Preface

This book is focuses on the overseas development aid provided by Korea to developing countries, exploring in particular how the effectiveness of this aid might be strengthened. In this context, it discusses how Korea’s excellent intellectual properties can be integrated with applied social and economic methodologies, so that they can be of service in underdeveloped countries. The ultimate goal of official development assistance is to improve the incomes and quality of life of the citizens of the underdeveloped countries receiving aid. Job creation is of cardinal importance here in bringing about improvements in incomes, and ultimately, support should be provided to improve equality of life in various different fields.
However, even if a range of facilities are installed in underdeveloped countries and equipment is transferred, ultimately, if local residents cannot use these to create new jobs so as to bring about stable income improvements, the aid will have had no results. Countries are constantly being forced to depend on foreign aid. The virtuous circle of rapid economic growth, job creation and personal income improvement in the 1960s and 1970s is the reason why Korea is the only country in the world to have received aid in the past which is itself able to provide aid today. Its example leads us to conclude that one of the important directions that aid to underdeveloped countries should take lies in creating an abundance of jobs in the recipient countries.
If Korean aid can create numerous jobs in the recipient countries, and can contribute to income improvements in those countries while at the same time allowing the development of industries in the international development co-operation sector in Korea which provides the aid, this will represent a highly desirable direction for international development co-operation to take in the future. With this aim in view, the present writer is engaged in academic research employing a range of methodologies, in the hope that the products of Korea’s outstanding intellectual capital can be grafted onto the social economy and revitalized, not only in the recipient countries, but also in Korea itself. If Korea’s excellent intellectual attainments can contribute to job creation and income growth for residents of recipient countries, and if at the same time industries that utilize this intellectual property in a social and economic capacity are revitalized in Korea, this will provide a strong opportunity to create a new field of international development cooperation.
Conceived against this background, this book is a compilation of articles the writer has published in various academic journals. It is published with the help of the Support Program for the Humanities and the Social Sciences Research Institute which the National Research Foundation of Korea has provided. I wish to express my deep gratitude to the Foundation for supporting the publication of this book. My hope is that, if it can contribute even a little to the field of Korea’s aid projects to developing countries, these projects, which are daily growing in size, may become more effective in the future.

Young-Chool Choi,
Cheongju City, April 2022