Our Work

Korea’s transformation from aid recipient to donor is a development success story; a success story many developing countries wish to learn from. Korea joined the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), affirming its status as a developed economy and a significant contributor of development aid in 2010.

Good Government planning underpinned the country’s rapid development and high economic growth. The evolution of the Korean planning model during the middle-income stage of its development offers valuable lessons to countries that are designing their own strategies for graduation to high income status.

The Centre:

• facilitates exchanges between Korean and foreign development practitioners, policy makers and experts and supports knowledge networks for policy creation;
• responds to queries from governments and UNDP country offices on specific aspects of Korea’s development experience to educate policy discussions; and
• Maintains database of relevant information for easy access by development practitioners interested in understanding, accessing and extracting lessons learned from Korea’s development experience (currently under construction).

The Centre is fully integrated into, and works closely with, UNDP’s global networks of policy knowledge, expertise, and experience of practitioners from 177 countries.

The Centre carries out its research, policy dialogue, advocacy, comparative analysis and knowledge sharing in broad partnerships, both within and outside of Korea.

Within Korea, the Centre is working to build knowledge networks with:

• The Government
• Academia, research and policy institutions
• The private sector
• Civil society and youth
• The media

There are over 100 Middle-Income countries worldwide and the number is rising. Middle-Income countries face unique development challenges and hold many of the world’s poor. The ‘middle-income trap’ generally describes the inability of newly graduated Middle-Income countries to develop further, as the factors feeding their growth and development dry up.

The Centre engages in cutting-edge research and policy dialogue on the development challenges faced by Middle Income Countries in partnership with Korean and international research institutions and UNDP global networks.

Current research themes include:

• the use of remittances for national development;
• the sequencing, affordability and financing of social protection; and,
• streamlining administrative processes for effective and client focused e-governance.

The research aims to support policy decision making and capacity development. It seeks to identify best practices and policy options from both Korea and other less advanced countries. The outcomes will then be shared through policy dialogue inside and outside Korea and will contribute to policy discussions within and between countries for mutual learning and support. It will also lead to the creation of a range of knowledge products for use by development practitioners and policy makers worldwide and will be shared through UN and other practitioners’ networks.

The Centre works with a range of Korean partners on global development agenda advocacy and dialogue, including the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, the Millennium Development Goals and beyond and other areas.

To support the Busan Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, the Centre:

• Brought UNDP’s global knowledge and experience to preparatory dialogues and consultations for the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF4).
• Co-organized the HLF4 Private Sector Forum.
• Supported the development of the official HLF4 website and social media and continues to maintain them today.
• Contributes to discussions on the future aid and development architecture in events such as the Korean ‘Civil Society Consultations on the Busan Partnership’, ‘Asian Perspectives on Development Cooperation and aid effectiveness’ and the Consultation on ‘Enhancing Global Governance and Development and the Role of the G20’.

The Centre is working with the Korea Development Institute (KDI) on a new research project to contribute to the evolving global debate on the global development framework and the successor to the Millennium Development Goals.

The Centre also brings UNDP’s knowledge and experience to Korean development debates and facilitates knowledge sharing on key development reports, such as the UNDP Human Development Report.

More about the UNDP Seoul Policy Centre