Korean Politics and the Spirit of Entrepreneurship

The political saga of South Korea is a long and complicated one, with many struggles and pitfalls interspersed with surprising success stories (see D. K. Kim, 2005; Pratt, 2007; Breen, 1998; and Oberdorfer, 2001). It is always difficult to assess the spirit of a nation or to characterize a “people” in one way over another. Ascribing certain characteristics to the Korean people is fraught with danger because Koreans, as with all people, have a vast array of differences and characteristics that make each person unique and each lived experience different from another (Breen, 1998). That being said, it is also the case that the collective experience shared by a group of people also shapes the playing field in which we find ourselves today. The political experience that has shaped South Korea has been fraught with a host of tragic events and many hard-won victories. This chapter seeks to explore the general salient points of Korean political history, particularly over the last century, and, more specifically, to look at how these events moved the Korean nation and people to the specific conditions in which they find themselves today. At the end of this chapter, I speculate as to how these events, in particular democratization and financial reform, might contribute to what can be called the entrepreneurial spirit.