1. Introduction
Sixty years ago, South Korea (henceforth Korea) was one of the poorest countries
in the world. Today, Korea is reasonably well-to-do, with a living standard comparable
to that of lower-end advanced industrial countries. If ever there was a country
deserving of the term economic ‘miracle,’ it is indeed Korea.
What happened, of course, was rapid economic growth. After having been
devastated by war from 1950 to 1953, the Korean economy then stagnated for about
a decade. However, Korea’s economic growth took off in the mid-1960s. Korea’s per
capita GDP grew by about 7.0% from 1963 to 1979, and about 6.5% from 1980
up to 1996. Korea was then hit by a crisis in 1997 and growth slowed somewhat,
but the growth rate still remains high relative to global standards. The growth of
Korea’s per capita GDP has actually been the fastest in the world over the last sixty
years, as shown in Table 1. Considering that the growth rate worldwide is much higher
in the last sixty years than in earlier periods, as can be inferred from Table 1, Korea’s
growth spurt is the single largest to date in world economic history.