KR206

Modern Korean History: Liberation, War and Nuclear Ambitions

Liberation and the Korean War
The prelude to liberation
Liberation in 1945 01
The Korean independence movement in America 02
The reoccupation of Korea 03
The Liberation Moment
The Liberation Moment in newspapers 05
Legacy of colonial rule: the chaos of liberation 06
Decolonization and the Soviet and American occupations 07
The return to Korea and Japan 08

The Soviet and American Occupations

The Soviet and American occupations 09
The Russian occupation of northern Korea 10
The United States military government in Korea 11
The 1948 elections and the politics of assassination 12
Who represents Korea? 13

The origins of the Korean War

The origins of the Korean War 14
The path to civil war 15
Researching the origins of the Korean War 16
Where should we look for answers? 17

The Korean War and its Legacies

The outbreak of the Korean War 18
The legacy of the Korean War 19
Extra resources on Korean War 20
Economic Development in South Korea
Park Chung Hee and the military coup of 1961
Introduction to Park Chung Hee 22
Park Chung Hee and Economic Development Policy 23
Park's military coup and the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction 24
Miners and nurses to Germany 26
Historical legacies of Korean economic growth
East Asian development from a historical perspective 27
Historical legacies: The pre-1945 influence 28
Historical origins of Korean development 30
Park Chung Hee and the economic take-off
Park Chung Hee and the Economic Miracle 30
Economic take-off: The Five Year Plans 32
Tungsten and wigs 33
The Saemaul or New Village Movement 35
Reforesting Korea 36
Explaining the Miracle on the Han
Korea in place the world 37
The Korean Economic Development Model 38
Export-led growth and the Miracle on the Han 40
South Korean developmentalism in global perspective 41
 Explaining the Miracle 43
South Korean Political and Social Developments 1950s-1980s
Korean politics in the 1950s and 1960s
Syngman Rhee and the April Student Revolution 44
The Hangul Crisis 45
Syngman Rhee and the Politics of the First Republic 47
The Progressive Party Incident 48
The April Student Revolution and the Second Republic 49
The Yusin Constitution
Park Chung Hee and the Yusin Constitution 50
Democracy on hold: The Yushin Constitution and the Fourth Republic 51
Korea-US relations and Park Chung Hee 52
Beneath the Miracle: Social Change and Discontent 54
Park Chung Hee's legacy 55
Social protest movements in South Korea 1960s-1970s
Demonstrations against the normalization of relations with Japan 56
Sasangye and Kim Chiha’s 'Five Bandits' 57
Protest movements in the 1970s 58
Political developments in the 1980s
Park's assassination and the Seoul Spring 59
The Kwangju massacre and US policy towards South Korea 61
The Minjung Movement 62
The 1987 Declaration and election 63
South Korea's democratic transition 65

North Korea’s Separate Path

The Emergence of North Korean State and Society
Kim Il Sung and North Korean Communist Party 66
Going it alone: The DPRK 67
The early life of Kim Il Sung 69
North Korea before liberation 70
The politics of purges and the emergence of Kim Il Sung 71
North Korean Economic Development
North Korean economic development 72
The fraternal assistance of socialist nations 73
The Flying Horse takes a Great Leap Forward 74
North Korea's Japan connection 75
North Korea's 'self-reliant' economy 77
Chuch'e Ideology and the Cult of Personality
The Meaning of Chuch'e Ideology 78
The Cult of Kim Il Sung 80
The rise of Kim Jong Il 81
North Korea and the world 82
The Cult of the Father and the Son 83
North Korea and State Terrorism
The Pueblo Incident and the Blue House Raid 83
The Panmunjom Axe Incident 85
The Rangoon and KAL Bombings 86
 North Korean nuclear confrontation, famine and North-
South relations since 1989
The collapse of the North Korean economy and the nuclear crisis
North Korean nuclear crisis 88
Falling behind in the 1980s 89
The policy of Nordpolitik 90
The history of the North Korean nuclear program 91
The nuclear crisis and the agreed framework 93
North Korean Famine
Social status and the North Korean famine 94
Economic factors behind the great famine 95
The controversies over food aid 97
The social context of the North Korean famine 98
The North Korean Threat and Human Rights
The North Korean threat: the importance of threat perception 99
North Korean human rights 100
North Korean refugee problem 101
Is the North Korean threat real? 103
The 2000 Summit and North-South Cooperation
Prelude to the Summit: The Sunshine Policy 103
The 2000 North South Summit and its legacies 105
The Kaesong Complex 106
The Kumgangsan Resort 107
Contemporary South Korean history after 1989
South Korean society and politics after 1989
The price of development 108
The trial of two former presidents 109
The tragic tale of President Roh Mu-hyun 110
The Korean Wave
Korean popular culture 112
The Korean Wave 126
Defining the Korean Wave 113
Reactions to the Korean Wave 115
The Korean Wave and the future of global cultural exchange 117
South Korea's transition to a global economic power
The IMF crisis 117
Free trade and mad cows 118
Korea's Chinese economic connection 120
Korea's global economic reach 121
Demographic change and post-industrial society in Korea
Demographic change and ageing society 122
Multi-ethnicity in Korea 123
Labour shortage 124
Further readings 125

Additional Contemporary topics

KR206
Modern Korean History: Liberation, War and Nuclear Ambitions
Liberation and the Korean War
The prelude to liberation
Liberation in 1945
Without question, August 1945 was one of the most celebrated moments in Korean history. 40 years of
Japanese rule had abruptly ended, and Koreans faced the opportunity to form their own independent
nation. Yet the celebrations did not last very long because the nation was soon divided into Soviet and
American occupation zones. There was no historical justification for the division of Korea. The 38th
parallel was actually drawn without much forethought by a couple of young military officers in the
American army. When the 38th parallel was proposed to the Soviets, the Americans had no idea if they
would accept. Surprisingly though, the Soviets halted their advance in 38th parallel, and thus began the
division of Korea.

Now in 1945, Korean society itself was split into different groups, classes, and political ideologies. On
one side were elite groups, like landlords and industrialists and many who had collaborated with the
Japanese and maintained special privileges throughout the colonial period. The right also included those
who served in the Japanese state as policemen or bureaucrats. But on the other hand, the left was
composed of students, intellectuals, peasants, and workers who often had strong sympathies to
Communism. The extent to which we can divide Korean society into these two categories may be
questioned as most probably most people did not have any political affiliations. But in general, we can
divide the interactions of the immediate post-liberation years into these two groups.

And what's interesting is that regardless of one's position, most Koreans favoured a somewhat socialist
platform of state ownership of key industries and a generous social welfare agenda. Now, the main
concern of the Japanese in August 1945 was how to maintain the peace so that they can withdraw their
military and evacuate over 700,000 Japanese who were in Korea when the occupation arrived. First, the
Japanese officials tried to convince a man by the name of Song Chin-u, who was an editor of the
conservative newspaper Tonga ilbo at the time and one of the few prominent political figures who had
kept a low profile and was not strongly tainted by Japanese collaboration. However, Song Chin-u
refused.

And so the Japanese had to turn to Yeo Un-hyeong, who had edited another newspaper called the
Choson Chungang ilbo during the colonial period. Now Yeo Un-hyeong was quite a popular figure and
had impeccable nationalist credentials. He was sympathetic to the Communists and could work closely
with them, but he never actually joined the party and nor did he share their entire ideological platform.
The Japanese had hoped that Yeo Un-hyeong would work closely with them, but instead he quickly
organised his own government and formed the Preparation for the Committee of Current Independence
or also known as the People's Committees.

Within a few days, People's Committees had emerged throughout the provinces of Korea, and for the
most part, they were formed by local leaders who took over the basic functions of government. Now on
September 6, several hundred representatives of the People's Committees convened to establish the
Korean People's Republic in Seoul and thus creating a single unified government. However, when the
Americans arrived, they refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Korean People's Republic and
tried to break up the People's Committees. In the north, the Soviets largely maintained the structure of
the People's Committees, but they also refused to recognise Yeo Un-hyeong's Korean People's Republic
in Seoul.

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Therefore, despite the fact that Koreans had began to organise their own government, both military
occupations refused to recognise its political legitimacy. The movement by the American and Soviets to
establish their own separate military governments would soon have devastating consequences for
division of Korea, which then plunged into several years of instability and crisis following that brief
moment of intense celebration that followed the departure of the Japanese in 1945.

© Michael Kim

The Korean independence movement in America

The United States spent an enormous amount of time and effort preparing for the military
occupation of Japan as WWII drew to an end. American planners had ambitious goals to reshape Japan
and their plans for postwar Japan formed over many years of intensive research. However, despite their
high level of preparation, the American occupation authorities also known as the Supreme Commander
for the Allied Powers (SCAP) encountered numerous unforeseeable problems.

The Korean situation, in contrast, did not allow for a deliberate planning process. When the Soviets
suddenly agreed to the division along the 38th parallel, American military resources that had been
earmarked for Japan were suddenly diverted to Korea. The US intelligence agencies like the Office of
Strategic Affairs (OSS) and the CIA did gather a significant amount of information about Korea from
interviewing Americans like missionaries who had lived in Korea and from Korean independence
activists in the United States. Declassified documents of this effort tell an interesting tale.

An important source of wartime contact between US officials and the Korean independence movement
was the United Korean Committee (UKC), which was established in April 27, 1941 and had its
executive offices in Los Angeles, California. Although many Korean organizations came under this
banner, the association was a merger between the two main factions of Korean independence activists in
the United States, the Korean National Association (Koongmin Hoi) composed of the followers of Ahn
Chang Ho (1878-1938) and the Korean Comrades Association (Tongji Hoi) composed of the followers
of Syngman Rhee (1875-1965).

The Korean independence movement has a long history of factional infighting ever since the formation
of the Korean Provisional Government (KPG) in Shanghai in 1919. The controversies often surrounded
the polarizing influence of Syngman Rhee who had been selected to be the first president of the Korean
Provisional Government but was expelled in 1925. Afterwards, Syngman Rhee continued to act on his
own to claim leadership of the independence movement until he achieved a rapprochement with the
KPG in 1939.

All Korean nationalist movements came together in United Korean Committee in 1941 and the goal was
for Koreans in America to lobby and financially support the Korean Provisional Government which at
the time had relocated to Chungking in China. The unified movement at first launched with great fanfare
and according to an OSS report prepared in March 24, 1943 the effort reflected a major advance in the
Korean independence movement. If the American government had accepted this achievement as
evidence that a framework for making use of the Korean independence network then Korean history
may have had a far different outcome. Perhaps the US might have been willing to train Koreans in the
war against Japan and provide the KPG in Chungking with lend-lease materials for support.

However, the failure of Washington to formulate a coherent Korea policy resulted in largely inaction
regarding the Korea question. The UKC eventually collapsed due to infighting between Syngman Rhee
and other colourful personalities such as Kilsoo Haan (1900-1974) who claimed to have his own
personal espionage network. By the fall of 1942, the UKC became impatient with Syngman Rhee’s
leadership in Washington, and the March 17-19, 1943 meeting in Los Angeles was filled with bitter
infighting between pro-Rhee and anti-Rhee factions.

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The inability of the Korean independence movement in America to unify may have generated doubt
among US officials as to the viability of overseas Korean organizations. Coordinating the far-flung
network of independence activists in China, Hawaii, and mainland American proved to be a challenge
that could not be met by the Korean leadership at the time. This history of disunity may have had a great
impact on the politics of the immediate post-liberation years in Korea. In many ways, we have to
understand the rivalries and continued factional infighting among the Korean leadership as a direct
legacy of historical conflicts that had spanned decades and stretched across the Pacific during the
Japanese occupation of Korea.

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© Michael Kim

The reoccupation of Korea

This excerpt from Michael Robinson's Korea's Twentieth-Century Odyssey describes the
sequence of events that led up to the division of Korea and the struggle to maintain order before
the arrival of occupation armies. In many respects, WWII in the Pacific ended far quicker than
anyone anticipated due to the dropping of the atomic bombs. This left the victors unprepared to
handle the myriad of problems brewing in the Korean peninsula. Michael Robinson tries to
explain the sudden nature of the division and how the Americans and the Russians were ill-
prepared for the events to come. Even the Japanese were at a loss about who should be in
charge of the interim government until the arrival of the occupying forces.

>What are your thoughts after reading the passage on the somewhat accidental nature of history?

The question of how to dispose of the Japanese empire had begun at the Cairo Conference in 1943. The
conference established a principle of trusteeship for Japan's colonial possessions, the ultimate
independence of which would be granted in the now-famous diplomatic phrase "in due course." The
concept of trusteeship was reaffirmed at subsequent meetings of the Allied leaders at Yalta and Potsdam
in the winter and spring of 1945. The idea of Allied trusteeship projected American power into the
Pacific in a leadership role and forced a complete re-evaluation of what had been America's low profile
in Northeast Asia since the Japanese had first annexed Korea back in 1910. Manchuria and Korea,
however, were of considerable strategic importance to the Soviet Union; it bordered Manchuria and
Korea, the latter being perilously close to its only major Pacific ports. The USSR had also been more
directly involved in the anti-Japanese struggles in Northeast Asia, further highlighting this asymmetry of
interests.

The brutality and high casualty rate of the Pacific Island campaigns left the United States dreadfully
concerned about the potential cost of life that the ultimate invasion of the Japanese home islands would
incur. American war planners were, therefore, anxious to involve the Soviet Union in a joint operation
in which the United States was to invade the main islands and the USSR would handle the Japanese
army on the Asian mainland. To that end the United States had invited the Russians into the post-war
trusteeship by conceding their occupation of Manchuria and Korea at the Yalta conference.

American worries were further confirmed by the terrible loss of life in the battle of Okinawa between
March and June 1945, the final, decisive battle of the Pacific War before the atom bombing of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August. After the Japanese signalled their intention to surrender on
August 10, the American planners tried to limit Russian involvement in Korea to a joint occupation.
They hastily proposed a North-South division of Korea along the 38th parallel of latitude, a line that put

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the Korean capital of Seoul and the bulk of the population under US control in the South. To the
Americans' surprise, the Soviets accepted this arrangement even though there was nothing to stop their
complete occupation of the peninsula. Soviet troops had moved into Manchuria and arrived in north-
eastern Korea in early August. Using the still intact rail-roads they could move freely around the
peninsula.
With the Russians already in Korea and appearing to acknowledge the 38th parallel as the line of
division, the American command scrambled to find a unit that could be sent to Korea on short notice.
The closest troops were elements of the American Tenth Army still in Okinawa recovering from the
recent battle. The Tenth Army's 24th Corps, mobilized under the leadership of Gen. John Hodge, left
Okinawa on September 5 and finally arrived off Inch'on on September 8. Three weeks had passed since
the surrender; Governor General Abe was relieved to surrender authority to US forces, but the
Americans had to struggle to assert their control over the rapidly unfolding events in Seoul.

Unlike the elaborate preparations that preceded the occupation of Japan, Hodge arrived in Korea with no
translators, no area specialists, no background studies-fundamentally, no plan whatsoever. He assumed
command over half of Korea, its largest cities, perhaps two-thirds of its population, the largest Japanese
expatriate communities, and, as a consequence, the bulk of its political and economic problems. Hodge
and his command had scrambled to get to Korea, spurred on by the State Department's urging that the
situation there might deteriorate at any moment. They were also painfully aware that Soviet elements
had moved as far south as the capital of Seoul before voluntarily withdrawing.
How long the Soviets would cooperate was anyone's guess.

General Hodge was greeted by a group of relieved Japanese officials. As for his early contacts with
Koreans, he faced the full spectrum of potential leaders, conservatives and radicals alike; more
important, he had to decide immediately what to do about a grassroots Korean People's Republic that
had emerged in the weeks before his arrival.

In the days before surrender Abe began looking for a Korean leader who might be able to organize a
group to guarantee the safety of Japanese citizens after the surrender. Ultimately a moderate leftist, Yo
Unhyong, agreed to accept the Japanese charge. He formed a broad coalition group, the Committee for
the Preparation of Korean Independence (Choson konguk chunbi wiwonhoe) (CPKI), to begin planning
for the maintenance of peace and order and for a future government. It began immediately to spread its
organization throughout the country and soon branches of the CPKI sprang up and assumed control of
local governments. On September 6, a representative group drawn from these branch committees met in
Seoul and announced the formation of a Korean People's Republic (KPR). Thereafter, the CPKI organs
became "people's committees" (inmin wiwonhoe) that emerged at most local levels of government.

Scholars still debate the true nature of the KPR, but at least in its beginning the leadership represented a
rather broad spectrum of political views. Moderates like Yo played important roles, but right-leaning
nationalists were also represented. Syngman Rhee, a staunch anti-Communist, was chosen as its
chairman. The KPR issued a broad 27-point program of political and social reform. Most important
among its articles were a call for land reform, a redistribution of land owned by the Japanese and
traitorous collaborators, nationalization of large industries, and a new labor laws that established
regulations on child labor, maximum labor hours, and a minimum wage. It also sought a universal
franchise for men and women and a denial of such rights to collaborators. The KPR platform reflected
long-standing demands of tenants and laborers from throughout the colonial period. Had it been
instituted, it would have been quite revolutionary, given the conditions that faced Korea in 1945.

© Michael Robinson, Korea's Twentieth-Century Odyssey, (University of Hawaii 2007), pp. 104-106.

4 KR206
 The Liberation Moment
The Liberation Moment in newspapers
This section describes the sudden freedom of speech discovered by Koreans in 1945

Moments of unrestrained promise are rare sights to behold; August 1945, was one such summer of
ebullient expectations. To the enthusiastic crowds that thronged the streets to celebrate the passing of
Japan’s colonial regime, a unique opportunity to build a new society was at hand, and the task fell upon
a generation eager to express its particular vision for the nation.

