained or recruited at the present time. Are these invariably, as in France, graduates of a small number of elite schools, or are they drawn more widely? Is there flow of executives between the public and private sectors, especially the chaebol that dominate key sectors of the economy, and if so, what are the implications? Unfortunately, public administrators themselves remain entirely hidden throughout the book. There is no indication if these are mostly men, nor any indication of what they are paid relative to other sectors of the labour market.
As noted at the beginning of this review, the major attraction of the book for potential readers is an account of the role of public administration and public administrators in the transition from dictatorship to democracy, and from economically disadvantaged to economic powerhouse. The book suggests a neutral, non-partisan bureaucracy that has faithfully implemented the wishes of powerful presidents. Yet, such a picture is surely inadequate. For instance, recent research convincingly demonstrates that public administrators mainly in the finance and economics departments have been a powerful force for decades in shaping policy in Korea, including retarding the establishment of key components of the welfare state (Jae-jin Yang, The Political Economy of the Small Welfare State in South Korea, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
In summary, the volume is a solid introduction to contemporary public administration and policy in Korea, especially for those seeking a broad and general overview. However, for readers seeking an explanation of how and why public administration aided or hindered Korea’s success since the end of the Korean War, or for lessons learned that might apply to other nations in Asia, or even for a glimpse into the future of the nation, this is not the place to look.
Thomas Richard Klassen
York University, Toronto, Canada