Fuelling Development? The Rise of New Development Finance in Korea’s Overseas Energy Cooperation with Southeast Asia

Abstract

© 2019, European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI). ‘Aid world’ has undergone critical changes and reforms to reconfigure the relationship between the role of private sector instruments and broadly defined development cooperation. Against the backdrop of the global/Euro financial crisis, development cooperation has become increasingly susceptible to financial instruments, logic, and actors. Such deepening of the financialisation–development nexus has been linked to the rise of the beyond aid agenda and the new and innovative development financing at its heart. Using the case of Korea’s energy development cooperation with Southeast Asia, our analysis shows how the keen take on the beyond aid agenda has further advanced the Korean government’s position on the utility of aid to pursue ‘national interests’ and ‘co-prosperity’. Also, our findings indicate that the Korean government mobilises both aid and other public finance to serve the national interests of (corporate) capital accumulation in the name of development.