An effusion of eloquence enlivened the initial publications of the post-liberation period, and Korean
writers took their spark of inspiration from the anguish of Korea’s colonial past and the exhilarating
possibilities of fashioning a new nation. While the cherished hopes for a unified Korea would collapse
with the establishment of two separate states in 1948, the infectiously triumphant spirit of liberation
filled the publications of both the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Today, the intensity of Liberation’s fervour may remain buried beneath the maelstrom of social and
political forces that led inexorably to the Korean War in June of 1950, yet the dynamism of the
immediate post-liberation years still echo among the newspapers that survive from the period. The
collapse of colonial rule in 1945 removed many of the barriers that had held back public expression due
to strict censorship and opened the floodgates of new ideas. The clamour to express the frustration built
up over several decades of colonial oppression was only limited by the availability of printing presses.
Surveying the post-liberation scene, an article published in the Tonga ilbo newspaper on March 23,
1946 noted:

"Newspapers pour out, journals pile high, pamphlets are everywhere, posters cover everything,
and words are turned into books just as soon as they are written down…Paper that is already
scarce is fast whittling away. Indeed, the drinking establishments and the publishing industry
are the two great spectacles of liberation. The amount of paper being consumed is probably
unprecedented in Korean history."

The amazement expressed over the cascade of print was echoed by countless other Koreans who
gathered in record numbers in their favorite drinking establishments to celebrate the end of the colonial
era. While the festive celebrations elicited considerable commentary on the rapid growth of post-
liberation public sociability, Koreans writers were even more enthralled by the images of a freely
circulating public discourse that coursed through the liberation scene. The same Tonga ilbo article
continued:

"A flood is about to break. The frustration built up over 40 years, when we could not speak even
though we had lips and could not write even though we had pens, has penetrated to our bones.
Now that we have freedom, what do we have to fear? What has been held back for ages has
finally exploded… So much so that even expressions of anger are now a distinct form of
pleasure."

The mere fact that Koreans were able to exchange ideas openly about what they read in print was an
unfamiliar but welcome sensation in 1945. Wartime censorship had closed down most vernacular
publications and the official government media had produced a constant stream of propaganda. Koreans
arrested for thought crimes and anti-state activities filled the colonial prisons. Liberation in 1945 finally
allowed public discussions to flow unhindered throughout Korean society, and the publications were
snapped up as quickly as they could be printed.

The genuine enthusiasm to establish a new nation can still be found in the hope and excitement in the
newspapers that survive from this period. Korean history can be full of difficult moments, but there are

,3 
also times when the entire nation comes together in collective triumph. During these expressions of
celebration, such as the Olympics in 1988 and the World Cup in 2002, a far different Korea emerges
than the constant images of collective tragedy that often fills the narratives of modern Korean history.
© Michael Kim

Legacy of colonial rule: the chaos of liberation

This section describes the chaotic situations of Korea under Japanese colonial rule.

This excerpt from Michael Robinson's Korea's Twentieth-Century Odyssey describes the chaotic
situations of Korea under Japanese colonial rule. Major changes took place during final decade
that greatly transformed Korean society. The social chaos and tensions that erupted with the end
of Japanese rule in 1945. would ultimately provide fertile ground for radical ideological activity
and generate considerable social discontent. The disruptive influences from the colonial era
would be interpreted in a radical light by American occupation authorities who suspected leftist
activity at every corner.

>Do you believe the situation in Korea in 1945 may have been ripe for social revolution? Was
there an inevitability to the historical events that took place?

The Japanese colonial rule of Korea left a bitter legacy in the decades following their departure.
Mobilization for total war had churned up the Korean population by sending millions away from their
homes in all manner of service to the war effort: actual military service in the army and navy, factory
labor in every sector of war production often concentrated in the most difficult and brutish jobs, labor
service for the Japanese military, and, most heinously, service in prostitution camps for the far-flung
Japanese military.

It is hard to imagine the chaos as these millions made their way back to Korea. At least half of these
mobilized workers were returning from extraordinary experiences abroad. Those who had not been sent
out of the country began their journeys home from the factories and mines in the north to their villages
and families in the densely populated south. Many returned to find the land untilled, or occupied by
different tenants. Enormous numbers collected in the cities to seek casual employment or just handouts
at the soup kitchens organized to feed the homeless. This huge movement of people added to the
political instability of the first years after Liberation, particularly in the south.

The cumulative effect of colonial rule, particularly in its last ten years, was to heighten class conflict in
Korea. In spite of the GGK's attempt to relieve rural distress, tenancy rates approached 80% in some
counties in the Cholla provinces of the south-west. Pushed off the land by spiraling indebtedness or
unable to afford rising rents, peasants had already begun migrating to cities in search of work by 1937.

The mobilization of labor during the war, particularly after 1941, accelerated this movement, but it also
masked the potential for class conflict as it emptied the countryside of its landless, unemployed peasants.
Repatriated laborers returned to the countryside after 1945 with raised expectations that a new Korean
government might solve the land problem.

Indeed, in the immediate aftermath of Liberation there was a question as to what would become of the
major Japanese landholdings, both public and private. Would these lands simply fall into the hands of
the large Korean landowners? After all a majority of the landlord class was Korean. Or would they be
distributed more broadly? Rumours of the possibility of a land reform circulated and added tension to
the already strained relations between landlords and the peasants, who considered the large landlords
profiteers and collaborators in the colonial regime.

The cities were overcrowded with unemployed, rural migrants and returnees after 1945. They made up a
lumpen proletariat available to all manner of demagogues. The prisons had disgorged political prisoners

6 KR206
who were predominately leftists associated with illegal organizing, thought crimes, and other political
agitation. Within weeks of Liberation, elements of the exiled nationalist movement in China, the Soviet
Union, and the United States began to arrive; all were in search of supporters, and many began
organizing their own paramilitary groups.

Given contemporary South Korea's staunch anti-Communism, it is hard to imagine socialism's

popularity in the 1940s Korea. But in the period after Liberation, the socialists drew tremendous support
from the landless, intellectuals, and factory workers. After all, it was the left that had more experience
with organizing workers and tenants, and they put it to use immediately.

© Michael Robinson, Korea's Twentieth-Century Odyssey, (University of Hawaii 2007), pp. 101-102.
Decolonization and the Soviet and American occupations

The historical controversies surrounding the immediate liberation period involve the claim of
some historians that the Soviet Union largely let revolutionary forces take their course in the North
while the United States blocked social movements from taking their course in the South.

The issues need to be understood within the context of different colonial policies for different regions of
Korea. The Japanese developed parts of the North as industrial centres and did in fact transform certain
areas like the industrial city of Hamhung in significant ways. The South also experienced major
changes, but the intense overpopulation of the predominantly agricultural region were difficult to
manage. The Japanese colonial authorities left many rural areas of Korea nearly untouched as they
lacked the capacity to implement changes. Therefore, the Soviets took over a more industrialised region
with a smaller population base concentrated in some highly developed cities while the Americans zone
contained a largely illiterate rural population that was mired in poverty.

In both cases, its important to keep in mind that Korean society had been mobilised during World War 2
for a war against America. Millions of Koreans had been conscripted for military and labour duty and
the entire peninsula had been preparing for an invasion by the United States. Japanese propaganda
warned of the dire consequences of a US military occupation by highlighting the mistreatment of racial
minorities and the perils of Western imperialism.

The Soviet, in contrast, enjoyed the reputation of a liberating anti-imperialist force that was welcomed
by leftist intellectuals who clamoured for revolutionary action. The conservative forces that ultimately
welcomed the US presence in Korea were tainted with collaboration as many had been educated in
Japan and had worked closely with the Japanese. The lack of legitimacy among the political right in
Korea greatly destabilised the situation.

The issues concerning decolonisation are important to keep in mind as the sudden disappearance of the
draconian colonial state had unleashed social forces that had been suppressed for many decades. The
American historian Gregory Henderson described post-liberation as the 'politics of the vortex' when he
observed the ubiquity of mass movements that seemed to have no central core. The argument that the
Soviets had allowed revolutionary forces to achieve their logical conclusion while the US had blocked
them has some merit as both the North and South were full of revolutionary energy.

However, the irony of the division of Korea may be that the Soviets took over the Pyongyang region
which had previously been a conservative Christian stronghold in Korea. Many of these Christians fled
south, while many radically oriented Koreans went North with the hope that they could engage in
revolutionary activity within the Soviet occupation zone. Therefore, the division of Korea had a
polarizing impact that was somewhat self-selecting. Radical Koreans who sought to achieve social
revolution flocked to the North while those with more conservative leanings went to the South. North

,3 
Korea did not experience the 'killing fields' that often followed communist revolutions, since Koreans
opposed to the regime could easily flee to the South.

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The return to Korea and Japan

Population displacement following the end of WWII

Hundreds of thousands of Koreans desperately struggled to return to the Korean peninsula after
the collapse of the Japanese empire in August 1945. Millions of Koreans had been abroad at the end of
the colonial era, and they could mostly be found in either Manchuria or Japan. The numbers of Koreans
flowing out of the Korean peninsula swelled during the forced labour and military mobilization during
WWII. While available statistics vary, as many as 1 million Koreans may have returned from Manchuria
and 1.4 million returned from Japan during the immediate post liberation years. All total, about 10-15
percent of the Korean population may have been abroad and desperate to return to Korea in 1945.

The number of Japanese who had been scattered to various parts of the empire was also considerable. At
the time of Japan’s surrender, 3.2 million Japanese civilians and 3.7 million military personnel were
outside of Japan, meaning that 6.9 million or nearly 9% of the Japanese population had left Japan during
the war. In effect, one of the most under-appreciated aspects of the mid twentieth century is the massive
population displacement that took place in East Asia at the end of WWII.

Thus, the simultaneous effort to repatriate millions of Koreans and Japanese back to their home
countries was one of the most spectacular consequences of Japan’s defeat in the Pacific War. The
trauma of cross-border displacement and the untold personal tragedies during this repatriation process
touched the lives of millions of Koreans and Japanese. Within this larger movement of Koreans and
Japanese flowing in different directions, there was even a group of Japanese and Koreans who briefly
travelled a similar path from Manchuria.

The shared trauma of this perilous journey through Manchuria and North Korea led to the first
simultaneous best seller in Japan and Korea. A gripping account of an ordinary Japanese housewife’s
escape from Manchuria and her harrowing trek through the Korean peninsula became a best-seller in the
Republic of Korea in the Fall of 1949 and early 1950. Fujiwara Tei (b. 1918) and her young children
began a treacherous journey through North Korea and eventually back to Japan. In 1949, she published
her memoir, entitled, “Nagareru hoshi wa ikite iru,” (The shooting star lives on) which became a major
best-seller in postwar Japan. Fujiwara’s work was translated and published in Korea under the title
“Naega nomun 38 son” (The 38th parallel that I crossed) in November 1949. The book was a
phenomenal success and sold out its entire first edition in just three days. Over the next seven months,
the book sold 45,000 copies until sales were interrupted by the start of the Korean War in June 1950.

Official South Korean records state that 317,000 Koreans had returned to the Republic of Korea from
Manchuria, while perhaps as many as 300,000 or more Japanese had entered Southern Korea from
Northern Korea and Manchuria. Thus, while the actual number of Koreans and Japanese who shared this
journey is difficult to determine, the statistics leave little doubt that thousands of Koreans and Japanese
had fled war-torn Manchuria, travelled through Northern Korea and finally crossed over the 38th
parallel into South Korea.

8 KR206
Initially, the question of whether or not the Japanese would be forced to leave Korea was unsettled, but
the availability of US troop transport ships that brought US soldiers across the Pacific made the task far
easier to implement. Japanese settler agencies like the Pusan Japanese Relief Society assisted Japanese
return home after the collapse of their empire. Little is understood of this process that brought back 3.5
million Japanese who either voluntarily or were forcibly repatriated after 1945. However, what remains
clear is that untold human suffering took place along the criss-crossing paths of Koreans and Japanese
throughout East Asia.

© Michael Kim

The Soviet and American Occupations

The Soviet and American occupations
Michael Kim explains why the Soviets and Americans were not prepared for the Korean
occupation. The occupation zones in the North and South had considerable differences that
provided different challenges for the two military governments. Controversies remain today
about how best to understand the critical decisions that were made by the Soviet and
American occupations.

Neither the Soviets or the Americans were prepared for the occupation of Korea. In many respects,
World War II had ended far too quickly. The atomic bombs that ended Japan's effort to take over East
Asia suddenly created a need to do something about the many occupation zones that resulted. Now, in
the North, when the Soviets arrived, they discovered that much of the population were actually Christian
and nationalist, and were quite conservative in their outlook. Whereas in the south, South Korean
society was filled with labour and peasant organisations that often took a very radical direction. And so
what the Soviets wound up doing is what they did in many places around the world. They essentially
Sovietised society.

They introduced many features of a planned economy and moved North Korean society towards a very
fundamental transformation of the social structure. The Americans, on the other hand, were far more
conservative, and reluctant to let many of the social tensions take their course. And so they tried to work
with the conservative elements of South Korean society. However, many of the conservatives were
tainted with collaboration. They had worked very closely with the Japanese, and they lost a lot of
credibility through the process. Now, the Americans and Soviets decided that the solution to the Korea
problem would be to hold an election after a five year period of trusteeship. When the trusteeship was
announced, at first, nearly everybody opposed the trusteeship.

However, the leftest factions in South Korea decided to go along with the trusteeship, because they
wanted to cooperate with the Soviets. However, the conservatives in the South did not at all agree with
trusteeship, and so they began to protest the movement. Now, this turned into one of the most popular
moves that they could have done, as the anti-trusteeship movement was one of the few genuinely
popular issues that conservatives could latch on to. Therefore, for the next several years, the Americans
and Soviets discussed establishing a trusteeship that would lead to a unified election. But on their own,
they began the process of creating a separate state.

They began to create their own separate police and army and administrative units, which began to
solidify the division into a political kind of a separation. And therefore, in 1948, when the Americans
decided that the trusteeship had gone long enough, and it was time to hold a unified election, the Soviets
opposed the move, fearing that because the Americans controlled the most popular section of South
Korea, that their candidates could not win an all-Korea election. Therefore, the Americans decided to go
ahead and hold a separate election in the South, without the North. And so a UN sponsored election was
held, and a South Korean government was created.

,3 
Soviets then moved to create their own separate government in the North, under the leadership of Kim Il
Sung, who had been a guerrilla fighter during the colonial period. And therefore, the division of Korea
was solidified with the birth of two separate regimes that were rivals to each other and hoping to unify
the country. And this situation is the backdrop of what would lead to the Korean War.

© Michael Kim

The Russian occupation of northern Korea

This section describes the Russian Occupation of Northern Korea.

Sources for studying the Russian occupation of North Korea are limited, but much of what we
know comes from the Soviet archives and captured North Korean documents by the US army
when Pyongyang fell during the Korean War. Michael Robinson explains what happened during
the initial phase of the Russian occupation to the Committee for the Preparation of Korean
Independence (CPKI). Rather than constructing an entirely new administrative apparatus, the
Russians chose to work within the political structures that they encountered upon their arrival in
Korea.
>Do you believe that the Russian occupation may have reflected the desires of the Korean
people or did they impose a social revolution from the top?

The Russians, already in Korea at the surrender, decided to recognize the peoples' committees formed
under the CPKI. This gave them the advantage of staying in the background at the local level while
directing events at the center. The initial leadership of the committees fell to resistance leaders emerging
from jails after Liberation; the Russians did not have to worry about the people's committees' politics
because the committees had already begun the decolonization process in the North. They removed
Japanese and their Korean collaborators from office, froze Japanese assets, and created the beginnings
of a police force to keep public order. These early moves were popular, and the relatively broad political
composition of the committees masked any show of direct Russian or Korean Communist leadership in
the early weeks of the occupation.

With Russians in control at the center, a broad program emerged in the peoples' committees to deal with
pressing economic and social demands of the people; as it turned out, however, the committees in the
North followed a plan that differed dramatically from what was happening in the South. Most important,
in the North a thorough land reform was carried out in February 1946. The new authorities confiscated
all Japanese-held land and that of 5,000 large Korean landlords and redistributed it to the tenants. Those
landlords who were not considered direct collaborators were allowed to keep a small portion of land
only if they promised to farm the land themselves.

This was a revolution in Korean society because it attacked the very foundation of the inequitable
distribution of wealth that had supported the ruling class in Korea for centuries. In some districts
peasants took direct reprisals, sometimes violently, against their landlords, but in the main, the land
reform was accomplished quickly and peacefully. It certainly helped that a number of the largest
landlords lived in the South and that many of the northern owners had already fled into the southern
sector by the time of the reform.

A program of general economic and social reform followed. The major industries in the North were
nationalized, but small firms and factories continued to operate privately. New labor laws dictated an
eight-hour workday, set a minimum wage, prohibited child labor, and regulated working conditions.
Laws to promote gender equality and the rights of women were also an important feature of the program.
These regulations prohibited concubinage, female infanticide, and prostitution.

10 KR206
Clearly the presence of the Soviet army encouraged the initiatives established by the committees, and
the influence of the Korean Communists was also important. But it must be noted that the ultimate
shape and direction of the reforms followed remarkably close to the spirit of those advocated by the
Korean People's Republic, now defunct in the South. While rightist elements may have chafed under the
leftward swing of the decolonization process and the reforms may have exceeded moderates' wishes, the
public greeted them favourably. The reforms in general and the land reform in particular solidified mass
support for the peoples' committees that by mid-1946 had come more and more under Korean
Communist direction.

