National Development of South Korea and Taiwan: a Different Case of Dependency Theory.

Dependency literature has emerged as a powerful ideological vehicle joining Third World nationalists and Marxists since the beginning of the 1970s. South Korea and Taiwan have maintained dependent relationships with their core countries--the U.S. and Japan. But the national development of South Korea and Taiwan cannot be explained only by uniform dependency theory, whose main arguments are (1) the higher the level of dependency, the more the level of inequality; (2) the higher the level of dependency, the slower the rates of economic growth, and whose main concern is only on external factors--the relationship between the core and periphery country. South Korea and Taiwan are two fast growing economies in the Far East (the average growth rate of GNP from 1960 to 1980 in South Korea: 8.7 per cent; that in Taiwan: 9.7 per cent). They have also been classified as countries whose inequalities represent two of the lowest in the world. The national development of South Korea and Taiwan should be analyzed in terms of both external and internal factors. Education has been one of the most important internal factors for their national development. For explaining how education has contributed to the national development of South Korea and Taiwan, in chapter III, the legacy of education and in chapter IV, the educational policies since 1945 have been analyzed. In chapter V, the economic aspects of education have been quantitatively analyzed. Those results have been compared with those in Latin America. Chapter VI has examined the relationship between equality and education in South Korea and Taiwan. Those relationships also have been compared with those in Latin America. South Korea and Taiwan have maintained six kinds of legacies of education from Confucianism, Japanese colonialism, and life environment (vegetable civilization): (1) education = a good aspect; (2) education = a good tool for increasing social mobility; (3) docility = a good thing; (4) cramming education; (5) a belief that they have to study hard; and (6) diligence = a good thing. We cannot find such legacies in Latin America. South Korea and Taiwan have implemented more positive educational policies than has Latin America. The finding in chapter V is that education in South Korea and Taiwan has more strongly affected economic development than education has done in Latin America. . . . (Author's abstract exceeds stipulated maximum length. Discontinued here with permission of author.) UMIPh.D.Political scienceUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/160042/1/8412254.pd