WHA Annual Meeting: Korea 2026

This session explores how U.S. aid and transnational mobility reshaped South Korea’s institutions, infrastructures, and state formation from the 1950s to the 1970s. Moving beyond a state-centric diplomatic narrative, the panel approaches aid as a multidirectional process involving the circulation and appropriation of people, knowledge, technology, and financial models across Cold War East Asia.
The papers shed light on different dimensions of these mobilities. One analyzes the contested movement of Zainichi Koreans in Japan, highlighting how repatriation and border control regimes exposed the tensions between mobility and sovereignty. Another explores the reconstruction of the Seoul–Busan highway, showing how military-led infrastructure projects facilitated the transfer of technical expertise and the growth of civilian engineering capacity. A third investigates the establishment of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science (KAIS), demonstrating how American technical assistance was selectively appropriated to institutionalize scientific expertise and consolidate a developmental state. The final paper considers U.S. aid officials’ perceptions of traditional rotating credit associations (kye) and their relationship to agricultural cooperatives, revealing how local financial practices were reconfigured within broader development frameworks.
Together, these studies questions the assumption that the South Korean developmental state emerged from domestic initiative or American imposition to emphasize complex negotiations within Cold War transnational networks. By foregrounding mobility and institutional transformation, this session attempts to situate Korean history within wider debates in Cold War studies, development history, and global history.