MODERNIZATION OF SOUTH KOREA: ORIGINS, ACHIEVEMENTS, AND THE EXPERIENCE FOR UKRAINE

Abstract

Considered the causes and results of the economic achievements of South Korea, which for one generation’s lifetime had managed to leapfrog from poverty to the top of the world’s advanced economies. Analyzed the similarity between the problems of the Republic of Korea, which has been at war with its northern neighbor for more than 70 years, and Ukraine since 2014, as both countries are at the epicenter of strategic conflicts in Eurasia, in which basic interests of world powers collide. Confucianism is analyzed as a model of social and personal relations that has absorbed the wisdom and experience of the millennia-old civilization, demonstrated its exceptional viability, capacity to dynamically modernize and creatively assimilate the achievements of other cultures and civilizations. There is a unique synthesis of values of the two most competitive systems of work ethic in the modern world – Confucianism and Protestantism, which ensured the phenomenal success of the South Korean modernization. It is argued that the very combination of strong socially responsible state, competitive structural democracy and social and labor ethics based on the amalgam of Confucian and Christian values gave effect to the “Miracle on the Han River.” It is shown that Ukraine and South Korea have a common position on the key issues of world order as well as promising bilateral relations, whereas the South Korean experience of economic modernization and development is of interest to Ukraine. Promising areas of Ukrainian-South Korean economic cooperation, such as electronics and IT technologies, renewable energy, aerospace and aviation industry, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and healthcare are substantiated. Ukraine may benefit from the ROK’s positive experience in developing such areas as private entrepreneurship, small and medium business support, that would help practically solve the problem of microcredit and attract investment in the real sector of Ukraine's economy.