After the 1945 Liberation of Korea, the rightists and neutralists shared some ideas in the direction for Korean economic development. They planned to conduct the Land Reform to transform landlord's capital into industrial capital, and intended to correct the imbalance of industrial structure and to improve manufacturing production through government's control policies and economic plans over the whole industry. That was a state-led industrialization policy which designed to overthrow the semi-feudal economic structure and build an independent, modern, and capitalist state.
The Syngman Rhee government formulated the Five-Year Plan for Industrial Recovery after the establishment of the South Korean government. It was designed to form an industrial foundation that would swiftly increase manufacturing production by dramatically raising the level of fuel, energy, and heavy chemical industries. However, the Plan was discontinued by the Korean War.
The characteristics of the war between two different "systems" evaporated the critical agendas such as anti-foreign power and anti-monopoly which were significantly discussed in relation to the direction of economic recovery before the war. The Syngman Rhee government devised a capitalist-centered economic reconstruction plan depending completely on foreign aids after the Korean War. In the plan, the government pursued the simultaneous developments of light and key basic industries.
However, the economic reconstruction plan was delayed because of the different prospects between the U.S.'s Japan-centered regional integration strategy and South Korea's request for separate support. Facing the problems, the Syngman Rhee government began to independently conduct its economic reconstruction plan. The government constructed industrial infrastructures and promoted fundamental industries by governmental investment and financing, and supported facility funds to capitalists through the loan of the Korea Industry Bank.
The economic reconstruction plan of the Syngman Rhee government brought about the expansion of social infrastructures, the growth of fundamental industries, and the formation of private capitalists. In the process, however, the corrupt relationship between political and business circles was deepened, and the farmers and laborers had to be sacrificed.