THE DEVELOPMENT TRAJECTORY THAT LED TO THE UPSWING FOR SOUTH KOREA, AND THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL FOR THE COUNTRY OF ZAMBIA. THE 2008 UNITED NATION DEVELOPMENT REPORT: A THEORETICAL APPROACH

Abstract

According to a report of the United Nations Development Program, UNDP (2008), the African nation of Zambia and the South-East Asian country of South Korea were roughly at equivalent levels of development in 1964. Today, while Zambia is a developmental disaster, South Korea has become an oasis of modern industrial progress. That is why, in 1996, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) recognized Korea’s progress and made the country a member of this exclusive club of rich countries. Axiomatically, South Korea had “graduated” from the status of a developing nation into the ambit of the developed world. With the United Nation Development Report (2008) as part of the background for this research study, our plan is to offer a comparative study of the upswing of South Korea’s economy, and the downward spiral of Zambia’s economy. In particular, our study was to examine the development trajectory for both countries (South Korea and Zambia). Further comparative lessons were drawn from the developmental experiences of the economies of South Korea and Zambia since 1964.  A larger focus of the research was on the transformative roles of South Korea and Zambia in the contexts of economic development and the goals both nations have attained so far. Also provided in the study was a revised developmental model for the two countries.

Keywords: Development, Economic growth, Democracy, Industrialization, and Export.