© Michael Robinson, Korea's Twentieth-Century Odyssey, (University of Hawaii 2007), pp. 106-107.

The United States military government in Korea

This section describes the US Military government process in Korea.

The events that took place in the South unfolded in a different direction than in the North.
General Hodge tried to work with the conservative Koreans who tended to speak English and
were pro-American, even though they were tainted with Japanese collaboration. Rather than
work within the existing people's committees, the Americans chose to dismantle them and
conduct their own direct rule. Michael Robinson explains that the Americans attempted some
reforms but held back from any radical measures for fear of destabilizing South Korean society.
>Do you believe that the differences between the Russian and American approaches to the
military occupation were historically significant? Might the US have suppressed radical forces
that attempted to express themselves in liberation Korea?

Fatefully, one of General Hodge's first decisions was to not recognize the authority of the peoples'
committees in the South. Even before arriving, Hodge had been warned by the frightened Japanese to
expect Communist subversion within the local provisional authority. By failing to recognize the people's
committee, Hodge was foregoing the legitimating influence of the local Korean effort to build a basis
for a future Korean government.

In place of the committees Hodge established the United States Army Military Government in Korea
(USAMGIK) and staffed it by returning to their government posts Japanese and Korean officials who
had already been dismissed by the people's committees. USAMGIK had to abandon the use of Japanese
officials almost immediately because of the public uproar that followed. Many Koreans, members of the
people's committees in particular, were outraged at what amounted to a rollback of the decolonization
process. After all, establishing a military authority denied Koreans the very political independence they
assumed was now theirs to organize.

The process of ousting the people's committees in the Korean countryside in the South was long and
painful. It took a full year to eliminate them, and it was not without major violence. Hodge turned to
conservative Koreans for support and found it in the form of the Korean Democratic Party (KDP). The
KDP, hastily organized the week after the American arrival, consisted of socially prominent landlords
and businessmen who considered with alarm the emergence of a political organization with the socialist-
sounding name of people's committees. Emboldened by the American presence in the South, the KDP
intended to provide an alternative to the KPR and to protect their interests in the reorganization of
governance that would follow. The two highest-ranking police officials appointed by USAMGIK, Cho
P'yong' ok (1894-1960) (National Police) and Chang T'aeksang (Seoul Police)-among the most
unpopular appointees made by the United States-were drawn from the conservative KDP; fully 80
percent of the forces they directed were composed of former members of the colonial police.

In its first year USAMGIK issued a series of social and economic reforms that fell short of Korean
expectations and stood in sharp contrast to the reforms already underway in the North. Moreover, many

,3 
of the new policies were slow to be realized. In spite of the decisive land reform in the North,
USAMGIK delayed land reform until 1948, and then it was only a redistribution of Japanese-held land,
leaving the holdings of large Korean landowners intact. The failure of land reform in the South was a
major problem for USAMGIK, and it was a singular mistake for an occupying authority that was
desperately in need of public support.

USAMGIK issued new labor laws that limited the work week to 60 hours and provided for time-and-a-
half pay for any hours over 40. A new child labor law banned employment of children under the age of
14. But the Americans were not enthusiastic to create laws that encouraged labor unions, groups they
distrusted as hotbeds of Communist activity. In general the social and economic reform programs in the
South failed to legitimize the American occupation government. Indeed, by September of 1946 ill will
toward USAMGIK and dissatisfaction with the slow pace of reform boiled over into a general strike
sparked by a demonstration of railroad workers in the southern port city of Pusan. The strike provoked
massive demonstrations in other southern cities, and American occupation troops and Korean police
spent the remainder of the fall fighting what amounted to a major insurrection.
© Michael Robinson, Korea's Twentieth-Century Odyssey, (University of Hawaii 2007), pp. 107-108.

The 1948 elections and the politics of assassination

This section explains the formation of two separate Korea.

The Americans and Soviets discussed the formation of a joint trusteeship for the Korean
peninsula at the highest levels, yet the actual policies on the ground by the military occupations had
moved towards division shortly after liberation. Both the Soviets and Americans formed separate
advisory and administrative bodies in Seoul and Pyongyang immediately upon their arrival. They
promoted certain leaders or in the case of the Soviets eliminated some like Cho Man-sik (1883-1950)
who threatened their authority. By the fall of 1946 a northern army had already been formed and the US
started a similar effort to organize a South Korean police force and constabulary that would become the
basis of the South Korean army.

The Moscow Conference in December 1945 established the Joint Commission, which met numerous
times throughout 1946 to discuss how to establish a unified provisional government. However, the
growing animosity between the two sides would lead to a prolonged stalemate. Once Syngman Rhee
purged all moderate elements and took over the Representative Democratic Council in the spring of
1947, the path was set for a separate southern government.

The US asked the newly-founded United Nations to form the United Nations Temporary Commission
on Korea (UNTCOK) to supervise the Korean Constitutional Assembly election on May 18, 1948 and
the process led to the establishment of the Republic of Korea in August 15, 1948. The Constitutional
Assembly elected Syngman Rhee who ran unopposed to become the first president of the Republic of
Korea. The Soviets refused to participate in this UN sponsored election because they controlled an area
of Korea that was far smaller in population than the US. The Soviets quickly held their own separate
elections on August 25, 1948 which inaugurated the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north.
The question of why Syngman Rhee emerged as the paramount leader of South Korea is an interesting
one and we must ask what happened to his rivals to power. Here we can see that there had been an
irreconcilable and deadly politics of assassination ever since Korea's liberation from Japanese rule.

As early as September 1945, the first victim of assassination was the communist Hyon Chun-hok (1896-
1945). Hyon’s death is still shrouded in mystery because he represented the leftist groups in North
Korea at the time while with Cho Man-sik represented the conservative elements in the North. Hyon
was a domestic communist who may not have cooperated to the fullest with the Soviets, and there is
speculation that his assassination was tacitly approved by them. His death may have been a signal that
not all communists in Korea welcomed the arrival of the Soviet army.

12 KR206
The next victim of assassination of Song Chin-u (1890-1945), who had been an editor of the Tonga ilbo
newspaper during the colonial period and one of the few conservative figures not tainted with Japanese
collaboration. After declining to take over from Governor General Abe Nobuyuki, Song was
assassinated for suggesting that Koreans should consider the trusteeship plan from the Moscow
Conference in December 1945. The renowned independence activist and head of the Provisional
Government Kim Ku (1876-1949) may have been behind his assassination, and most elements of the
right were staunching against the trusteeship.

Yo Un-hyong also fell victim to the assassin's bullet after surviving multiple attempts on his life. He
escaped ten terror attacks against him during the first two years of liberation, but he was finally gunned
down on July 19, 1947. Many considered him to be the only true moderate leader among the Koreans,
and his death ended the possibility of Koreans coming together under a centralist figure willing to work
with all sides of the ideological spectrum.

Perhaps the most famous assassination during the immediate post-liberation years involved Kim Ku.
Kim Il Sung invited Kim Ku to Pyongyang to discuss ways of preventing the division of Korea by
forming a unified coalition of Korean leaders in April 1948. Kim Ku made the difficult decision to
attend the northern conference at a time when most conservatives supported the separate elections in the
South. He refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the May 1948 election and wanted no part of the
newly formed Constitutional Assembly that elected Syngman Rhee president. The Pyongyang
Conference ultimately turned out to be a propaganda ploy, and Kim Ku was assassinated later in
November 1948. The crowds that gathered for his funeral honoured him as one of the few genuine
voices that opposed the division of Korea.

Thus even though the negotiations to unify the two Koreas continued throughout 1945-1947, in many
ways the movement towards separate states started quite early during the liberation period, and the path
became hardened through violence. Syngman Rhee emerged in the South and Kim Il Sung emerged in
the North, because so many of their rivals had been systematically eliminated during the violence of the
immediate post-liberation years and the Korean War. In effect, an entire generation of Korean leadership
had perished during the struggle to establish the Korean nation after the end of Japanese rule in 1945.

© Michael Kim

Discussion
Who represents Korea?
You have read a considerable number of articles that discussed the complexities of the Soviet and
American occupations. What are your thoughts on how best to understand the problems of faced by the
Soviet and American occupations in establishing a new Korean nation? Working with former
collaborators and independence activists who all claim to represent the nation can be a harrowing task.
Picking winners and losers can have deadly implications when political rivals assassinate each other.
Peaceful transitions are difficult to achieve even within a democratic system, but what about a situation
where no democratic constitution exists?

Further complicating the Korea question is the fact that the United Nations had only been formed in
October 1945, during the same period that Korea was divided. The United Nations Temporary
Commission on Korea (UNTCOK) was formed to hold an election in 1948 throughout Korea for a new
government, but the North refused to accept its legitimacy. The question of who legitimately represents
the Korean nation was not an easy one to resolve and was in fact one of the UN's first tests in
establishing the sovereignty of newly formed nations. The task of state-building is never an easy process
in world history. In many ways, we can find similar issues whenever occupation governments end and
the state building process must begin.

,3 
>Can you draw larger lessons from this period in Korean history to understand the dynamics of
establishing nations in other parts of the world? What examples from world history might we find that
have a similar dynamic as the Korean case?
© Michael Kim

The origins of the Korean War

The establishment of two separate Korean governments quickly launched the controversial sequence
of events that led to the Korean War. This section discusses both the domestic as well as international
factors that led to the war.
The origins of the Korean War
The origins of the Korean War have triggered considerable historical controversies over the years.
Michael Kim explains why the orthodox views on the Korean War became challenged by revisionist
historians. These revisionists pointed to the importance of domestic factors in the outbreak of the war
and argued that we need to pay more attention to what took place in the Korean peninsula. The trend
today, however, is to return to the international factors that led to the Korean War.

Now, one of the most controversial aspects of Korean history revolved around the origins of the
Korean War. Now, during the Cold War, the explanation for why the Korean War broke out was quite
simple. The Soviets had ordered the North Koreans to launch a surprise attack, and the Americans then
intervened, through the United Nations, to save South Korea from the surprise attack. However, during
the 1970s and '80s, many revisionist historians, like Bruce Cummings, began to raise a question of
whether or not the Cold War explanation was far too simple. And they began to look at many of the
domestic factors that took place during the colonial period as a possible reason for why the war broke
out.

They pointed out that quite a lot of Korean society had been transformed by the Japanese occupation,
and new classes and groups had emerged that were in conflict with each other. And so these societal
tensions is what led to the outbreak of the Korean War, and that the Korean War was, in actuality, a civil
war between different factions of Koreans who did not share the same vision of where Korean society
should go. Now, one of the important features to keep in mind about the liberation period is that close to
15% to 20% of Koreans had left Korea during the colonial occupation.

And they had gone there as a result of the forced labour mobilisation, as well as looking for economic
opportunities in neighbouring Manchuria and Japan. When these Koreans returned to Korean society in
1945, they found that the society that they came back to had no place for them. And so quite a lot of
social disruption took place as these returning Koreans tried to regain a position in both North and South.
In any case, these domestic factors were ignored under the Cold War historiography. And so Bruce
Cummings and others made important contributions by pointing out that there were these internal
factors behind the outbreak of the Korean War.

However, more recently, after the end of the Cold War, we have now available the Soviet archives. And
many new findings by international historians suggest a far more complicated picture than simply
domestic factors that led to the outbreak of the Korean War. The international historians have pointed
out that the Sino-Soviet relationship is just as important in understanding why, when Kim Il-sung
proposed to the Soviets to invade the South, why Stalin gave his OK. Here, we have to keep in mind that
Stalin had not actually supported Mao Zedong and the Chinese Revolution. And so when he had an
opportunity to support the reunification of Korea under the North Korean state, he was happy to go
along.

14 KR206
Because he was hoping, perhaps, that the Chinese, if they were drawn into a conflict with the United
States, would then have to rely on the Soviets for assistance. And therefore, we have to consider both
domestic factors, in terms of tensions that led to the outbreak of the Korean War, as well as international
factors that allowed the war to take place. Because ultimately, Stalin could have said no and not given
permission to Kim Il-sung to launch the Korean War. And we also have to understand the complex US
involvement here in a more critical light, as it's clear that the United States was not quite sure or certain
about what to do in terms of its Taiwan and Korea policy.

Because the United States was only in the beginning phases of creating a more coherent vision for their
strategic place in the Pacific Theatre. And therefore, the output of the Korean War was very much an
international incident, and we do have to understand it from a more international perspective.

© Michael Kim

The path to civil war

Discussion of events leading up to the Korean War

There is no question that the Korean War broke out in June 25, 1950 as a result of a surprise
attack by North Korea forces. However, in many ways the North Korean invasion can also be viewed as
the culmination of two years of warfare that had engulfed the Korean peninsula ever since the two
separate elections that established two rival governments.

The violence began with the outbreak of guerilla warfare in the summer of 1948 on the peaceful island
of Cheju in the south-western corner of Korea. Demonstrations against the separate elections in Korea
led to the National Police and army having to suppress the residents of Cheju Island. Massacres of
civilians ensued as South Korean authorities struggled to bring the rebellion under control. Estimates
vary but perhaps as many at 30,000 or more may have died in the fighting which may have been in the
range of 1/6 to 1/7 of the total population.

The Cheju Uprising then trigged another series of violent incidents in the city of Yosu, where a
contingent of soldiers awaiting dispatched to the suppression campaigns on Cheju Island decided to
stage their own rebellion. They captured a large area of the Yosu-Sunch'on area and threatened the
stability of the Southern regime. One of the young officers who was arrested for his participation in this
rebellion happened to be Park Chung Hee, who would later become the president of South Korea.

Southern Korea on the whole underwent a tumultuous process of decolonization, as public trials were
held to expose prominent collaborators with the Japanese during the colonial era. The newly elected
National Assembly passed a law and installed a special commission in September 1948 to investigate
and put collaborators on trial. The special commission identified approximately 7,000 individuals and
issued 682 arrest warrants. The trials proved to be a humiliating experience for hundreds of the most
prominent Koreans. However, right-wing groups disrupted the trials, claiming that they were disruptive
to public order. Many of the collaborators, especially in the police and military were considered to be
essential personnel in the looming battle with North Korea. On June 6, 1949 the National Police
attacked and arrested members of the special commission. President Syngman Rhee refused the National
Assembly's calls to investigate the incident and the collaborator trials ended without any further
punishment of their actions.

While the social disorder leading up to the Korean War in South Korea was significant, it may also be
important to keep in mind that all signs indicated that the Republic of Korea was not about to collapse
on its own. North Korea dispatched guerilla fighters to the South and tried to instigate further rebellions,
but none materialized after the Yosu-Sunch'on incident. The guerilla suppression campaigns at the end

,3 
of 1949 proved successful and the southern authorities were firmly in control at the outbreak of the
Korean War.

Like may aspects of the Korean War, the outbreak of the conflict on June 25, 1950 is still shrouded in
controversy. While there is no question that the war started with a massive North Korean surprise attack,
it is also true that both sides had been engaged in a border war for months leading up to the war. Some
historians have argued that who started the war is almost irrelevant since both sides were eager to
escalate the hostilities.

Much of the fighting had centred around the Ongjin peninsula, as the division along the 38th parallel
had created a small strip of land that was difficult to defend along the extreme Western coastline of
South Korea. Both sides exchanged fire as they tried to position themselves into better defensive
postures. The North may have tried to obfuscate their actions by claiming that they launched the war as
a counter-attack to Southern aggression near the Ongjin peninsula.

Regardless of the tensions leading up to the Korean War, there is now a general consensus that North
Korea was clearly the initiator of the conflict and the explanations have now shifted to why they
received the approval of the Soviets and Chinese to launch the war. The return of tens of thousands of
veteran Korean soldiers who had fought in the Chinese Civil War was critical for providing the North
Korean army with the personnel necessary to attack the South. Chinese permission to release these
solders in time to participate in the war proved to be highly significant. Generous Soviet military
assistance was also crucial for providing the necessary fire power. The Korean War required
considerable coordination between North Korea, China and the Soviet Union. There was no similar
effort between the South and the United States before the outbreak of the war.

Thus, both North and South may have been eager for war, yet only the North Koreans would have
superpower support and the capacity to launch a major invasion. The Soviet Union had left behind
ample military equipment and offensive weaponry behind, while the U.S. was reluctant to provide
comparable arms to the South. The Americans feared that they would encourage Syngman Rhee to
launch a war if they provided him with the necessary armaments. Thus, the situation was clearly ripe for
conflict along the 38th parallel, yet this did not necessarily mean that war was an inevitability. The
North Koreans clearly had the means to launch a war, and they were eager to interpret the southern
situation as advantageous for spreading their revolution.

© Michael Kim

Researching the origins of the Korean War

Discussion of historical sources on the Korean War.

The orthodox view of the Korean War used to be quite simple. The North Koreans, acting as
puppets for the Soviet Union, had launched an unprovoked proxy war against the South. This was the
official position of the American and South Korean governments throughout most of the postwar period.
Yet during the 1970s and 1980s a number of scholars like John Halliday and Bruce Cumings began to
question the orthodox view of the Korean War. Bruce Cumings represents the revisionist view of the
Korean War, and he completely challenge the official understanding of why the war broke out.

In Bruce Cuming’s initial arguments, which he outlined in the two volumes of the Origins of the Korean
War, he claimed that the Korean War was not so much international in character but was in fact the
culmination of tensions within the Korean peninsula that triggered a civil war. Bruce Cumings pointed
to the radicalisation of the population during the colonial period, when many peasants and workers came
under the influence of leftist ideology.

