One of the characteristics of human cognition is the tendency to attempt to place things in categories or to create models to cover many different kinds of situations. Rather than deal with each experience or situation as an individual and unique occurrence, the human brain works to simplify the world by reducing the number of events that it has to analyze or deal with.
Sometimes this is appropriate and helpful. In other instances, the tendency to categorize can become non productive stereotyping or a false association of situations that are unlike. In this paper, the intent is to look at whether or not there is an appropriate model that fits most of the instances of East Asian development and how that model might be described.
To narrow the scope of this exploration, the focus in this paper is on the early development experiences in Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. There are some immediate, and obvious, differences in the post World War II situation in these countries. Japan was the conquered and subdued power that had been overwhelmed at the end of the war by the atomic bomb. Korea had been liberated from Japanese occupation. Taiwan was still in the throes of the conflict in mainland China. So, these were very different situations at the end of World War II. The timeline for development in the countries was, therefore, quite different also.
In looking at Korea, for example, economic development proceeded at two different levels in the country, since for most of the time since World War II, it has been divided into two separate countries. South Korea, supposedly the more democratic country, aligned with the U.S. and the West, experienced rapid growth and industrialization during the past three decades. According to Han and Park (1993), Korea developed into a major manufacturing center and the twelfth largest trader in the global economy. It also had a per capita income of $3,000 in U.S. funds. This was all accomplis...