January 25, 2006 World Bank Knowledge Economy Advisory Service presented: Wonhyuk Lim, Korea Development Institute and Brookings Institution Scholars and policy makers are increasingly attempting to formulate a "new industrial policy" whereby the state attempts to solicit vital information from market and social actors while empowering them to restructure sectors and jointly construct new institutions. The event explored the origins of a now famous Korean Industrial policy. It showed how state capabilities developed step by step, by bootstrapping, and in response to acute economic crisis. Although replication of Korea ’s industrial policy is out of the question, broader lessons of its origin and evolution remain highly relevant for middle income economies. The lessons which were emphasized included issues such as building capabilities to develop and implement pragmatic policy solutions, open-ended design of policies rather than following blueprint solution for reforms and other lessons. This perspective - how government capabilities evolve from initially low starting points rather than taking them for granted as a precondition for growth - is relevant for Latin America and post-socialist economies characterized by highly fragmented innovation systems. This event was a part of a series of seminars on New Industrial and Innovation Policy, a set of interventions which is distinct from the ‘old’ functional/ horizontal industrial policy of the 1980s and 1990s, yet capable of avoiding familiar old pitfalls of ‘picking winners’. Resources  Path Dependence in Action: the Adoption and Persistence of the Korean Model of Economic Development. Background paper. Wonhyuk Lim. June 2003. (PDF, 116Kb)
Growth Miracles Revisited: Origin and Evolution of Korean Economic System.Presentation. Wonhyuk Lim, January 2006. (PDF, 343Kb) For more information, please visit: Speaker Wonhyuk Lim is a CNAPS Fellow at Brookings. He is currently on leave from the Korea Development Institute (KDI), where he is a Fellow in the Department of Industrial and Corporate Affairs. Previously, he taught at the Korea Military Academy and worked as a consultant for the World Bank and Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI). Dr. Lim also served as an advisor for the Presidential Committee on Northeast Asia and for the First Economic Subcommittee of the Presidential Transition Committee after the 2002 Election. His recent publications include Energy Scenarios for the DPRK: Report of the Working Group Convened by the United Nations (New York: University for Peace, 2005, co-authored), Economic Crisis and Corporate Restructuring in Korea: Reforming the Chaebol (Cambridge University Press, 2003, co-edited), and Public Enterprise Reform and Privatization in Korea: Lessons for Developing Countries (Korea Development Institute, 2003). He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford. 
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