16 KR206
In particular, Cumings portrayed drastically different pictures of what the Soviets did in the North to
alleviate these revolutionary tensions and what the Americans failed to do in the South. Cumings argued
that the Soviets simply sanctioned the existing organizational structure of the people's committees and
ruled North Korea with little interference. This position argued against the Cold War perspective that
North Korea was simply a satellite state of the Soviet Union, and that the Soviets had ordered the North
Koreans to launch the war.

Cumings’s work pointed out that there was indeed considerable domestic social tensions that existed in
the Korean peninsula and the North Korean government adopted policies that had considerable populist
appeal. In contrast in the South, Cumings argued that the American government had dis-banned the
spontaneously formed people’s committee and they had suppressed the radical tensions within South
Korea. The US military government relied on the former Japanese collaborators and adopted policies
that worked against the popular sentiments of the Korean people.

Cumings primarily relied on the US archives that focused considerable attention on the leftist movement
in South Korea. In the years since Cumings published his study in the 1980s, the collapse of the Soviet
Union has brought forth another perspective. In particular, scholars working with Soviet archives, which
were opened up after the collapse of the Soviet Union, have pointed that that there was a far greater
degree of Soviet involvement in North Korea than Cumings had suggested.

In addition, Korean scholars have argued that the South Korean government did in fact attempt to
alleviate many of the social tensions, such as Syngman Rhee’s plan to redistribute land with
compensation and attempts to arrest collaborators. Leftist agitation in Cheju Island and the Yosu
Rebellion led to military crisis, but the guerilla suppression campaigns before the outbreak of the
Korean War were highly successful. South Korea on the eve of the war was in fact showing signs of
stabilizing. Some historians speculate that one of the reasons why the Kim Il Sung wanted to attack to
South was because he feared that the southern regime was stabilizing and would not collapse on its own.

So now after all these years of emphasizing the domestic factors that led to the war, one of the trends
today is to again focus on the international factors. If you are interested in learning more, you can
research many documents online to determine your own perspectives on what led to the Korea War.

The links below are provided as optional resources if you wish to get started on your own research about
the origins of the Korean War.
© Michael Kim

Discussion
Where should we look for answers?
Many books have been written about the factors that led to the Korean War. Yet we may still
have a way to go before a scholarly consensus emerges.

The Cold War perspectives generally explain that North Korea simply followed the orders of the Soviet
Union. Later revisionist historians challenge that view and argue that the Korea War was in fact a civil
war that was triggered by domestic tensions from changes to Korean society during the Japanese
colonial occupation. Korea became divided into different classes, interests, and ideologies that clashed
with the outbreak of the war. Here, we need to understand the problems of decolonization and how
societies that suddenly experience liberation are often thrown into complete chaos as the former
colonizers depart.

More recent academic studies have placed the focus back on the international stage and have pointed to
tensions between the Soviets and Chinese as the potential explanation for why North Korea received the

,3 
green light to launch their offensive. The availability of sources from the Russian archives after the
collapse of the Soviet Union has allowed us to better understand the international factors.

Stalin clearly had complex motivations behind his support for Kim Il Sung's proposal to invade the
South. Scholars have often argued that the birth of the PRC and the signing of the Sino-Soviet alliance
positively affected Stalin’s assessment of the balance of power in Asia and gave him the confidence he
needed to confront the United States in Asia. But it is also possible to argue that Stalin perceived the rise
of the CCP as a potential threat to Soviet dominance of the international Communist movement, and
therefore sought ways to subordinate China. Stalin may have viewed the conflict in Korea as an
opportunity to bring China's closer to the Soviet side if a war broke out against the United States.

The complexities behind the origins of the Korean War have filled many academic studies. Ultimately,
we reach the important historical question of whether or not the event was an internally driven conflict
or one that was contingent on external factors.

>What are your thoughts on the origins of the Korean War and where should we focus our attention
for the answers? Are domestic factors more important or should we try to explain the event from an
international perspective?

© Michael Kim

The Korean War and its Legacies

The Korean War is often called the Forgotten War, but it was one of the bloodiest conflicts in
world history. The war ended on an armistice and not a peace treaty, which has left the Korean
peninsula in a perpetual state of war.
The outbreak of the Korean War
This article describes the outbreak of the Korean War.

Without a doubt, the Korean War was one of the most destructive wars of the 21st century. It had
the third most deaths after World War I and II of around 2-3 million people, mostly civilians. The actual
death toll among civilians may well be higher since we will never know exactly how many people died
from the indiscriminate bombings and civilian massacres that took place. The number of military deaths
is not clear, but there may have been as many as a million soldiers killed during the conflict.

Such astronomical figures are of course difficult to digest. Indeed, can any of us really imagine what it
may have been like for so many people to be killed in such a relatively short period of three years?
Perhaps the truly ironic aspect of the Korean War was that it could have been much worse as there was a
debate among the Americans of introducing atomic weapons to the conflict. When the war ground down
to a stalemate, a dispute over the use of nuclear weapons emerged. General Douglas MacArthur wanted
to broaden the campaign to attack Chinese forces north of the Yalu River, but he was refused permission.
When MacArthur made inappropriate statements to the press, President Truman dismissed him for his
public insubordination.

After the initial attack on June 25, the North Koreans rapidly pushed the South Korean military all the
way down to the famed Busan Perimeter, which was a fifty-by-fifty mile area in the south eastern corner
of Korea. Only the US decision to enter the conflict through a UN resolution would save the Republic of
Korea. Historians still debate why the Soviets did not veto the resolution within the Security Council,
for they had boycotted the session to protest the inclusion of the Nationalist Chinese government of
Taiwan as the China representative to the UN. Ultimately, when the United States did enter the war, it
was considered to be a 'police action' rather than a formally declared war. The Korean War proved to be
the first case of an undeclared war and establish the pattern for the Vietnam conflict. The passage of the

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War Powers Resolution of 1973 was an attempt by the US Congress to rein in the US President's
authority to engage in military conflicts without a declaration of war.

The surprise landing in Incheon on September 15-16, 1950 cut off the North Korean army and allowed
Seoul to be liberated by September 28, 1950. The fateful decision to cross north over the 38th parallel
forever changed the character of the war from 'containment' to 'roll back' as US attempted to push back
communism rather than simply stop its spread. The combined US-ROK forces quickly captured nearly
all of North Korea and pushed towards the Yalu River when the Chinese decided to intervene in October
1950. The Chinese quickly repelled the US-ROK forces back below the 38th parallel and even captured
Seoul on January 5, 1951 for three months. The war then stalemated into a battle for better defensive
positions along the front lines.

This war of attrition would introduce the most destructive phase of the war as massive US bombings of
North Korean cities left only smouldering smokestacks behind. US pilots eventually ran out of bombing
targets, for they had destroyed nearly all North Korean urban centres, rail road facilities, damns and
industrial sites. The US also introduced napalm into the conflict to destroy villages suspected of
harbouring enemy soldiers. Had the war ended in a few short months with a victory for either side in
1950, the loss of life would have been far less, for most of the casualties took place during the war of
attrition between 1951-1953.

The Korean War was significant on many levels for the Soviet Union, China and the United States.
While there is still a tendency to view the conflict as forgotten war on the Korean peninsula, the impact
of this event was international in scale and would forever change the Cold War interactions among the
superpowers. What often gets lost in the historical accounts of the Korean War, though, is the magnitude
of destruction and loss of life. Some scholars have noted that the amount of fire power used in the
conflict was more than the amount used in the entire Pacific theatre during WWII in a shorter time
frame. Today we debate the meaning of 'collateral damage' and the need to minimise 'civilian casualties',
but such a discussion about saving non-combatant lives was largely missing from the Korean War.

© Michael Kim

The legacy of the Korean War

This section describes the legacy of the forgotten Korean War.

One of the primary legacies of the Korea War may be the strong Korean-American alliance was
forged from the loss of 37,000 Americans lives. Even today there are still tens of thousands of US
troops in Korea as a result of the war. This US commitment reflects a major change from the state of
US-Korea ties before 1950.

The US had never intended to occupy Korea and the hasty retreat from the peninsula in 1948 suggests
that this region was not a high priority from the perspective of US policy makers at the time. Secretary
of State Dean Achenson famously did not mention Korea and Taiwan in his National Press Club speech
on January 12, 1950 that defined the US 'defensive perimeter' as running through Japan, Okinawa and
the Philippines. While evidence suggests that Dean Achenson's speech did not impact the North Korean
and Russian preparations for the Korean War, the omission bolsters the suggestions that Korea was not
an area of major strategic interest prior to 1950.

Syngman Rhee tied to do everything possible to delay the withdrawal of US troops. He wanted a
military pact in the Pacific similar to NATO, but did not receive it. When the North invaded the South,
the US might have adopted a similar position as China, where it had stood by while Chiang Kai Shek’s
Nationalist Chinese had to flee to Taiwan. Instead, the US decided to intervene in Korea, which resulted
in a long-term US military presence. In 1953, some within the US hoped to end the war without a major

,3 
long-term US commitment. We need to keep in mind that Eisenhower had been elected partly because
of the popular discontent with the war in Korea.

The Americans in the late 1940s were reluctant to enter into a bilateral treaty with the ROK, because
they did not want to diminish the UN’s role and were worried that Syngman Rhee would entangle them
in a Korean crisis. Ultimately, the US may have agreed to an alliance after the Korean War because of
Syngman Rhee’s insistence and his threats to sabotage the armistice talks. Rhee wanted to keep fighting
and refused to accept a peace that would leave a divided Korea. Once the defence pact between the US
and Korea was formalized, the US greatly expanded its aid program.

Before 1950, the US barely provided economic assistance to the ROK. The US Congress rejected an aid
bill and the State Department had to scramble to provide some support. However, the aid provided as
the US withdrew from Korea in 1948 was far less than requested. The Korean War changed this picture
completely, and over a billion dollars of US aid was provided in the decade that followed. Regardless of
the indifference shown by US policy makers before the outbreak of hostilities, the Korean War clearly
turned the region into a high strategic priority. The importance of South Korea within the overall US
Cold War framework would mean that the subsequent economic development plans benefited greatly
from special access to US markets. The pro-US sentiments would last for decades as South Koreans
looked to America for leadership and assistance.

In North Korea, the legacy of the Korea War was clearly psychological because of the immense
devastation created by American bombing. The destruction of the Korea War from aerial bombardment
led the North Koreans to dig deep into the ground when they rebuilt their cities. Decades after the
Korean War, the North still remembers the American attacks and the leadership of North Korea gains
great legitimacy by pointing to the wartime destruction and the rebuilding process that took place after
the war. The deep-seated anti-Americanism of North Korea today must be understood within the
unprecedented level of bombings conducted during the Korean War.

Over sixty years have passed since the end of the Korean War, yet we still do not have a permanent
peace on the Korean peninsula. The Cold War has ended nearly everywhere except for this part of the
world. This fact makes research into the Korean War perhaps more significant than some of the other
major conflicts of the twentieth century. Without a doubt, a peace treaty that can finally end the conflict
is the most urgent issue in inter-Korea relations.

There have been many efforts to commemorate the Korean War both officially and unofficially. The
devastating event still lives on in the countless testimonials generated by the survivors of the conflict
and their efforts to keep the distant memory alive. Only through a understanding of the causes of the
Korean War and revealing the truth of the destruction that took place during the event can we come
closer to a historical reconciliation and complete the task of ending this Forgotten War.

Extra resources on Korean War

I have linked a [newsreel from Taeha News](http://www.ehistory.go.kr/page/koreanews/korea_news.jsp)
that shows the signing of the armistice. Unfortunately, the clip is only available on Internet Explorer for
Windows computers and the videos will not display on Google Chrome. Mac users and those viewing
the clips from mobile devices such as tablets and cell phones may not be able to view them. The Taehan
News clip is entirely optional so you don't need to worry if you cannot watch it as none of the materials
will be in a quiz or test for the course.

I also linked some Korean War memorials for those who are interested in how the event is
commemorated. The links are optional and not necessary for the course.

Taehan News (July 20, 1953) * News clip of prisoner exchange and the signing of the Armistice that
ended the Korean War.

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http://www.ehistory.go.kr/page/pop/movie_pop.jsp?srcgbn=KV&mediaid=18&mediadtl=72&gbn=DH
&quality=W

Korean War Veterans Digital Memorial * Website with digital memories collected by US veterans
of the Korean War
http://www.kwvdm.org/

Korean War Memorial in Washington D.C. * The National Park Service website of the Korean War
Memorial in Washington D.C.
http://www.nps.gov/kowa/index.htm

The War Memorial of Korea * The official War Memorial Museum of Korea.
https://www.warmemo.or.kr/eng/main/main.jsp

UN Memorial Cemetery in Busan *The Korea government provided land for permanent use by the
UN as a cemetery in August 1955 and the UN General Assembly accepted the proposal to establish a
United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Korea.
http://www.unmck.or.kr/eng_index.php

United Nations Involvement * For more information about the participation of the Commonwealth
and various other nations in the Korean War, you can follow this optional link that provides a detailed
breakdown of the United Nations involvement.
http://www.koreanwar-educator.org/topics/united_nations/p_un_involve.htm

© Michael Kim

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 Economic Development in South Korea
President Park was without question one of the most important figures in modern Korean history. This
section discusses the economic development that Park led during his 18 years in power.

Park Chung Hee and the military coup of 1961

President Park was without question one of the most important figures in modern Korean history. This
section introduces his early years and the events that took place during the Military Coup of 1961.

Introduction to Park Chung Hee

There is no more controversial leader in Korean history than Park Chung Hee. His name is
forever associated with the rapid economic development of the Republic of Korea, but he is also linked
to its authoritarian excesses. No other Korean leader will elicit such strong reactions from the Korean
public and for good reason.

During his long period of rule from 1961 to his assassination in 1979, South Korea society underwent
such a fundamental transformation that he is today considered to be a national hero by the older
generation who recall the desperate poverty and destruction that followed the Korean War. However, a
vocal minority even among the older generation insist that the human rights abuses that took place
during Park Chung Hee should never be forgotten and that his authoritarian style of governance did
more harm than good for modern Korea. Younger generations of Koreans tend to acknowledge Park
Chung Hee for contributing to their high standards of living, but few are aware of his complex legacy.

Park Chung Hee began his voyage to become a leading historical figure under rather humble
circumstances. He was born into a poor rural family in 1917 in a part of Korea called South Kyongsang
Province. He was a precocious student and one of his biographers claim that he had worshipped
Napoleon as a hero in his youth. During the Japanese colonial period, he began his professional career
as a school teacher at the Daegu Normal School between 1937-1940, but he soon aspired to achieve
more in life. In the early 1940s, he was among a small group of Koreans selected to train with the
Japanese army at the Manchukuo Military Academy in what is today Changchun, China. He graduated
at the top of his class and later transferred to the Japanese Military Academy in Zama, Japan, where he
had a first-hand opportunity to examine Japan and absorb some of the ideas of wealth and power from
the Meiji Restoration in 1868.

Park Chung Hee's affinity for Japan and his appreciation of the Japanese economic development model
is perhaps one of the most controversial aspects of his legacy. His connections to the Japanese military
system would serve him well when he became president, for he had attained some of the highest
qualifications within the Japanese empire. Following liberation in 1945, Park Chung Hee first dabbled
in the leftist movement as he became a member of the South Korean Workers Party or Namrodang. He
was arrested as one of the conspirators behind the Yosu Rebellion of 1948, and some scholars speculate
that the only reason why his life was spared was that he provided evidence against his fellow rebel
officers. For the rest of his military career, Park's rise within the Korean military was not a smooth path
and a cloud of leftist suspicion followed him. Most doubt that he was a true communist, but his own
brother was one of the leaders of the revolt and therefore he may have had family reason for his
involvement.

Park Chung Hee experimented with democracy in the 1960s as a civilian president, but the fundamental
approach to rule was military. His had his own vision of achieving national reconstruction through
economic development. Yet in many ways, he may have felt a need to achieve rapid results because of
the illegitimate way that he seized power through his military coup. Park Chung Hee was a highly
pragmatic person. Even though he may have not believed in the principles of democracy, he was willing
to recognize the necessity of obtaining popular support. Whereas his predecessor Syngman Rhee was

22 KR206
often seen as an elitist, Park carefully shaped his image as a popular folk hero who remained firmly
connected to the Korean people.

Although historians common refer to Park's rule from 1961 to 1979 as an era of 'military dictatorship',
his long period of rule was far more complex and his methods were not always dictatorial. At the same
time, his reputation as an authoritarian leader may be well deserved due to the human rights abuses
during his rule. Some of the opponents to Park's rule died under mysterious circumstances and several
were executed for subversion, despite the shaky evidence behind their purported crimes against the state.
Regardless of how one evaluates the Park years, the economic transformation remains a topic of
considerable admiration. There were in fact many questionable decisions and actions undertaken during
the Park presidency. However, the legacy of lifting an entire nation out of poverty is a difficult one to
critique. Many future generations of Koreans may have to ponder the broader philosophical and ethical
considerations that Park's remarkable achievements have left behind.

© Michael Kim

Park Chung Hee and Economic Development Policy

Michael Kim explain the history of Park Chung Hee’s military coup and the launch of the first
economic development plan. The US initially refused to support the military coup and
therefore Park Chung Hee had to turn to the Germans. The financial funding for the first Five
Year Plan required a creative financing plan that depended on the dispatch of miners and
nurses to Germany.

