The Developmental State Goes Litigious: Korea’s Pursuit of WTO Litigation

Once a part of the country’s national champion industrialization plan, conglomerates are now the pillar of Korea’s economy. Korean conglomerates are well-verse in using legal resources to protect their global business and their long-standing collaboration with the Government of Korea (“GOK” hereafter) on trade remedy issues have enhanced the GOK’s capacity and paved the way for it to become an active user of the WTO dispute settlement system. This chapter explains this transformation based on a historical analysis of Korea’s economic structure and policymaking system since the 1980s, when the country began to face mounting trade protectionism. It shows how common interests have forged GOK-conglomerate collaboration at filing WTO litigation over export restriction issues and how their collaboration has advanced over time.