The Bumblebee Economy

Abstract

According to specialists in aerodynamics, the bumblebee is not supposed to be able to fly. The wings are too small and the body is too large, for example. Yet the bumblebee does fly, perhaps not in the most gracious, straightforward manner, but fly it does. That has been the case as well for the South Korean economy. The truly heroic efforts of President Park Chung-hee started the authoritarian developmental state in 1961, and it worked. In the view of some, South Korea literally pulled itself up by its bootstraps (albeit with an exceptionally fortuitous set of circumstances, detailed later). The Korean developmental model, not well understood either by the Koreans or their would-be copiers, rang up the cash registers and annual GNP gains consistently in the 8–9 percent range.¹ This remarkably quick V-shaped recovery of the Korean economy from the 1997 financial crisis is testimony to the durability of a nation of dedicated workers.