Soon after taking over South Korea, President Park Chung-hee faced strong resistance from both his
political opponents and the US Kennedy administration, which did not approve of the fact that his
military coup had overthrown a democratically elected government. Park Chung-hee enforced his
military rule through the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction where he gathered together
many military figures who placed the highest priority on economic development. The Supreme Council
was famous for meetings where young officers, who constantly carried with them rolled up charts, held
economic briefings. A combination of unique historical circumstances, luck, and exhaustive planning
led to the successful launch of South Korea's export-oriented economy.

Just two months after his military coup, President Park announced the first Five Year Economic
Development plan, which was launched in July 1961. Much of the Five Year Plan had actually been
formulated under the previous Second Republic, but the Supreme Council made the final modifications.
Park nationalised the banks, reformed taxes, and attempted to mobilise domestic savings to promote
basic industries through a currency reform plan. However, the currency reform plan did not start
smoothly as he did not consult with the United States beforehand. US foreign aid, at the time, was
providing more than half of the South Korean government's budget. So the US had considerable aid
leverage which it used to roll back the currency reforms.

The resistance from the US led President Park to look elsewhere to fund his economic development plan,
when he found a sympathetic ear in Germany. Since private firms in South Korea lacked the
international credit, the Korean government decided to guarantee the loans. When the chancellor of
Germany first heard about President Park's economic development plan, he was sceptical about how he
planned to provide necessary collateral for these government loans. The solution that they agreed upon
was quite novel. Germany at the time had a strong shortage of miners and nurses. The German
government was willing to hire Koreans for these jobs with the condition that their wages would be
deposited in a special savings account, which would serve as collateral for the loans.

Korea, at the time, had problems in that many college graduates were not able to get a job because of
high unemployment. And therefore, thousands of applicants applied for these positions. Through the

,3 
1960s and '70s, the Korean government dispatched over 8,000 miners and 10,000 nurses to Germany.
When President Park visited Germany in 1964, there was a tearful gathering in the Ruhr where the
Korean miners who had travelled such a long distance to support Korea's economic development plan
met the president. Once underway, the results of the Five Year Economic Development plan was highly
successful. The plan went into effect in 1962, and from that point on, imports increased by more than 40%
a year.

The electrical output doubled, and economy started to grow very quickly. However, Korea's Foreign
Exchange Reserves began to fall, which could only be resolved by international investments. It was at
this point that the economic development plan and US Cold War interests came together. Now, the
Americans had initially opposed Park Chung-hee's coup, but the escalating conflict in Vietnam
necessitated a strong ally in the Asian region. Therefore, the US decided to work closely with the Park
government as long as it upheld the pledge to restore the electoral process in 1963. Park eventually gave
up his military position and ran as a civilian for president against an opponent named Yun Bo-seon, who
he defeated by the slightest of margins.

So soon after his election, President Park, at the US's urging, normalised relations with Japan in 1965.
The Korean government received as compensation from Japanese a direct grant of $300 million and a
loan worth $200 million. An additional $300 million in credit bought by Japanese companies gave
South Korea the economic boost that it needed at the time. Another key component of the Korean
economic development was Korea's role in US-Vietnam policy. The Americans wanted more nations to
participate in Vietnam as part of its More Flags programme launched by President Lyndon Johnson in
April 1964.

Under the Brown Memorandum, signed in March 1966, South Korea sent as many as 50,000 soldiers a
year and a total of 300,000 to fight in the Vietnam War. In return, South Korea received about a billion
dollars of US aid between 1965 and 1970. Historians today generally agree that a combination of sound
economic planning, Japan normalisation, and the Vietnam War all played significant roles in the early
success of South Korea's economic development.

Extra resources
The video "Secrets behind Korea`s Economic Success " is helpful to understand Economic success of
Korea. This video made by Korea Foundation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ0hMr5TSkI

© Michael Kim

Park's military coup and the Supreme Council for

National Reconstruction
Discussion of Park Chung Hee's military coup and the Supreme National Reconstruction Committee

There is much speculation about the reasons why Park Chung Hee launched his military coup in 1961.
The most often cited factor is the ineffectiveness of the Second Republic under Prime Minister Chang
Myon (1899-1966) that came to power after the April Student Revolution in 1960.

However, it's also true that Park was deeply concerned about the state of the Korean military under
President Syngman Rhee's government. Park may have even entertained thoughts of overthrowing the
Rhee government, as he was upset about military corruption involving the funnelling of aid money to
politicians and the use of the Korean Army in the vice-presidential election of 1960. When the Second

24 KR206
Republic took office, he was initially demoted from the position of Chief of Operations in the army
headquarters to the deputy commander of the Second Army in the city of Daegu. The cloud of suspicion
that he was a leftist due to his participation in the Yosu Rebellion would follow throughout his military
career.
The coup members had initially planned to strike on the one year anniversary of the April Student
Revolution on April 19, 1961, but they had to wait for another opportunity when the student protests
failed to materialise. The fateful day would arrive on the early dawn of May 16, 1961 when Park Chung
Hee and his network of young officers positioned their forces around the capital city of Seoul and
enacted an internal coup within the ROK Army. Only 3,750 solders out of 720,000 military personnel
were under the control of Park's allies and much of the success or failure of the coup attempt hinged on
the reaction of the American military.

General Carter Magruder the head of the UN Command and the US Army in Korea had initially ordered
Korean officers to stay loyal to the civilian government. However, the Americans did not intervene in
the coup, which allowed Park to seize control then establish the Supreme Council for National
Reconstruction (SCNR). Park gathered together military leaders who superimposed themselves upon the
existing government structure. The SCNR worked on a wide gamut of social and economic issues and
functioned as the de facto government. Martial law was declared and special military tribunals charged
and arrested thousands of people of corruption and suspicions of being a communist. Many criminals
were paraded in front of the public for humiliation and political activity of any kind was banned.

In June 1961, one of Park's closest associations, Kim Jong Pil (1926- ) was appointed the head of the
newly created Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA). This intelligence organization would
become the basis of Park's rule as he created a vast network of agents both inside and outside of Korea.
The US initially opposed many of Park's measures and demanded an immediate return to civilian
government. Since approximately 50% of the national budget at the time depended on US aid, the
Americans had considerable influence on the military junta. Park announced a return to civilian rule in
1963, which got him an invitation to visit the Kennedy White House in November 1962.

Park at first tried to delay the return to civilian government, but he could not resist the US threats to
withhold aid unless he allowed for a democratic election. He eventually gave up his military
commission and ran for president in the 1963 election. He narrowly defeated his rival Yun Bo Sun
(1897 – 1990) by a 1.5% vote, which then launched the next phase of his career as a civilian elected
president. Despite his reputation for authoritarian rule, Park ran for president twice and defeated Yun Bo
Sun again with over 51% of the vote in 1967. Therefore in any historical discussion of Park's military
rule, we need to keep in mind his democratic interlude during the 1960s.

Extra resources
I have linked a newsreel from Taehan News that provide images of South Korea immediately after
Park's military coup. Unfortunately, the clips are only available on Internet Explorer for Windows
computers and the videos will not display on Google Chrome. Mac users and those viewing the clips
from mobile devices such as tablets and cell phones may not be able to view them. The Taehan News
clips are entirely optional so you don’t need to worry if you cannot watch it as none of the materials will
be in a quiz or test for the course.
Taehan News (May 20, 1961) * The first official news broadcast after Park Chung Hee's
successful military coup. It's a long clip of 5 minutes and 30 seconds, but it shows a military parade with
Park Chung Hee reviewing his soldiers. At the very end, Prime Minister Chang Myon hands off power
to the military coup.
http://www.ehistory.go.kr/page/pop/movie_pop.jsp?srcgbn=KV&mediaid=394&mediadtl=2370&gbn=
DH&quality=W

,3 
Taehan News (May 27, 1961) * Newsclip of the first meeting of the Supreme National Reconstruction
Committee. Chang To-yong, the Chairman of the Committee warns pro-communist forces and tells
students to focus on their studies.
http://www.ehistory.go.kr/page/pop/movie_pop.jsp?srcgbn=KV&mediaid=395&mediadtl=2383&gbn=
DH&quality=W
© Michael Kim
Miners and nurses to Germany
Discussion of Korean miners and nurses dispatched to Germany

When Park Chung Hee's Supreme Council for National Reconstruction began their efforts to implement
the First Five Year Plan, which they had largely inherited from the previous government, they faced the
problem of just how to fund their ambitious objectives. During the summer of 1961, the US government
was still uneasy about the military junta and showed little indication that they would be willing to
provide financial assistance.

Therefore, Park Chung Hee had to look to Germany for the necessary funds. The Germans had
expressed interest in assisting Korean development even before Park seized power and negotiations with
the Second Republic for a loan had already been in motion. However, the problem of finding sufficient
collateral had stalled the discussions. Park Chung Hee was invited to Germany in December 1961 where
they discussed a plan to dispatch 5000 miners and 2000 nurses to Germany. The wages of the Korean
miners and nurses would be deposited into a special account that would act as collateral for the German
loan. The accounts belonged to the workers, but they were forced to save a proportion of their wages.

December 16, 1963, the "Program for Temporary Employment of Korean Miners in West German Coal
Mining" went into effect and the first group of Koreans miners were dispatched to the Ruhr region. As a
result, approximately 8,000 South Korean miners were sent to West Germany up until 1977. Through an
additional agreement in July 26, 1971, further South Korean nurses were dispatched. In total,
appropriately 10,000 South Korean women entered West Germany as nurses through these various
programs. Today many Koreans living in Germany can trace their family history to this effort to fund
Korea's economic development.

At the time, the West German mining industry had difficulties recruiting qualified miners and there was
also a shortage of nurses. The high level of unemployment in Korea in the 1960s, which reached
approximately 30%, meant that even college graduates could not find adequate work opportunities.
Therefore, the initial groups of miners included numerous individuals with high educational
qualifications of high school or higher (60%). They received extensive training before being dispatched
to Germany, where many faced extreme hardships in their new-found careers.

The 150 million marks received through this agreement proved to be crucial for launching the First Five
Year Plan. When Park Chung Hee visited Germany again in 1964, he reported had a tearful reunion with
the first group of dispatched miners. The sacrifice of these individuals on behalf of Korean economic
development is one of many poignant episodes that can be discovered in the modern history of Korea.

Extra resources
Taehan News (March, 23 1965) * Newsreel of Korean miners dispatched to Germany. Shows the first
group of miners and their training routine. They say that each miner will be able to send $100 a month
to their families. The end of the clip shows their daily lives in a mine in Germany. Please note that the
clip will only play on Windows computers using Internet Explorer and will not work on Google Chrome.

http://www.ehistory.go.kr/page/pop/movie_pop.jsp?srcgbn=KV&mediaid=420&mediadtl=3868&gbn=
DH&quality=W

26 KR206
Korean Nurses and workers migrated to other countries and some of them returned to Korea. You may
see following links.
http://ildaro.blogspot.kr/2014/09/the-life-of-korean-nurses-gone-to.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koreans_in_Germany

© Michael Kim

Historical legacies of Korean economic growth

South Korea’s economic success did not just take place because of actions taken by President
Park. The economic development built upon a controversial historical legacy and took
advantage of geopolitical conditions.
East Asian development from a historical
perspective
Discussion of general issues in East Asian development.

Understanding the issues of Korean economic development may require some broader understanding of
East Asian history. Recent scholarship on Asian development has brought attention to what Kenneth
Pomerantz has called the Great Divergence. Up until about 1750 much of Asia was either ahead or quite
similar to Europe in terms of many economic indicators. In fact, Europe had little to offer the Chinese to
purchase their goods until the discovery of silver in the New World and later opium from India.

Something then happened in the 19th century that triggered a major disparity between Europe and Asia,
namely the Industrial Revolution. The immense productivity gains of industrialization brought about
rapid growth in Europe but this was a relatively recent phenomenon in world history. Now that many
parts of Asia has caught up to the West this then raises some interesting questions. What has allowed
East Asia on the whole to achieve such rapid growth?

There are many scholars who propose the existence of a distinct East Asian form of development that is
characterized by more intensive use of human resources and less access to natural resources. A key part
of early modern development may have been the 'industrious' revolution rather than the industrial
revolution in Europe. The buying power of day wages declined yet ordinary people had more
possessions. This was because Europeans worked longer hours to buy more goods. Consequently they
saved more and bought more, and this desire to both save and consume were key factors that drove
demand for consumer products.

Similar developments actually took place in pre-industrial East Asia as the Chinese also worked more
and bought more items, ultimately increasing consumption levels. Therefore, a broader shift had taken
place that paralleled developments in Europe, even if industrialization itself did not reach East Asia until
much later.

Europe was able to achieve a steady import of land intensive products like sugar and textiles which then
allowed for more specialization into manufacturing and commerce and release labor from agriculture.
Great Britain’s location on top of large coal reserves was important for initiating the Industrial
Revolution, but so was its ability to import food and resources through its imperial expansion. Once the
ability to import key resources and infrastructure development was achieved in East Asia, some similar
patterns of development began to emerge.

As the world economy became integrated beginning in the 19th and early 20th century, Chinese and
Japanese development began to catch up with Europe even before the end of World War 2. Many new

,3 
areas were incorporated into a regional economic order that had previously not been developed like
Manchuria in the northeast. Growth rates in some of China’s core coastal areas actually kept up with
Japan during the twentieth century even if the development had started at a later point.

Therefore, we have to look at Korean development within the broader regional picture where there were
many pockets of intensive economic growth in East Asia. Korea's proximity to Japan and the coastal
economy of the Chinese was absolutely critical for its rapid growth in the latter half of the twentieth
century. East Asia’ successful growth was related to high human capital in terms of literacy and low
wages. The availability of knowledge infrastructure such as universities that could could disseminate
information was also important. Just as critical was the reduction of transaction costs that could be
achieved through regional networks and social relationships.

The Cold War was also a factor as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan had easy access to finished goods
and primary products through the US alliance. This may have allowed these countries to gain a head
start on postwar development, but eventually the coastal areas of China caught up with the rapid growth
pattern.

The Korean economic miracle may look less like a unique event when we view it within the broader
context of East Asian regional development. From this perspective, Koreans had opportunities for
economic expansion in the region by connecting to the existing commercial networks and taking
advantage of the available financial resources. The US alliance clearly played a key role in South
Korean development, but we should not overlook the fact that the entire region also achieved
remarkable economic growth rates.
© Michael Kim

Historical legacies: The pre-1945 influence

This section discusses historical legacies of Korean economic growth and advantage of geopolitical
conditions.

In this excerpt, Hyung Gu Lynn discusses the key historical legacies to consider when we try to
explain Korean economic development. We need to keep in mind the distinction between
economic growth in the colonial era and what took place after the devastation of the Korean
War. Park Chung Hee may not receive all of the credit for Korea's economic development as
significant events did take place before his military coup in 1961.
>What are your thoughts on Hyung Gu Lynn's key arguments about how best to understand the
historical legacies?

Economic Development, 1960-97

How did the South Korean economy grow? During the 1980s and 1990s, academics and
journalists flocked to South Korea to search for the causal alchemy behind the metamorphosis of post
Korean War slag into late-industrial gold. Among the range of explanations offered, the roles of
effective economic planning and timely intervention by a government dedicated to development - the
"developmental state" model - became one of the most commonly cited. Others included the impact of
"export-led development" and, more controversially, the role of culture, or "Confucian capitalism," on
attitudes towards work, authority, and education. References to Asian "tigers" and "dragons" abounded,
as did more specialized invocations of a 1930s Japanese economic theory of development called the
"flying geese model" – which emphasized the role of trade of declining industries from one country to
another as the lead country moved up the value-added chain. Aside from these marriages of economics
and zoology, the importance of market mechanisms versus industrial policy, the impact of supply-side

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factors versus demand-side factors, and total factor productivity increases versus increases in factor
inputs, formed other lines of debate.

Historical legacies
As was the case with democratization, the origins of development and growth can be traced back
to long before 1989. The question of when exactly Korean development began and the extent of the
continuities between pre-colonial, colonial, post liberation, and post-Korean War economies remain
open for further exploration by historians.

At least four periods have been identified by various scholars as possible starting points for the story of
Korea's economic development. This topic has been riven by intense debates in South Korean academia
because of the view of economic development as a desirable outcome, and the association of
colonialism or authoritarianism with normatively negative processes.

The first view situates the start of economic development in the late Choson period. Commercial activity
flourished in the late Choson period, and the Choson government had initiated some model
manufacturing factories, but Korea was colonized by Japan before these prototypes could affect the
entire economy. While the commercial roots of economic growth were certainly grounded in this period,
sustained growth of the manufacturing sector did not
occur on a large scale before the 1930s.

The second view locates the start of sustained development in the 1920s and 1930s under Japanese
colonial rule. Under Japanese rule, while some attempts were made to promote manufacturing in the
1920s, it was not until the 1930s that there was sustained investment in manufacturing and heavy
industry. Why and how the colonial state invested in manufacturing, and who ultimately profited from
such development remain points of heated debate among academics and the public, but few disagree that
there were significant increases in output in manufacturing and heavy industry. In this sense, the initial
start to economic development, narrowly defined as structural transition from an agrarian to an
industrial society, can be said to have begun in earnest during the 1930s.

There is a problem in linking the development during the colonial period to the post-1953 years due to
the extensive damage to the infrastructure incurred during the Korean War – the war destroyed around
25% of capital stock or 85% of South Korea's 1953 gross national product (GNP). Also, heavy
industries and power sources were generally concentrated in the northern half of the peninsula, leaving
South Korea with little access to power once the peninsula was divided. Moreover, decolonization
disrupted existing trade and supply routes with Japan. It is possible to argue that the more important
legacy took the form of human capital and organizational form: the entrepreneurial know-how lodged in
the minds of businessmen and government officials and the developmental state model. For example,
the similarities in organizational structure between Park Chung-Hee's developmental state of the 1960s
and the 1930s colonial administrative structure could be explained by Park Chung-Hee's early education
in a Japanese military academy in Manchuria. However, further empirical research is required to
demonstrate that colonial experiences had a major impact on post-1960s development policy.

