The Least Developed Countries: Key Challenges and the Way Forward for Korea's Development Cooperation

The least developed countries (LDCs) are the poorest and the most disadvantaged members of the international community that face a broad range of socioeconomic, geographical, political, and environmental challenges. The United Nations defines LDCs based on three criteria: low gross national income, weak human development indices, and high level of economic vulnerability. Currently, 48 countries — 33 in Africa, 14 in Asia and the Pacific, and 1 in Latin America — are designated as LDCs by the United Nations. With only three countries having graduated from LDC status, the number of LDC countries has leaped from 24 in 1971 when the category was first officially established by the UN General Assembly to 49 in 2012. Amid the growing interdependency in the global economic system, international efforts to reverse the trend of socioeconomic marginalization of LDCs officially began at the first UN Conference on Least Developed Countries held in Paris in 1981. In the realm of development, the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals in 2000 has led to major donors targeting LDCs as their key aid recipient groups. The Fourth United Nations Conference on the Least De-veloped Countries (LDC-IV) pledged to reduce the number of LDCs by half in nine years. In order to achieve the agenda, it requires a sustainable long-term broad-based economic growth at the rate of 7% a year. Nevertheless, despite global efforts to support LDCs, there has been growing concern over the deepening vulnerability of LDCs as they were stricken by the impact of global economic recession, food crisis, and climate change in the last several years. The IMF predicts that only 10 countries will be able to graduate from LDC status by 2020. Entangled in a series of conflicts with LDCs’ geographical obstacles, socioeconomic factors, supply shock, and accumulated debt, the LDCs’ vicious cycle of poverty led further impoverishment. Although the continuing marked increases in the volume of the Korean ODA, due to relatively greater portion of concessional loan, Korea faces with the task of improving the lending conditions.