When the developmental state meets Hollywood: copyright regimes and the opening of Korea’s film market, 1973–1987

This article examines how a developmental state’s market opening unfolds through the interplay of internal and external dynamics, focusing on the liberalization of Korea’s film market. Drawing on newly identified US archival materials from NARA alongside Korean government records, it reconstructs negotiations among the Korean developmental state, the US government, and the American film industry from 1973 to 1987—spanning the 1973 Korea-US Commerce Ministers Meeting, the 1976 Centralized Import Channel dispute, and the 1987 market opening. It argues that American pressure did not succeed uniformly, but was refracted through Korea’s political-economic conditions. In the 1970s, Korea’s authoritarian developmental state retained sufficient bureaucratic autonomy to resist demands for import liberalization. By the 1980s, however, Section 301’s linkage of intellectual property to trade intersected with Korea’s anti-statist sentiment and democratization aspirations, producing film market liberalization. This study demonstrates how external coercion and internal democratic aspirations can converge to produce consent for global market integration.