This study attempts to examine the development process in which social security provisions have been established, and to expose factors related to the rise and development of social security programmes in developing countries. The dynamics involved in the evolution of social security programmes in developing countries are not merely pale reflections of the processes promoting such developments in hegemonic centres. Rather, they were deliberately adopted according to their needs and according to the circumstances of the countries. In this analysis, therefore, we explore some of the factors affecting social security policy development which play particularly important roles in policy-making in developing countries in order to establish the most suitable pattern of the social security policy. As the major social security programmes in Korea, the National Pension programme provides the focal point of analysis, from its enactment in 1973 to its much postponed implementation in 1988. In order to ascertain how the programme was adopted and what directed its development, four theories of social security policy development have been considered. The first focuses on the role of socio-economic developments in providing the impetus for and constraints on social security policy development. The second centres on the role of pressure groups in urging the development of these programmes. The third interpretation emphasises the impact of an authoritarian political elite, which act in an entrepreneurial fashion to promote certain state interests and preserve system stability. Finally, the impact of international policy diffusion from hegemonic centres to periphery nations and among geographically contiguous nations, is considered.