I was looking at this Wikipedia article on “developed countries” and I can see there is a bit of controversy over which countries qualify as “developed.”
I think everyone will agree the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Western Europe qualify as developed.
But some like South Korea, South Africa, Israel, Singapore and various Arab Middle East countries could go either way. (I don’t count Hong Kong, 'cause it’s part of China)
So what do you all think. What countries would you say qualify as developed, or do you disagree with my initial list?
Why does it matter? I see disputes about this as being a bit silly, since whether or not you are “developed” or “developing” doesn’t make an iota of difference to whether or not you are raking in the cash from your economic power. South Korea would be a perfect example. Yes, they still have sections of the country that are relatively poor by “Western” standards. So what? Can’t they be both developed and developing? Ask Hyundai, Daiwoo, and other industrial powerhouses which applies. 
Now it IS true that perception of economic ability and status can have an affect on which power-sharing clubs you get to join (example being the Group of 8). And that can have an effect on your ability to control what goes on around you economically. But that’s not important enough, I don’t think, to get into some prolonged debate over the application of a term that has substantial variability in meaning, depending upon who you ask and what you are applying it to.
Perhaps we should argue over where to draw a line between “developing” and “come on, at least try” countries.
I do think that all on your definite list are definitely developed. But whether the others are developed or developing depends on whether or not the word “developing” is on a euphemism treadmill. China and India are certainly not backwater nations in that a significant number of their inhabitants live in “western” wealth and their economies are growing at a rapid pace to match the highly industrialized nations. But if you were to call India and China “developing nations” some might think you were implying that they had no infrastructure or industry to speak of, whereas literally, they are developing.
Perhaps we should look at a third term “non developing nations” to assign to those nations that are significantly less developed than the developed nations and are not making any “progress” toward that (I use scare quotes because just because a nation does not have industry and infrastructure does not mean that the population is necessarily unhappy and unfree, and I dont feel like researching that point one way or another.)