A final flowering of the developmental state: The IT policy experiment of the Korean Information Infrastructure, 1995-2005

In contrast to the private-led initiative typified by the US Information Superhighway project in the early 90s, the Korean government was in the forefront of directing the Korean Information Infrastructure (KII) project (1995–2005), which was aimed at building a nationwide broadband backbone network. This study first looks at how the developmental mechanism of Korea during the KII project signifies the weaker status of the civilian government of the 90s. This study then shows how in the KII project, the government served primarily as a moderator mediating conflicts between the private sector and the relevant public agencies. To describe the close state-capital linkages in the KII project, this study focuses on the government’s financial investment system for enticing the private sector to install the IT infrastructure, the neatly coordinated policy networks between the public and private entities, and the policy discourses by which the government achieved a national consensus on IT-driven economic development.