However unfair it may seem to some, the rich and the poor have always coexisted and still can be found among various societies as well as countries. People from some countries enjoy the luxuries and maintain certain level of lifestyle that only wealth can provide while those from other countries lack even the basic needs of existence such as nutrition. One can witness some situations where rich countries offer to help poor countries with various methods, and it appears to be giving and generous. However, countries do not just throw out their capital with which they themselves can use for their own benefit. The immediate result of help can produce wealth in poor countries while not affecting rich countries much, but the true incentive behind the help of rich countries lie deeper in the aspect of economics and politics.
Dependency theory assumes that the low levels of development have occurred in less economically developed countries because they have relied and depended on more economically developed countries; therefore, third-world poverty is the consequence and the fault of the Northern world’s wealth. To be more specific, the poverty of low-income countries stems from their exploitation by wealthy countries. The differences in the quality of life can be observed in individuals of those countries. For example, people in high-income countries are far healthier than those of low-income countries whose sources of poor health can be attributed to hunger, malnutrition and famine; people in high-income countries obtain a higher level of education and literacy and more.
The advocates of dependency theory claim that less economically developed countries will remain less developed because their surplus products are restricted and taken advantage by multinational corporations of more economically developed countries; however, other countries, such as Taiwan and South Korea, exist to contradict this conjecture. More deeply exploring the example of South Korea, one can easily discover the rapid development that occurred in its economic history. The economy of South Korea had been traditionally based on agriculture, and the Korean War of 1950 which destroyed an extensive part of the country aggravated the already gloomy economy—which was gloomy compared to that of other industrialized Western countries.
However, South Korea soon began extraordinarily swift industrialization in the early 1960s. Foreign economic aid, particularly from the United States and Japan, was crucial to the economic recovery from the war and to the growth of the country. In consequence, South Korea grew from one of the world’s poorest countries to one of the Asian Four Tigers economies, which, without foreign aid, would have been impossible. The technology and industrialization that first started to appear in Western Europe benefited countries of Eastern Asia—including South Korea. For example, the growing economies of Europe and the United States provided a huge market for the clothing, footwear, electronics and others that were increasingly produced in East Asia. On top of that, by adopting the open market system, South Korea fully took the advantage of the opportunity given by the foreign aid: now, it has become one of the top producers of semiconductors.
During the late 1990s, this country underwent a tremendous economic crisis due to numerous causes. One of the primary causes can be attributed to the fact that the international financial market had increasingly been losing credit regarding the economy of South Korea and began collecting past investment while halting new investment, thereby draining foreign exchange holdings. Consequently, South Korea had to inevitably ask for International Monetary Fund in exchange for forgoing some management authority. Now South Korea has recovered impressively from this crisis and the economy is performing better.
In international relations, ideas about economics and politics matter more than the distribution of wealth or capital. As a realist may contend, the wealth or capital of one nation approximately measures how much power it possesses in the world: the wealthier it is, the more powerful it is perceived. When one carefully analyzes the case of South Korea, if one of the main foreign aid—the United States—had been more concerned with wealth, it would not have helped South Korea in the first place in the aspect of education, marketing, investing and more. In most cases, every country as well as every individual does not donate his or her money, assets and time without foreseeing certain benefit in return. If the United States regarded only wealth as the measure of power, it would not have aided South Korea. However, in fact, the United States actually put much effort for South Korea to recover and furthermore improve its economy. This improvement of economy created a friendly relationship between these two countries, thereby strengthening the political power of the United States.
As one can infer from the example of economic development of South Korea, economic help of rich countries is necessary for poor countries to ameliorate themselves, so they do provide aid. However, rich countries do not necessarily desire poor countries to stay poor forever; rather, what they actually aim for is acquisition of better control in economic and political side of power struggle. By obtaining more control over those two aspects, the rich can, in turn, acquire more and more wealth as well as power.

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