Chaebols’ Innovation Management without an Economic Miracle

Abstract

Economic miracles are few and far between in modern human history, suggesting that world economic affairs have persistently upheld a biased division between a few haves and majority of have-nots. Over the post-war years, the Cold War, an era of freer trade, and US hegemony, only eight countries have successfully ascended to the status of what the IMF calls “developed” (i.e., countries exhibiting full political independence with a highly-developed infrastructure, health care facilities, education, culture, a strong middle class, and affluence as measured by national and per capita GDP). These are Israel in the Middle East; South Korea (hereafter, Korea), Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore in East Asia; and the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Slovenia in the former Soviet bloc. In this short list of newly developed countries (two of them being city states), only four are non-European, adding further bleakness to the already gloomy picture of north-south inequality.