Description: Capitalism in South Korea, 1945-2025 provides an interdisciplinary and analytical account of the evolution of South Korea since 1945. This book employs a framework of "compressed development, decompression, and convergence" to better understand Korea's turbulent journey, which has been marked by economic miracles, crises, and, more recently, a slowdown in growth and rising inequality. The book begins by defining "decompression" as political democratization and economic liberalization while demonstrating that economic achievements under the regime of compressed growth enabled the emergence of a Korean middle class that demanded political freedom, facilitating a peaceful transition to democracy in the late 1980s.
