Centralization Forces of Socioeconomic Activities and Decentralization Policies in Korea

The process of development in many developing countries is assumed to evolve through a series of stages; the nature of this development process will depend on a number of factors. These factors include the structure of the economy in terms of its endowed resources, state of technology, availability of entrepreneurial talent as well as its position in the world economy from the perspective of the competitiveness of its products on the world market. In addition, the nature of the political structure and the legacy of past colonial and neo-colonial occupation combined with cultural factors will serve to accelerate or retard the expected progress of development. These essentially empirical aspects of the economy may then be placed into some conceptual framework, drawing on received theory, against which actual progress may be compared or evaluated.