Neo-liberalism in post-crisis South Korea: Social conditions and outcomes

South Korea's post-war development pattern has been considered to be a developmental state model, where the basic institutional framework was the “state-banks-chaebol nexus.” Since the financial crisis of 1997, however, the country has been swiftly transformed from the developmental state model and has acquired more neo-liberal characteristics. This has been made possible through intense reforms implemented by the post-crisis South Korean government under the IMF's guidance and encouraged by domestic political, ideational, and social conditions. Among those, significant conditions for this swift transformation include chaebols' legitimacy problems, neo-liberal consensus among the domestic elite, democracy hijacked by neo-liberalism, and the role of some NGOs. As social outcomes of the transformation, we find the enlarged presence of transnational capital, increased labour flexibility, inequality and poverty, and an increasing cultural gap in the country. Huge social costs of such neo-liberal transformation necessitate an alternative path of political economy.