A third view emphasizes the role of capital accumulation and embryonic economic planning in the
1950s. The orthodox view had been that Syngman Rhee's policies and US aid had not generated
consistent growth in Korea in the post-war years. Revisionist views posit that the capital accumulation
and fiscal reform that was necessary for post-1961 growth occurred from 1953 to 1960 rather than in the
1930s. These scholars point to the existence of drafts for economic plans under Chang Myon that Park
adapted for his own use after the coup, and to the continuities between bureaucracies of the 1950s and
the 1960s, to argue that there was no spike in the level of prescience or effectiveness of industrial policy
after 1961, but only a reduction in transaction costs due to policies based on personal networks.

,3 
The fourth and majority view is that the development of the 1960s was not directly related to the
preceding periods. Scholars who adhere to this view emphasize the damage suffered during the Korean
War, the poor economic record under Rhee, and the convergence of state and market in the 1960s.
Park's dictatorship rested on shaky stilts of legitimacy, but he was armed with the power to repress
protest and maintain autonomy for its economic bureaucrats. Development also coincided with
favourable international conditions, leading the central role of exports in development.

Bipolar Orders: The Two Koreas Since 1989

© Hyung Gu Lynn, Bipolar Orders (Zed Books 2007), pp. 58-60
Discussion
Historical origins of Korean development
One of the most controversial historical questions involves the origins of Korean
development. Perhaps there is no more heated topic in modern Korean history due to the clash of
different perspectives.

Some historians believe that certain patterns established during the Japanese colonial development were
important for postwar development, both in a negative as well as positive light. Other historians make
the more explicit argument that the Japanese introduced industrial capitalism to Korea, while others see
colonial rule as highly exploitative and not conducive to economic growth.

While colonial economic growth was significant, we may need more of a focus on post-1945 events.
Historians of the postwar period point to President Park's economic planning and the importance of the
US Cold War relationship in boosting the Korean economy. Open access to US markets and technology
were clearly important factors in the rise of the South Korean economy. Korea not only gained access to
the United States it also gained favourable positions among nations allied with the United States during
the Cold War.

The broader issue of East Asian development needs to be raised as well since the only countries that had
developed successfully before the rise of China happened to be Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and
Singapore. The export-oriented development model was particularly effective in postwar East Asia and
the entire region showed impressive economic growth rates. Here we must consider the importance of
the Normalization Treaty with Japan in 1965 and the synergies that developed among the East Asian
economies. Considerable Japanese investment took place in Korea after the treaty was signed, and many
of the manufacturing plants moved to Korea when labour costs in Japan became too high.

>What are your thoughts on the historical origins of Korean development? What do you feel were the
key factors that drove Korean economic development? We can continue this discussion again after a
few more steps. But for now, I wonder what are your preliminary thoughts about the broader context
of Korea and East Asian development in general?
© Michael Kim
Park Chung Hee and the economic take-off
The road to achieving economic development was full of obstacles and challenges. President Park
pushed a unique combination of government-private cooperation that established the foundations for
Korea’s economic miracle.

Park Chung Hee and the Economic Miracle

Michael Kim discusses the ‘spirit and ethos’ of President Park’s economic development. He
explains some of the key challenges and decisions that led to the start of rapid
industrialisation. Korean economic development took place despite going against the advice
of many who believed that Korea should not focus on heavy industrialisation.

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Under President Park's leadership, South Korea transformed its economic structure and created a vibrant
export-oriented economy. The share of manufacturing-increased GDP doubled between the early 1960s
and the late 1970s. To promote development, the private sector and the government created a
partnership that shared investment risks, and rewards became performance based. Successful companies
were given favourable treatment in getting access to loans, and their economic privileges were protected
while less successful companies received little government assistance. Slogans such as the
"exportisation of all industries" and the "scientification of all the people" capture the essence of the
spirit of the times. The Korean government targeted certain key industries and funnelled government
guaranteed loans to the highest priority sectors.

Some of the early successes of the President Park years include the Seoul-Busan Expressway and the
POSCO Steel Mill. President Park had been inspired by the German autobahn during his visit there, and
he pushed forward the plan to build an expressway between Seoul and Busan at a time when very few
cars existed in Korea. The plan was controversial from the start, but ultimately, the Seoul-Busan
Expressway provided a great contribution to economic growth. The South Koreans were also heavily
invested in petrochemical plants as its economy was heavily dependent on oil. A Western petroleum
executive reportedly observed in the President Park years that, if one goes west from Japan, the only
petrochemical refinery that you'll find until Italy exists only in Korea.

President Park pushed ahead with the promotion of heavy and chemical industries, against the advice of
many who believed that the current economy was not ready at the time. During the 1970s, it was not
clear that the investment would pay off as the OPEC oil shock and the global recession at the time
proved to be a difficult challenge for the South Korean economy. By the end of 1970s however, South
Korea had created a solid industrial base in steel, nonferrous metals, chemicals, electronics, shipbuilding,
and machinery. The current economy was not completely stabilised and able to utilise the heavy
industry development capacity through 1970s.

But the industrialisation drive helped to build the foundation of many of Korea's leading industries and
enabled it to develop its own defence industry. Now, initially the agricultural sector was lagging far
behind and did not do as well as industrial sector. By 1970s however, the agricultural sector became a
target of much government attention. And balanced economic growth is actually one of the most
interesting characteristics of the Korean development. The third year Five Year Plan stressed rural
development, and the depressed conditions of the countryside was in sharp contrast to thriving urban
areas. The plan quadrupled the budget for agricultural production from the previous plan and raised
protectionist barriers around agricultural products.

The centrepiece of the agricultural policies of the Park era was a Saemaul Movement or New Village
Movement which began with the distribution of excess cement in the countryside in the winter of 1970-
1971. The movement stressed the mechanisation of agriculture production, rural revitalisation, and the
spread of high-yield rice strains and rural beautification projects. The idea was that the farmers were
going to help themselves out of poverty through government assistance. Competition between villages
was encouraged and initially successes took place in improving the lives of farmers. However critics
note that the plan ultimately was carried out under authoritarian guidelines, and it greatly empowered
local elites at the expense of the general rural population.

While initial agriculture production rose, the high-yield rice proved to be not as disease resistant as local
strains, and the harvests were disastrous in 1979 and 1980s. Despite the setbacks in the South Korean
economy, the growth generally was healthy throughout the 1960s, 1970s. Not all the efforts were
successful in their way. But the firm foundations were clearly laid out during the Park era, and they will
contribute greatly to subsequent economic development that followed the following decades.

© Michael Kim

,3 
Economic take-off: The Five Year Plans
This section discusses Park Chung Hee's early Korean economic development policy.

In this excerpt from Kyung Moon Hwang's A History of Korea, he discusses the first and second
Five Year Plans and their impact. Each plan had different targets and their results far exceeded
the initial expectations. In many ways, the plans went against the advice of foreign experts who
believed in 'comparative advantages' and recommended that South Korea should be developed
as an agricultural economy. The ambitious plans were far-reaching attempts to transform Korea,
but the biggest beneficiaries were the family-controlled conglomerates or chaebols. Such a high
degree of economic power concentrated into a small number of families was a direct result of
the economic development plans.

>What are your thoughts on the role of the chaebols in Korea's economic development?

Park made it clear that his highest priority throughout his first decade of rule was to lift the country out
of poverty and set it on the path to economic modernization through industrialization. For the most part,
he accomplished both of these goals, although it took the entirety of the decade, and the economy
encountered problems with rice shortages. Borrowing an approach found in communist systems, Park
deployed the model of the "Five-Year Plan" for national economic development, with clear-cut goals
and blueprints for pursuing a growth strategy managed by skilled bureaucrats. Park's government
promulgated the First Five-Year Plan in 1962, the same year that it also designated the city of Ulsan on
the south eastern coast a special industrial development zone. UIsan would become the home region for
the Hyundai Corporation's manufacturing juggernaut.

By the end of 1966, the final year of the plan, there were indeed signs of major infrastructural and urban
growth, as well as of the drive for exports gaining full force. One of the most visible transformations
had taken place in 1964, when some areas in the country were the first to experience twenty-four hour
electricity provision, engendering a dramatic lifestyle change by expanding the scope of night time
activity. Indeed, materially and otherwise, especially in the urban areas, conditions continued to improve,
and the people's perspectives on the world, especially those of the youth, widened with greater exposure
to foreign cultural and material products.

The Second Five-Year Plan, beginning in 1967, more explicitly targeted export-oriented growth as the
primary goal, which would lay the foundation, in turn, for a shift toward heavy industry. That year the
government finalized plans to establish a nationally-owned steel venture, the Pohang Iron and Steel
Company, or POSCO. POSCO became incorporated the next year and went on to supply the major
industries of shipbuilding, auto manufacturing, and construction through which South Korea became an
industrial power. 1967 also witnessed the creation of a special export manufacturing zone in south
western Seoul, the famed Kuro Industrial Park. With its concentration of toiling workers producing
everything from shoes and clothes to machinery, the Kuro Industrial Park eventually turned into a
symbol of the sacrifices and lives of the South Korean labour force.

Korean workers, the economic miracle's backbone that the state and big business exploited for the
comparative advantage of cheap labour, suffered conditions not unlike their counterparts throughout the
modern world. Many South Korean workers fiercely resisted this heavy-handed state control and even
won significant legal concessions through union actions, but prodded by calls for national sacrifice and
the promises of material gain, they too mostly fell in line with the larger industrialization drive. This
inclination, together with a dedication to education and training, made the work force the most
indispensable element of the South Korean success story.

The biggest beneficiaries of the state-led, export-oriented industrialization drive, however, were the
family-owned conglomerate companies, the so-called chaebol, a mostly pejorative term meaning

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“financial clique.” Some of the best-known of these conglomerates today, such as Samsung and LG,
began as small enterprises in the colonial period, while others, such as Hyundai, began shortly after
liberation. By the 1960s, the government selected well-performing companies for targeted export-
oriented production, rewarding them with cheap and big loans, easy licenses, tax benefits, and
government guidance. The result was the astonishing growth of many of these companies into the
“octopus” -like entities that came to dominate the South Korean economy.

The families that controlled the conglomerates came to be followed as national celebrities, though not
always flatteringly, and the tycoons who began these enterprises won listings in the pantheon of national
heroes. Hyundai presented a prime example. Begun by Chung Ju Yung, a man from the east coast of
what is now North Korea, as a transport service supplying the American military, Hyundai became
perhaps the most celebrated beneficiary of government largesse in the 1960s. Hyundai’s first major
industry, construction, jump-started its rise through foreign building contracts in southeast Asia in the
mid-1960s, while at home it won major infrastructural projects, including construction of the main
national artery, the Seoul-Pusan Expressway, completed in 1970. Its second major industry, automobile
manufacturing, began in 1967 with an agreement to build a Ford model in its plant in Ulsan. By the
1970s, Hyundai would produce and export its own car, the Pony, and by the 1980s it would penetrate
the largest car market in the world, the US. Hyundai eventually expanded into shipbuilding, for which it
became a global leader, as well as cement, chemicals, and even electronics. Today, like the other well-
known chaebol, Hyundai is commonly seen as a standard-bearer for Korean industrial prowess, and
even for Korea itself.

Extra resources
Taehan News (December 27, 1968) * The opening of the Seoul-Busan Expressway. The clip
shows President Park at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. The segment connects Seoul to the city of Suwon.
The narrator explains that the when the expressway is finished at the end of 1970 it will cut the time to
Busan to 4 hours.
http://www.ehistory.go.kr/page/pop/movie_pop.jsp?srcgbn=KV&mediaid=601&mediadtl=3834&gbn=
DH&quality=W
Taehan News (July 15, 1972) * The construction of the POSCO steel mill. The factory will
produce 336,000 tons of steel a year and export $20 million a year when completed in March 1973.
http://www.ehistory.go.kr/page/pop/movie_pop.jsp?srcgbn=KV&mediaid=820&mediadtl=6938&gbn=
DH&quality=W

© Kyung Moon Hwang, A History of Korea (Palgrave 2010), pp.230-233.

Tungsten and wigs

Discussion of the two primary export products during the early years of the Park Era.

The Korean economic miracle received a strong boost from two unusual exports: tungsten and wigs.
These two items would account for a major percentage of South Korea's exports during a period when
there were few products in demand.

During the 1950s, the South Korean government struggled to finance its operations and there were only
two government run companies that produced a profit, which happen to be the government Korea
Tungsten mine and the tobacco monopoly. The Japanese had imported tobacco leaf from Virginia to
produce a large tobacco production system, but the tobacco revenues were not as profitable back in the
1950s because of the problems of smuggling and the unlicensed production of tobacco.

Instead, tungsten became the major export product during the early years. All school children in South
Korea in the 1960s learned about the rich tungsten deposits on the Korean peninsula. They were taught
about the importance of this metal for the future of their country. South Korea’s export of tungsten

,3 
became a key part of Park Chung Hee’s economic development plan. Korea Tungsten produced 60-70
percent of Korean total exports at its height between 1950 and 1970 and provided key financial
resources during a period when little capital was available for investment purposes.

Following his 1961 coup, Park Chung Hee appointed colonel Pak Tae Joon (1927~) in 1963 to head the
state-run Korea Tungsten Corporation, which had been in financial trouble. Within one year, Pak turned
the company around into a profitable business and three years later he became the president of the newly
inaugurated POSCO steel company, which was launched as a joint venture between the Korean
government (75%) and Korea Tungsten Co. (25%). Even though POSCO is primarily a steel company,
it is still involved in the mining industry.

Another unusual commodity that became a significant revenue generator was wigs made of human hair.
Wig exports amounted to almost 10 percent of total exports in the late 1960s and early 1970s. At the
height of Korean wig exports to the US, the total amounted to over $90 million a year. Korean American
businessmen established numerous hairshops where they sold beauty supplies and wigs throughout the
US. The primary customers were African American women who preferred straight black hair for hair
extensions. Hong Kong and Japan were far ahead of South Korea in the wig business, but they had
sourced all of their hair from China. When the US placed a trade embargo on Chinese products, the
Koreans suddenly had a major advantage, because they were able to source their hair from Korean
women.

In both cases, both the demand for Tungsten and Korean hair spiked sharply because of the closing of
the Chinese market to the United States. Previously, supplies of both commodities could be acquired
relatively easily from China, but the world supply experienced difficulties when trade with China
declined. South Korea was able to take advantage of these unique trade opportunities to earn valuable
foreign exchange at the start of its economic development. Eventually, textile product would become the
lead export item in South Korea's industrialization, but the availability of the tungsten and wigs markets
would greatly aid the Korean economy while it made the transition to the higher value products for
export.
Extra resources
Taehan News (February 25, 1959)* Footage of tungsten mining. The clip explains that the
Sangdong tungsten mines increased its production from 224 tons to 243 tons. The clip further explains
that the price of Tungsten rose from $7.50 to $12.00 per unit. To watch the clip we recommend you use
Internet Explorer as the videos will not display on Google Chrome.
http://www.ehistory.go.kr/page/pop/movie_pop.jsp?srcgbn=KV&mediaid=64&mediadtl=415&gbn=DH
&quality=W

Taehan News (September, 30 1961) * The first 1/3 of the newsreel shows images of Korea
Tungsten Co. The capacity of the new mine facilities built in 1961 increased to 3,600 tons a month. The
rest of the clip is about a new steel mill and electricity power plant. To watch the clip we recommend
you use Internet Explorer as the videos will not display on Google Chrome.
http://www.ehistory.go.kr/page/pop/movie_pop.jsp?srcgbn=KV&mediaid=260&mediadtl=1887&gbn=
DH&quality=W

Taehan News (October, 13 1967)* The first half of the newsreel shows a Korean wig factory. The
clip explains that in the previous year $700,000 was earned, while $1.2 million had been exported by
September 1967. The projects for the year after was for $3 million in wig exports. The second half of
the clip shows light-bulb manufacturing plant. To watch the clip we recommend you use Internet
Explorer as the videos will not display on Google Chrome.
http://www.ehistory.go.kr/page/pop/movie_pop.jsp?srcgbn=KV&mediaid=484&mediadtl=4924&gbn=
DH&quality=W

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More information on Tungsten * Tungsten is a rare metal used for many industrial applications,
most notably as filaments for incandescent light bulbs. For more information on Tungsten follow this
Wikipedia link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungsten
© Michael Kim

The Saemaul or New Village Movement

Rural Development during the Park Years

One of the important economic initiatives by President Park Chung Hee in the 1970s was the New
Village Movement. The idea was based on the ideas of Korean traditional communities like the
hyangyak that provided the rules for self-governing and cooperation in traditional Korean villages.

The movement initially sought to address the growing difference in the standard of living between the
nation's urban centres and the small villages. During the era of high speed growth, many Koreans
abandoned the villages to move to urban centres, which triggered overcrowding and created urban slums.
The New Village Movement promoted self-help at the local level and encouraged farmers to participate
in the economic development process. The idea was to revitalize the countryside so that all regions of
Korea would join in the growing prosperity.

