Parts of India did.
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, India's two poorest states today used to have relatively decent British built universities (Lucknow University, Allahabad University, Patna University) that stood toe-to-tow with top universities like Delhi University, Calcutta University, Osmania University, Panjab University etc.
But in the 1960s-70s, Ram Manohar Lohia [0] lead an anti-intellectual, pro-Hindi and anti-English [1],and anti-rich movement in Eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar that lead to the rise of Lalu Prasad Yadav (Bihar) and Mulayam Singh Yadav (UP), both of whom were directly influenced and in some cases mentored by Lohia.
It was under those two CMs that Uttar Pradesh and Bihar began falling behind the rest of India in the 1980s-2000s period.
With Korea, I guess we can point to Juche but then again I said South Korea, and not North, though university purges were very common during the democracy movement of the 70s and 80s leading to events like the Gwangju Uprising.
> It would be fair to characterise the region that way going back to the Bronze Age
I mean you can characterize any region like that. For example, arguing that China was basically in a century long civil war from 1850-1950, along with the multiple other chaotic periods in between dynasties. For example, China didn't even catch up to Iraq's developmental indicators until the 2000s
> The article seems to go out of its way to restrict its arguments to the Arabic world, not Islam in general.
Fair enough.
[0] - https://theprint.in/opinion/great-speeches/when-ram-manohar-...
[1] - https://www.epw.in/journal/2009/48/discussion/lohia-and-lang...