Paper short abstract:

This article examines recent knowledge sharing initiatives aimed at promoting South Korea's development experience as a 'development alternative', and questions the coherence of the narratives being shared.

Paper long abstract:

This article examines recent knowledge sharing initiatives aimed at promoting South Korea's development experience as a 'development alternative', and questions the coherence of the narratives being shared. Through interviews with development practitioners and interrogation of policy narratives, I examine how South Korea's development cooperation initiatives occupy a 'zone of awkward engagement.' This is a zone that has been produced by pressures for Korea to export a version of the developmental state model, extend the overseas activities of domestic businesses, and entertain the ambitions of ruling political blocs. By examining how practitioners navigate these pressures and the anxieties it creates for them, the article highlights some of the limits and possibilities that shape the promotion of the developmental state as an alternative development model and questions discursive claims of emerging donors and South-South cooperation that privilege empathy and reciprocity as drivers of development cooperation.