The changing dynamics of state-business relations and the politics of reform and capture in South Korea

Abstract

The Choi Soon-sil scandal, which led to the arrest of the de facto leader of Samsung Group Lee Jae-yong and the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye, exposed the ugly features of state capture in South Korea. Although the 1997-1998 financial crisis highlighted the problems of crony capitalism, it has been widely recognized that South Korea overcame the crisis by implementing far-reaching reforms of the chaebol's corporate governance. This article explores why the post-crisis reform failed to end the practices of crony capitalism and why global companies like Samsung engaged in such corruption through a historical case study of Samsung Group. It highlights how increasing inequality and chaebol concentration have produced both popular pressures for institutional reform and incentives for chaebol to capture the policy-making process in the context of the changing state-business-civil society relations in the democratic post-developmental state era. I find that while the main objective of the chaebol's bribery and lobbying of the government before the financial crisis was business expansion through the acquisition of low-interest loans and other government favors, it has changed to weakening or circumventing government regulations on corporate governance in order to achieve easier and cheaper dynastic successions of corporate control.