Exploring the intersection of developmental state and neoliberalism in South Korea's sport official development assistance

Abstract

This study critically analyzes how Korea's sport official development assistance (ODA) constructs legitimacy, focusing on the World Cycling Centre-KOREA program. While previous research has explained sport ODA largely through perspectives emphasizing state-led developmental logics, this study examines how developmental state and neoliberal rationalities intersect to shape legitimation. Pempel's (2021) concept of developmental regimes (DR) is used not as theory-testing but as a lens to reveal the structural realities of Korea's sport ODA. The analysis draws on policy documents and nine semi-structured interviews with stakeholders, including officials from sport organizations, federations, and recipient countries. Data were thematically coded around the three categories of the DR framework: state institutions, socio-economic forces, and external forces. Findings show that legitimacy was constructed through three mechanisms: moral legitimacy based on the free operating model, managerial legitimacy tied to performance indicators, and international legitimacy derived from Union Cycliste Internationale branding and certification. These reveal the entanglement of state-led developmental logics, neoliberal relationalities, and external symbolic forces. Yet the study also underscores the framework's limitations, showing that federations acted competitively rather than in coalition, and that external actors offered primarily symbolic instead of material resources. Consequently, sport ODA emerged as a complex field negotiated through multilayered power relations.