Explaining the Path Dependency of Smart City Policy in South Korea: An Evolutionist Interpretation

This paper contributes to understanding of international variations in smart city practices by examining the role of institutional inertia and inter-organisational policy mobility. In formulating smart city policies, South Korean bureaucrats adhere more closely to the traditional Korean industrial policy model than to smart city concepts prevalent in global academia or Western policy circles. This Korean model—often referred to as developmentalist industrial policy—epitomises the state’s leading role in economic development. It was one of the main drivers of South Korea’s rapid economic growth in the 1970s and 1980s. The model has become less effective in recent decades because the growth of the private sector has surpassed the state’s capacity to provide incentives and coordination. Nonetheless, the lingering memory of past successes continues to influence public opinion and political leaders’ decision-making, leading bureaucrats to shape their own agenda in the form of developmentalist industrial policy. We argue that this tendency is why South Korean smart city policies has become for the most part industrial policies rather than improvements to urban public services, as observed in Western Europe and North America.