Globalizing a rural past: The conjunction of international development aid and South Korea’s dictatorial legacy

• Developmental state, developmental dictatorship and mass dictatorship are reviewed.
• Legacies of developmental dictatorship evolve and persist after democratization.
• Saemaul Undong became a national imaginary of economic growth after dictatorship.

Saemaul Undong is an international development aid model that has recently gained international currency. It originated in a rural development campaign led by a South Korean authoritarian regime in the 1970s. What enabled the campaign’s global transformation, and what are its implications? To answer these questions, this research examines the relationship between dictatorship and development by reviewing the literatures on developmental state, developmental dictatorship, and mass dictatorship. Park Chung Hee’s authoritarian regime employed a discursive strategy of presenting the campaign as an opportunity of contributing to national development—a development defined only in economic terms—and secured participation from rural communities that had desired progress. At the wake of a national debt crisis in the post-authoritarian era, various non-governmental and quasi-governmental actors elevated the campaign into a political and economic imaginary that allegedly merits international replication in their efforts to practice the discourse of national development. This imaginary was institutionalized into an international aid model, which the Park Geun-hye administration abused for its glory. The findings of this research show that, unlike the liberal claim that democracy follows economic development, the legacies of developmental dictatorship may persist through evolution even after formal democratization. Attempts at the uncritical replication of Saemaul Undong in the Global South risk reproducing the reductionist definition of development that overlooks political development. As the country is still paying the cost of its dictatorial legacy, the true lessons from South Korea’s development experience can be found in its prolonged struggle for democracy.