For most development scholars the East Asian “tigers” have long been a source of wonder and curiosity. Among them, South Korea and Taiwan garnered special attention during the 1980s and 1990s for their increasing per capita incomes, declining rates of inequality, and the fact that they had transcended a predominantly agrarian past to become formidable industrial giants in a remarkably short period of time. Many have pondered why these particular countries achieved considerable economic stability and prosperity while in the same decades so many other late industrializers lurched from one debt, financial, employment, or inflation crisis to the next. What made it possible for South Korea and Taiwan to escape from the trap of problem-ridden import-substituting industrialization and pursue the more profitable export-led industrialization so early on, thereby setting themselves on such a promising path vis-à-vis so many other late developers?

When I began to seek answers to these questions several years ago, after having completed a detailed case study of political and economic development in twentieth-century Mexico, I turned to the case of South Korea first. I was totally unprepared for what I discovered. The regime uniformly identified as responsible for establishing the South Korean development miracle, that of General Park Chung Hee, counted on South Korea's farmers and rural-based small producers as a key political base and cultural reference point.