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This paper argues that Korea, once a representative East Asian developmental state, has state characteristics that amount to 'neoliberal developmentalism', which is a combination of the government's neoliberal political rationality and the developmental state's governmentality. To elucidate this, the case of Korea's recent green growth policymaking process is analysed. The government based the policy on its neoliberal political rationality. This featured the utilisation of neoliberalism to achieve the government's specific aims in the international, political and socio-economic spheres. Furthermore, the government revealed the developmental state's governmentality, focusing on the maintenance of the developmental state's policy autonomy and capacity. Based on the findings, this paper teases out the academic implications of the post-developmental state and the policy implications regarding policymaking in the context of neoliberal developmentalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent developments in spatial political economy have shown that the shift of power from the national state to subnational states in many Western European countries does not represent a dismantling of the state, but a reconfiguration of statehood that the national state proactively takes part in. The existing literature, however, neglects the path-dependent and contested nature of state spatiality and depicts devolution as the only possible option. In contrast, this paper shows that changes in state spatiality are contingent upon historical and spatial context, where the state may choose to pursue different options. Based on an empirical study of South Korea, this paper shows that the national state may choose to resist the pressure for devolution. The methodological contribution of this paper is on the emphasis of discursive strategy in the study of state spatiality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]