The new Myanmar government has been trying to introduce a series of political and economic reform measures which are intended to improve its relationship with the western countries including the US and the EU. Those reform measures also shows that Myanmar has greater willingness to gear up its socio-economic development.
Myanmar has been known for its growth potential with plenty of natural resources as well as its sizable land and population. Recently, Myanmar’s role in the ASEAN has been increased and strengthened. There will be more opportunities for economic and development cooperation with Myanmar. In this vein, Korea considers Myanmar as one of the important partner countries for development cooperation. Nevertheless, development cooperation strategies as well as country studies on Myanmar are hardly found in Korea. 
This report analyzes the current status of Myanmar’s socio-economic development, and then evaluate development cooperation efforts made by donor countries including Korea up to now. Based on the analysis and evaluation, three directions are derived for Korea’s development cooperation for Myanmar. Firstly, Korea needs an early and considerable increase in its ODA for Myanmar. Currently, per capita ODA amounts for the nearby important partner countries such as Cambodia, Rao PDR and Vietnam from Korea, are well above those for Myanmar. Secondly, concessional loans have not been provided by Korea since 2005. They need to be resumed to help Myanmar construct and improve its physical infrastructures (especially electric transmission lines, small local roads and bridges, local ports etc) which are prerequisite for social and economic development. Lastly, Korea has to prepare the Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) that is a comprehensive framework for development cooperation allowing for Myanmar’s mid/long-term development process.
The CPS has to identify priority areas or issues of development cooperation. Based upon the analysis of Myanmar’s socio-economic development and the selection principles such as willingness, alignment, selective focus, harmonization, spill-over and short-term urgency, this report recommends the first and second tier priority areas of development cooperation for Myanmar. The recommendation will be a very useful reference in devising the CPS for Myanmar.