Few developments in South Korean history have garnered as much attention as its rapid economic growth in the second half of the twentieth century. In 1962, its per capita gross national product rank in the world was ninety-ninth, but by 1986, it had jumped to forty-fourth, outpacing other newly industrialized countries such as Brazil and Mexico. This growth has been attributed primarily to two factors: first, the centralizing force of state-led and state-owned modernization policies under Park Chung Hee (1961–79), and second, the colonial legacy of “weak labor,” which played into the strategies of the developmental state. Hwasook Nam, in Building Ships, Building a Nation: Korea's Democratic Unionism under Park Chung Hee, challenges this widely held view that a strong state and “weak” labor were the defining characteristics of South Korean economic development. Instead, Nam argues that the labor movement was far more animated than stagnant, as well as...
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