A major component of the New Village program was rural electrification, which brought electric power
to the rural population. Another important aspect of the program was the encouragement of rice
production, and rice yields increased from approximately 3 metric tons in the 1960s to 4 metric tons per
hectare in the 1970s. The early stage of the movement focused on improving the basic living conditions
and environments whereas later projects concentrated on building rural infrastructure and increasing
community income.

The program began as small scale village-level programs, but the Park Chung Hee government soon
realized the potential to expand the effort to the entire country and involve the central bureaucracy. The
initial programs started with surplus cement supplied to the villages, which the farmers used effectively
to make village improvements. Various local improvement projects then came under the Saemaul
banner such as changing thatched roofs to tiled-roofs, straightening village roads, clearing irrigation
canals and encouraging income generating activity in the villages.

The New Village Movement is today considered to be a model for rural development. However, rural
incomes continued to lag far behind urban areas and government intervention could not solve the
longer-term exodus of the rural population to the cities. Critics also charged that the New Village
Movement was used to create a personality cult of President Park built around his leadership in
promoting traditional cooperation and egalitarian social relations. The New Village Movement became
one of the flagship programs of the Park Chung Hee era and did display his commitment to the rural
development. However, scholars today are more cautious in identifying the successes of the program as
many of the villages had been mobilized for purposes that was later discovered to have negative
consequences, such as the asbestos discovered in the roof tiles.

Extra resources
Taehan News (September 29, 1973)* Images of the Saemaul electrification program in the
island of Nukdo off the coast of south-western Korea. The village had been designated as a model New
Village. The electrification allowed residents to watch TV for the first time. To watch the clip we
recommend you use Internet Explorer as the videos will not display on Google Chrome.
http://www.ehistory.go.kr/page/pop/movie_pop.jsp?srcgbn=KV&mediaid=875&mediadtl=5874&gbn=
DH&quality=W
Taehan News (August 2, 1972) * Saemaul program in Wanju in North Cholla county. Volunteer
farmers build a bridge and conduct village improvements such as expanding their street and adding roof

,3 
tiles. To watch the clip we recommend you use Internet Explorer as the videos will not display on
Google Chrome.
http://www.ehistory.go.kr/page/pop/movie_pop.jsp?srcgbn=KV&mediaid=10005&mediadtl=20029&gb
n=DH&quality=W
Taehan News (December 30, 1975) * Success stories from the Saemaul Movement. The first half
shows images from Sillimdong which is today located in the outskirts of Seoul. The second half shows
images from the island of Wando located in South Cholla province in south-western Korea. To watch
the clip we recommend you use Internet Explorer as the videos will not display on Google Chrome.
http://www.ehistory.go.kr/page/pop/movie_pop.jsp?srcgbn=KV&mediaid=10022&mediadtl=21962&gb
n=DH&quality=W
© Michael Kim

Reforesting Korea
One of the important success stories of Korean development was a major reforestation project

One of the major accomplishments of the President Park years involved a highly successful forest
conservation movement. When the colonial era ended, Korea was almost barren of trees. The Japanese
colonial authorities had an extremely poor record of managing forest resources and entire forests were
cut down for lumber. Towards the end of Japan's occupation, the forests nearly vanished from the
Korean peninsula, which resulted in major soil erosion and flooding.

The Korean War only worsened the situation as many trees burned from indiscriminate bombing and
artillery shelling. The inability of the Korean government to control unlawful cutting of trees also
exacerbated the problem. Another major issue were the slash and burn farmers called 'hwajonmin'
(䀫䇩㹡). During the colonial period, many farmer who became landless went into the mountains to
continue their farming by burning down trees to make a living.

These farmers moved from location to location as the ashes from the fires they started only provided soil
nutrients for a few years before being depleted. While this type of farming had existed in Korea since
traditional time, the number of these farmers were small. The traditional slash and burn farmers were
also quite skilled at the practice and rarely triggered fires that got out of control. During the colonial
period, however, there was a sudden explosion of landless farmers headed into the mountains due to
financial difficulties. At its height, over a million farmers made a living in this way before 1945. These
'novices' to slash and burn farming often did not understand how to burn their fields properly. In some
cases, these new mountain dwellers accidentally triggered large forest fires with devastating
consequences.

Reforestation became one of the most important national issues as Korea during the period of economic
development. Previous to the military junta, colonial laws enacted in 1911 were used as the basis for
controlling the forests. These early laws were not capable of addressing the tremendous loss of forestry
resources that had taken place. The Forest Law of 1961 would serve as the new legal basis for a national
system to limit deforestation and establish limits on lumbering.

Perhaps one of the most remarkable aspects of South Korea's reforestation campaigns were the
significant participation of everyday Koreans. Public workers, soldiers, and students planted millions of
trees and sowed grass seeds on Arbour Day which was held on April 5 every year. Public campaigns to
replant tress had mass appeal that encouraged ordinary citizens to volunteer their time and labour. Over
a decade of coordinated efforts led to a major transformation of the Korean landscape, and today the
southern landscape is full of lush green growth.

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The nationwide reforestation effort also became a part of the Saemaul Movement. The Park government
encouraged the cultivation of tree seedlings and tree planting as a way to increase the income of farmers.
The Korean government provided tree seeds and education on cultivation methods. Saemaul Movement
leaders led numerous tree planting projects that often had great success at the village level. Disease and
insect resistant strains of trees were planted, and tree varieties were carefully selected according to
various experiments on what would be the most appropriate for the Korean climate and geography.

Ultimately, the goals of the Ten-Year Mountain Reclamation and Reforestation Plan established in 1973
was accomplished in just six years. While many elements of the Park Chung Hee years remain
controversial, there is almost a complete consensus that one of the major achievements was this major
reforestation effort. A combination of government policy and enthusiasm at the local level to conserve
the environment produced a remarkable transformation that is today a model for other regions in the
world suffering from deforestation.
Extra resources
Taehan News (April 14, 1963) * Images of Arbor Day in Korea in 1963. The news clip shows Koreans
volunteer planting trees throughout the country.
http://www.ehistory.go.kr/page/pop/movie_pop.jsp?srcgbn=KV&mediaid=318&mediadtl=3035&gbn=DH&quali
ty=W

© Michael Kim

Explaining the Miracle on the Han

Korea’s economic development is often called the ‘Miracle on the Han’. A deeper examination of
economic development shows that it was a combination of good planning and favourable historical
circumstances that led to the emergence.

Korea in place the world

The importance of external factors in Korean economic development.

Perhaps more than most other country in the developing world in the 1960s and 1970s, South Korea was
a major beneficiary of its aggressive expansion into the world market. The Korean economic miracle
benefited far more from engagement with the world markets than its economic planners could have
anticipated. In that sense, it's important to keep in mind that South Korea pursued its economic
development during a period when the world markets were relatively open. Access to the US market
was absolutely critical for South Korean success.

The US effort to rebuild Korea after the Korean War encouraged American policy makers to tolerate
growing trade deficits with the Republic of Korea. Korean exporters did not have to face resistance from
US companies until the 1970s, when trade friction emerged over textile products. After the
normalization with Japan, access to new technologies from Japanese companies and investments from
Japanese banks also played an important role in transforming the South Korean economy. Wages had
grown to a point where Japanese firms sought lower cost production for manufactured items, which they
found in South Korea.

South Korea active involvement in the world markets after the liberation period can be traced back to
the Vietnam War. The US wanted more nations to participate in Vietnam under its 'More Flags' program.
Normalization with Japan was seen as a critical step in linking the South Korean and Japanese
economies together so that they could provide firm economic support for the Vietnam War effort.
Therefore, the US government pressured both countries to expedite their normalization talks, which
ultimately led to the Japan Korea Normalization Treaty of 1965. Under the Brown Memorandum of

,3 
1966, the US agreed to pay for the equipment and wages of two ROK army divisions to be dispatched to
Vietnam. The US also agreed to provide lucrative contracts to Korean construction firms worth
approximately a billion dollars and they took advantage of the opportunity to build roads and port
facilities in Southeast Asia.

Once Korean construction firms became US certified military contractors, they were able to leverage
their experiences in Southeast Asia to gain even more lucrative contracts in the oil-rich Middle East.
The rise of OPEC and petro-dollars to spend on Middle East infrastructure projects provided immense
opportunities for the Korean economy. The Korean companies took advantage of the rapidly growing
world market for oil by building supertankers and oil rigs to supply the world's supply.

Korean ties to the United States, Southeast Asia and the Middle East proved a critical basis for
economic success and pushed the involvement of Korean companies far beyond the Korean peninsula.
Many today discuss the possibility that Korea may offer a model of development for other nations to
follow. While the Korean case is certainly worthy of study, we must also keep in mind the unique
conditions that existed during the 1970s, which may not be available for other developing nations to
take advantage of today. At the same time, it may be worth considering the extremely high engagements
with the outside world that the Korean case exhibits. Many developing nations try to close their markets
to the outside world and focus only on on domestic production. South Korea from the beginning had an
export-oriented approach which led Koreans to search the globe for markets and opportunities.

Extra resources
Taehan News (January 30, 1966) * News from Vietnam: Korean soldiers assisting Vietnamese
refugees
http://www.ehistory.go.kr/page/pop/movie_pop.jsp?srcgbn=KV&mediaid=2621&mediadtl=9567&gbn=
DH&quality=W
Taehan News (May 3, 1968) * Battle scenes of the 9th Infrantry Division (White Horse) in action in
Vietnam. 236 killed and 25 prisoners captured as a result of the attack.
http://www.ehistory.go.kr/page/pop/movie_pop.jsp?srcgbn=KV&mediaid=761&mediadtl=4263&gbn=
DH&quality=W
Taehan News (February 28, 1977) * Family Day sponsored by Hyundae Construction company
for Korean workers in the Middle East. Shows scenes from Korean projects in the region.
http://www.ehistory.go.kr/page/pop/movie_pop.jsp?srcgbn=KV&mediaid=10097&mediadtl=20554&gb
n=DH&quality=W

© Michael Kim

The Korean Economic Development Model

This section describes the export oriented economic policies and the Miracle on the Han.

Numerous observers have observed that the rapid economic development was an unprecedented
achievement. Michael Robinson explains that the 'Miracle on the Han' was not such a miracle in that the
reasons can be understood as a combination of favourable historical and cultural circumstances and
sound economic planning:

"The dramatic expansion of the South Korean economy over the next twenty years was
breath taking. In 1963 the estimated per capita income was about $100; this grew to $6,614
in 1990 and more than doubled to $13,980 in 2004. South Korea's dramatic rise from third-
world basket case and USAID junkie to middle class industrialized world trading power gave
rise to the expression, used by both Western development economists and Korean national

38 KR206
 boosters, "Miracle on the Han," Han referring to the river that flows through Seoul. It was,
however, no miracle, with its condescending implication that for Koreans to build an
industrialized economy was a miraculous event. Miracle better describes the speed and
breadth of the development. The mechanics of the phenomenon are now well known. South
Korea's rapid growth stemmed from creating a good plan and from the country's inexpensive,
disciplined labour force and its entrepreneurial talent, both of which were strengthened by
certain historical and cultural factors. Furthermore, open world export markets and certain
fortuitous world events helped the economic program at several crucial moments. The
reorganized, authoritarian state under Park Chung Hee was able to orchestrate, sometimes
with considerable coercion, the planning process and ensure that investment was channelled
into effective activities so that foreign exchange earnings were not frittered away in
unproductive ways. The result manifested itself in an average annual 8.2 percent increase in
South Korean GNP over the two decades between 1962 and the late 1970s -a very rapid rate
of growth by any measure." (Michael Robinson, Korea's Twentieth Century Odyssey (University of
Hawaii 2007), pp. 129-130

Many attempts to understand South Korean development model often point to its unique political
economy where the state played a predominant role in the economy. President Park disciplined Korean
conglomerates by using the Bank of Korea as a guarantor of foreign loans to Korean companies.
Without government authorization, Korean companies had little access to capital from abroad. The
Korean government also determined which companies would be allowed to compete in which sectors of
the economy.

President Park created both a competitive system among rival companies that sought to receive
government support and a dependent system as the companies that received government favours could
not act on its own to survive. Many scholars often compare the Korean system with the Japanese and
find many similarities. Indeed, the Japanese model also selected certain companies for government
support and used tariffs to protect nascent industries. However, an important difference is that the
Japanese developed many large private banks that are among some of the largest in the world. Therefore,
Japanese companies were not as reliant upon the government for capital, as they had numerous Japanese
banks that they could receive loans from.

The Korean model of using state banks to guarantee foreign loans gave the state far more power than in
Japan. Companies could be dissolved overnight, if the Korean government chose not to extend them
credit. The powerful nature of the South Korean state would trigger numerous corruption scandals
involving Korean companies that wanted access to government-backed loans. One of the side effects of
the Korean system was that low-cost loans were only available to large conglomerates. Small to medium
size companies had to rely on the curb market and pay often exorbitantly high interest rates to conduct
their business. This problem would create a 'dual structure' of the Korean economy, where the largest
companies could develop into world-class businesses while smaller companies could not. While there
were clearly problems with the Korean development model, it is also true that remarkable growth rates
were achieved during a period when few other economies around the world could succeed.

One other important point to keep in mind in understanding Korean development is the importance of
Korea's proximity to Japan. By the 1960s, Japanese wage costs had soared and Japanese companies
were looking for a location to assemble their products. The Korean market re-established ties with Japan
in 1965 at a critical transition in the Japanese economy. The Japanese companies continued to make
small component parts, but the labour intensive assembly work was increasingly farmed out to South
Korea.

During the 1970s and 1980s, most Korean products had an extremely high composition of Japanese
parts. Later, when the cost of manufacturing in Korea became too high, the same jobs would move to
China and Southeast Asia. Therefore, we need to consider how Korean development fit into the larger

,3 
regional shifts in manufacturing capacity as rising costs in one area would lead to the movement of jobs
to another. Even today, most of the electronic products assembled in China use parts from South Korea,
Japan and Taiwan. This relationship between component manufacturing and the availability of cheap
labour for assembly work is a major characteristic of East Asian development and Korea has long
played a key role in its emergence.

© Michael Kim

Export-led growth and the Miracle on the Han

This section describes the export oriented economic policies and the Miracle on the Han.

In this excerpt, Michael Robinson provides a detailed explanation Korea's export-oriented

strategy. He identifies a number of key factors to keep in mind when understanding how
Korea was able to develop so quickly in the 1970s when so many other nations failed to
achieve development during this period. We need to consider such factors as
entrepreneurship and favourable advantages that contributed to the rapid growth. Michael
Robinson also alerts us to the importance of the state and cultural factors in Korea's economic
development.

After reading the passage, what are your thoughts on the importance of the many different
factors in Korean economic development?

The state did not become the administrator of large state-owned industries, as was attempted in other
developing economies. It took the responsibility for planning, but the initiative for creating and
implementing various industries depended on private entrepreneurship. This dynamic was crucial to the
success of South Korean development; the few times that the state itself did attempt to organize large-
scale industrial projects-as when it created a massive tool and machinery industry in the mid-1970s-it
failed. Generally speaking, "guided capitalism" succeeded in South Korea, although it was not without
its problems. The emphasis on light industry created an imbalance in the economy by the 1970s, and
wage differences between the successful export sector and the domestic economy began to create a
stratified labour market. Moreover, income in the neglected agricultural sector stagnated, requiring
heavy subsidies to support rice prices.

Important to the success of South Korea's export-led development was the existence of talented
entrepreneurs. A small number of Korean entrepreneurs during the colonial period had been involved in
the creation of large-scale industries. Some were from landed elite families who made the transition
from rents to investment in modern commerce. There was also some continuity of personnel between
the business boom during the Pacific War and the recovery years following the Korean War. In the
1960s there were talented entrepreneurs willing and able to work with government incentives and take
the risks associated with business start ups. During the first two Five-year Plans, a group of businessmen
emerged whose successes in the early phases of development garnered them additional capital from the
state.

Ultimately the enormous business combines known as the chaebol grew from the continued state
patronage of successful companies like Hyundai, Samsung, Daewoo, and Lucky Goldstar (Amsden,
1989; Eun Mee Kim, 1997). The state wielded a number of controls and incentives to get private
entrepreneurs to work for and within the overall economic plan. Chief among the state's carrots was its
control of capital (Woo, 1991). The state provided investment capital only for projects that fit its overall
plan. In addition, businessmen who successfully fulfilled export quotas continued to receive favour and
were thus able to expand their operations. The state also regulated business with an elaborate system of
licenses and permits that defined and limited the scope of their activity. Any change in business activity

40 KR206
had to receive proper permits from the responsible government agency. In this way the state was able to
prevent wasteful duplication of effort and assure that businesses were making efficient use of capital
relative to overall planning goals. The state also lowered income taxes, provided import tariff relief for
exporters, and gave other tax subsidies to businesses that succeeded in executing the state's overall
economic plan. Finally, the state cultivated business leaders as partners in the grand national project of
developing the Korean economy by singling out for prizes and honors those who fulfilled or exceeded
development plan goals.

South Korea possessed a considerable comparative advantage in its plentiful and inexpensive labour
force. The development plan exploited this labour force by investing in labour-intensive semi-finished
goods that required minimal capital investment but could earn foreign exchange on the open world
market. Early export industries manufactured goods such as plywood, simple rubber items, wigs, textiles,
and so forth, and the earnings from these early exports were ploughed back into the economy in the
form of capital investment in higher value-added processes. The state enforced labour discipline
throughout the era of rapid growth; this meant suppressing labour strikes and delaying as long as
possible any natural rise in wages as economic productivity rose. The state also relied heavily on public
campaigns to promote austerity and frugality, to reduce personal consumption in order to squeeze out all
available funds for investment in the economy's productive capacity. Moreover, the labour force was not
only inexpensive; it was literate and well socialized for on-the-job training. Clearly, the strong, society-
wide desire for and rapid expansion of mass education in the postwar era paid enormous dividends.
Another aspect of South Korean labour productivity was its capacity for hard work. By the 1970s
Korean workers sustained one of the longest hourly work weeks in the world, averaging about 54 hours
per week across the entire manufacturing labour force (Koo, Korean Workers, 2001).

