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This course provides a comparative and historical perspective on Korea’s development, with a focus on its political economy. One of the poorest countries in the world at the beginning of the 1960s, Korea joined the ranks of high-income industrial democracies within a generation, becoming a member of the OECD in 1996. The course will examine how the government and the private sector made joint efforts to address innovation and coordination externalities to promote development while minimizing negative government externalities, such as corruption, as well as how they developed “a big-push partnership” in which the government shared the investment risks of the private sector and provided support largely based on performance in competitive global markets. Students will also explore how Korea pushed ahead with a coordinated and broad-based program of trade, industrial, and human resource development by balancing human development, social cohesion, and economic growth.