LAUSR

ABSTRACT State support for start-ups and entrepreneurship is increasingly common, with governments worldwide experimenting with different initiatives to support innovative businesses. In this article, we conceptualise and assess the South Korean government’s turn towards supporting entrepreneurship as a manifestation of what we label the entrepreneurial developmental state. Using the case of the Park Geun-hye government’s Creative Economy Action Plan, we assess the effectiveness of South Korea’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, and find that the Plan has contributed to an increase in both the quantity and quality of entrepreneurial activity. We then analyse the perceived effects of the Plan on the evolution of South Korea’s ecosystem, which the private sector consider to be mostly positive. This way, we provide new empirical evidence about the performance of the contemporary developmental state, showing that industrial policy can effectively promote small firms and entrepreneurial ecosystems.