Trend Korea's rapid rise coexists with a deepening sense of national crisis

Summary

The plan portrays Korea eighty years after liberation as a country with two faces. On one side it credits the nation with escaping war and poverty, reaching the threshold of advanced economies and achieving industrialisation and democratisation together, while Korean culture has won a global following. On the other side it observes that public anxiety about a Korea in crisis has grown despite these achievements. The problems it lists are low growth and widening inequality, a vacuum in politics and strain on democracy, amplified social conflict, population and regional decline, and rising tension on the Korean Peninsula. The plan presents this mix of achievement and anxiety as the starting condition inherited by the new administration.