Much has been also said about the cultural and historical factors that lay behind the hard work of
Korea's labour force and its acceptance of relatively low wages during the period of intensive growth.
Of course, the state forbade by law the organization of industry-wide labour organizations, preferring a
centralized union organization controlled at the top, with separate unions by industrial sector (textiles,
transportation, etc.). Horizontal and independent union activity was also illegal. But the absence of
independent labour unions does not explain the whole phenomenon. Some have pointed to the
continuing strong resonance of Confucian values as a reason behind worker discipline. Such values
enjoin children's loyalty and obedience to parents and parents' loyalty and duty to the lineage and the
ancestors writ large. Abstracting broadly to the economy, Korean companies repeatedly played upon
this concept to spur worker loyalty to the company. Thus the idea of reciprocity-the employer accepts
responsibility for the welfare of the worker and expects the loyalty, hard work, and even gratitude of its
employees in return-was a common theme in company ideology. Moreover, while wages in the new
companies leading the export charge may have remained low, they were still relatively higher than
comparable jobs in the "old" economy, and working conditions in the new plants were considerably
better. Labour pressure-many people chasing fewer jobs-caused workers to bear with the long hours and
feverish pace in the new plants.

© Michael Robinson, Korea's Twentieth-Century Odyssey (University of Hawaii Press, 2007), p. 132-134

South Korean developmentalism in global

perspective
Legacy of Developmental Ideology in South Korea

South Korea's successful example of achieving rapid economic growth offers interesting contrasts with
other area of the world that did not achieved a similar level of development at the time. As previously
mentioned, we may view South Korea within the broader context of East Asian development, which

,3 
suggests the critical role of regional factors. However, we may also consider the question of Korean
development from a more world-historical perspective to identify some interesting features.

Many nations after WWII used billions of dollars of developmental assistance on monumental
construction projects and lavish public expenditures that failed to trigger economic growth. The
spectacle of cities turned into fantasy-scapes are testimonials to the leaders that funnelled vast amounts
of scarce development resources for their own personality cults. The North Korean capital of Pyongyang
is certainly one of these examples as the city remains a holy shrine to the father-son duo of Kim Il Sung
and Kim Jong Il. Third World leaders indulged in urban projects designed to enhance their personal
prestige and symbolize progress. The flow of foreign aid often allowed the Third World leadership to
construct opulent presidential palaces, build well-equipped armies, and amass personal fortunes.

Not all of the foreign aid in the developing world went to the ruling elites, as considerable amounts were
sent directly to the most impoverished zones. Yet the advanced technologies introduced by aid agencies
often had little impact among populations with no understanding of what to do with them or involved
complex machinery that was not easily to repair. Many development schemes also involved the import
of surplus goods from donor nations with little use in recipient nations or inadvertently competed with
local industries that were destroyed by the process. The inflow of foreign aid to the developing world
did not always misfire, but the end results inevitably produced more the illusion of development rather
than concrete achievements in the improvement of livelihoods. Numerous experts have highlighted the
dangers of aid-dependency and how the financial assistance from the outside can sometimes compound
the problem of development.

South Korea certainly had its share of monumental construction projects, but they were in general more
utilitarian such as the Seoul-Busan Expressway or the POSCO steel mills. Rather than build factories for
the domestic market, South Korea under President Park Chung Hee built over-sized facilities for the
world. Most nations that followed Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) schemes built much
smaller factories that were intended to supply far smaller domestic market. ISI can generate
considerable growth, but they require foreign loans and access to foreign technology at a premium cost.
ISI regimes protected domestic industrial production from foreign competition, yet the consumer goods
that they produced could not be priced competitively for export. South Korea also maintained high
tariffs for awhile, but the overall goals were much more ambitious than simply protect the domestic
market. The successful cases of developmental regimes in East Asia would emerge through the
attraction of foreign investment for export-oriented growth and by maintaining the right conditions for
low-cost industrial production.

From this historical perspective, we might consider the advent of what some scholars identify as 'Global
Fordism', which allowed for a limited number of developing nations to participate in a global division of
labour and the production of commodities for export. This critical perspective suggests that only nations
willing to ensure the optimal conditions necessary for attracting Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) could
become industrial centres. This usually meant weak labour and environmental laws, coupled with strong
measures against political unrest. The South Korean state created an environment amenable for
attracting foreign capital and low-cost industrial production, but they came at the cost of suppressing the
labour movement during the era of high-speed growth.

The East Asian Tigers of South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, in general, embraced the
conditions necessary to attract foreign capital and create political stability, which raises the spectre of
labour repression. The debate still continues whether or not historically contingent factors such as the
Cold War assistance and the high tolerance of protectionist barriers by the United States among its
Asian allies created unique circumstances for achieving economic growth. Some critics argue that it is
unlikely that such favourable international circumstances for South Korean development will appear
again. What may be worth pondering, though, is that South Korean economic growth may have resulted

42 KR206
from judicious industrial policies that took advantage of the favourable global conditions that had
existed at the time.
© Michael Kim

Discussion
Explaining the Miracle
Now that we have spent considerable time discussing the various facets of Korean economic
development, we might go back to the discussion from (Historical origins of Korean development). Has
your views changed about the factors that drove Korean economic development after going through
more steps? Are you convinced more than ever that your first historical theories about why Korea
developed so quickly were correct?

These days we can find several examples of Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs) around the world,
the largest being of course China. The Korean 'economic miracle' may not seem so extraordinary in
comparison to the rapid rise of China. However, considering the complete devastation of the Korean
War and the extremely difficult world circumstances of 1950s-1970s, we can still appreciate how
difficult it was for Koreans to achieve such rapid growth during this period.

Korea is one of the few countries in the world that has deep economic connections to Japan, China, the
European Union, South-East Asia, the United States and the Middle East. The global scale of the
Korean economy is a direct result of the export-oriented model that the Koreans pursued, at a historical
moment when many nations pursued 'import substitution' to reduce their reliance on foreign goods and
manufacture their own domestic products. The Koreans, from the beginning of its export-drive,
produced products that could sell on the world market. Initially, most Korean products were finished
goods that consisted of Japanese parts or used Japanese machinery. But eventually, Korean companies
became their own component manufacturers and competed directly against the Japanese manufactures
of automobile and electronic parts.

What are your thoughts on Korea's export-oriented development model? Why haven't more nations
succeeded with the export-oriented models? Is there a lesson to be learned in Korean history about
how other nations can achieve economic development or are the factors so specific to Korea that they
cannot be replicated elsewhere? Feel free to share any of your thoughts on Korean economic
development.
© Michael Kim

,3 
 South Korean Political and Social
Developments 1950s-1980s
The social and political changes that followed the economic development of South Korea were indeed
dynamic. A long history of political activism would culminate in the Democracy movement of 1987 that
would leave to a peaceful transition to democratic rule after decades of military dominance.

Korean politics in the 1950s and 1960s

The first president of the ROK, Syngman Rhee, had ambitions to extend his rule well beyond his first
elected term. A decade of political crises in the 1950s ended with a student-led revolution in 1960 and
military coup in 1961.

Syngman Rhee and the April Student Revolution

Michael Kim explains the complexities of politics in the 1950s. South Korean society in
the 1950s experienced numerous political crisis triggered by Syngman Rhee’s desire
to extend his rule and use the National Security Law eliminate his opposition. The
tensions eventually led to a massive civic uprising in the spring of 1960 that ended
President Rhee’s authoritarian rule.

On August 15, 1948, the First Republic was formally established, and President Syngman Rhee was 73
at the time. Rhee initially formed a coalition government with the Hanmindang, which is composed of
many of the wealthiest members of Korean society. But he soon broke with them and formed his own
political party called the Liberal Party or Chayudang. The Hanmindang then changed its name to
Kungmindang in 1949 and was later absorbed by the Minjudang or the Democratic Party in 1955. In
many ways, South Korean society and politics in 1950s may be characterised by a series of political
crises triggered by conflict between these two conservative parties.

Syngman Rhee was inevitably at the centre of these conflicts as he attempted to consolidate his power
and extend his rule beyond the limits established by the South Korean constitution 1948. The passage of
the National Security Law in November 1948 gave Rhee immense power to suppress his opposition.
Rhee would use the National Security Law to eliminate both the left as well as to restrain his right wing
opposition. One of the first major political crisis of the First Republic would take place during the
middle of the Korean War in 1952 at the wartime capital Busan. The crisis centred on the revision of the
constitution to allow for direct elections of the president.

The South Korean constitution was a mix of both parliamentary and presidential systems, for the
National Assembly members elected the president who had considerable more power than most prime
ministers under a pure parliamentary system. Rhee used strong-arm tactics to revise the constitution in
1952 to allow for the direct election of the president rather than have the National Assembly elect the
president, because the assembly was dominated by his opposition. In 1954, Rhee again amended the
constitution, this time to allow myself to be elected again beyond the original two-term limit.

By the time 1956 elections came around, Rhee had lost a considerable degree of his popularity, and it
seemed that he might actually lose the election to his primary opponent, Shin Ik-hee-- except that Shin
had died a few months before the election. One notable aspect of 1956 election was a man by the name
of Cho Bong-am, who was a presidential candidate of the Progressive Party or Chinbodang which had
attained 30% of the vote-- which suggests that the left still had a considerably strong presence in South
Korean society despite the overwhelmingly anti-communist sentiments. Cho Bong-am would later be
accused of being a North Korean spy and be executed in 1959.

Now another important aspect of 1956 election was that the vice-president was Chang Myon, who was
from the opposition party. This was because the current system at the time had two separate elections on

44 KR206
separate tickets for both the president and the vice-president. Controversy would erupt in 1960 when
irregularities in the election for vice-president led to a student uprising. Rhee's primary opponent during
the election was Cho Byeong-ok, who died during the election, so he was assured of being elected
president. Therefore the election for vice-president became extremely important because Rhee was 85
years at the time, and there was a good chance that the next vice-president might become the president.

Rhee's Chayudang party took extraordinary measures to ensure that his successor Lee Gibung would be
elected to be the vice-president. And when irregularities involving the vice-presidential election cane to
light, protests then soon spread throughout the country. A major demonstration took place on March 15,
1960 in the city of Masan. And when one of the student protesters who went missing that day, later
discovered to be dead-- massive protests broke out throughout the country. At the height of the student
protests, thousands of university students marched to end Rhee's rule, and this is why the event is often
called the April Student Revolution. Syngman Rhee was forced to step down, and a new government
formed buy his conservative opposition was soon in power.

The April Student Revolution is today remembered as one of the highlights of the Korean Democracy
Movement, even though the government that then came afterwards proved to be short-lived as a military
coup led by General Park Chung-hee inaugurated an entirely new direction for South Korean state.

© Michael Kim

The Hangul Crisis

Discussion of the first political crisis of the Syngman Rhee era over correct spelling

The politics of language represents a complex cultural terrain in post-colonial societies. Newly liberated
nations often clamour for linguistic unity and engage in intense political campaigns over a common
language. In this respect, one of the central features of both North and South Korea in the 1950s was a
shared concern over language standardization. Japanese had been the official language of colonial Korea,
and Korean was largely relegated to a secondary role.

In the case of SouWK.RUHDDSDUWLFXODUO\GLYLVLYHLQFLGHQWFDOOHGWKH+DQ¶JǎO&ULVLVHUXSWHGLPPHGLDWHO\

after the conclusion of the Korean War in 1953. President Syngman Rhee, a life-long advocate of the
.RUHDQYHUQDFXODUVFULSWFDOOHGKDQ JǎOZDQWHGWRUHIRUPWKH.RUHDQ spelling, because he believed that
a simpler script would greatly increase mass literacy. While many Koreans agreed with Rhee’s goal of
LPSURYLQJKDQ JǎODFDFRSKRQ\RIYRLFHVUDLVHGVHULRXVUHVHUYDWLRQVDERXWWKHXQLODWHUDOPHWKRGVWKDW
he employed to implement his language policy.

During the colonial period, a group of Korean scholars associated with the Korean Language Society
had introduced a system of spelling in 1933 based on a set of scientific linguistic theories. Many older
Koreans who were not used to the more complicated newer system wanted to return to the simpler
previous system. The Cabinet Council on April 11, 1953 passed a resolution that all government
documents and textbooks would unilaterally abolished the established spelling and mandated the
adoption of a system that greatly resembled the 1921 Governor General’s Korean orthography.

Media reaction was swift and overwhelmingly negative. On May 22, 1953 ninety-seven National
Assemblymen signed a resolution demanding the preservation of the 1933 orthography. Yielding to the
pressure, the Education Ministry announced that a 50 member National Language Committee composed
of leading academics and literary figures will further examine the issue. The interesting aspect of this
committee was that the linguistic issues discussed were far broader than spelling, for they raised
questions of Chinese character usage, eliminating Japanese loan words from the vocabulary and how to
standardize the spelling of foreign words. Despite the numerous linguistic issues on the committee’s

,3 
agenda, the heated debates over the simplification issue prevented discussions on the other pressing
areas. On December 29, 1953, the Committee determined that no further simplification was necessary
and declared that the onO\VSHOOLQJUHIRUPWRFRQVLGHUZDVDKRUL]RQWDOKDQ¶JǎOVSHOOLQJV\VWHPVLPLODU
to the way Japanese was written.

Despite the National Language Committee’s recommendations, the Rhee administration continued its
TXHVW WR VLPSOLI\ KDQ¶JǎO $V D UHVXOW RI WKe government’s intransigent language policy, the famous
OLQJXLVW &K¶RH +\ǂQ-bae (1894-1970) resigned from his position as head of the Education Ministry’s
7H[WERRN&RPSLODWLRQ%XUHDXDQGWKH(GXFDWLRQ0LQLVWHU.LP3ǂP-nin also tendered his resignation.
Despite the strident opposition, on February 24, Prime Minister Paek Tu-jin announced that someone
ZLOOLQJ WR FDUU\ RXW WKH KDQ¶JǎO VLPSOLILFDWLRQ SODQ ZRXOG EH DSSRLQWHG WKH QHZ (GXFDWLRQ 0LQLVWHU
However, the position went unfilled for 70 days because of a lack of cooperative candidates.

On March 27, 1954 President Rhee announced that the established orthography would be abandoned
within three months and replaced with the one used in the late nineteenth-century translation of the New
Testament. Rhee noted in his explanation for the measure that Korea’s ancestors had left a marvellous
script that could have potentially made Korea the most literate society in the world, but scholars had
needlessly complicated it. Rhee argued further that while other Asian countries reformed their language
so that foreigners could more easily read their newspapers, Koreans still insisted on using Chinese
characters and complicating their spelling system. Rhee was also an advocate of eliminating Chinese
characters from the Korean language, which continued to be widely used in South Korea until the
1970s-1980s.

7KH +DQ¶JǎO &ULVLV HQWHUHG LWV ILQDO VWDJH ZLWK WKH DSSRLQWPHQW RI <L 6ǂQ-JǎQ  - 1983) as the
(GXFDWLRQPLQLVWHU2Q-XO\<L6ǂQ-JǎQSURSRVHGDVLPSOLILHGKDQ¶JǎOVSHOOLQJV\VWHPWKDWZDVDJDLQ
nearly identical to the Japanese Governor-General’s orthography of 1921. What began as a simple
disagreement about spelling had blossomed into a full-scale political crisis that threatened the public’s
FRQILGHQFHLQWKHJRYHUQPHQW7KH+DQ¶JԃO&ULVLVHYHQWXDOO\PRYHGWRWKH1DWLRQDO$VVHPEO\ZKHQLW
opened hearings on the matter on July 9, 1954. The spelling controversy lingered on for another year
until Syngman Rhee finally relented and announced on September 19, 1955 that he would abandon his
linguistic reform efforts.

What appears on the surface to be a case of Syngman Rhee imposing an outdated spelling system was
far more complex, because of the generational differences in Korean society. Most younger Koreans
were used to the newer system while older Koreans had become accustomed to the previous system first
developed partially by Christian missionaries. Further complicated the issue was the fact that many
Koreans had been educated in the Japanese language during the colonial era and written Korean had
fallen into disuse. Therefore, there was no accepted lLQJXLVWLFVWDQGDUGLQWKHV7KH+DQ¶JǎO&ULVLV
provides a fascinating window into the fractured nature of the linguistic practices of the Korean public
after liberation and how one of the most pressing issues of a modern nation is to standardize its language.
Extra resources
Taehan News (August 17, 1958) * Film clip shows Chinese character signs being replaced by
han'gul signs. Language standardization was one of the major issues of postliberation Korea and was
filled with controversy from the beginning. Even the removal of Chinese characters was opposed by
Koreans who believed the script connected them to the Korean past.
http://www.ehistory.go.kr/page/pop/movie_pop.jsp?srcgbn=KV&mediaid=576&mediadtl=3118&gbn=
DH&quality=W

© Michael Kim

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Syngman Rhee and the Politics of the First Republic
This section discusses Syngman Rhee and the Political development of the First Republic.

Syngman Rhee is well known as a dedicated nationalist who devoted his entire life to the
independence movement. However, his political record was far from perfect, and much of his
record as president was tarnished by his authoritarian politics. Syngman Rhee's authoritarian
politics may have been surprising considering the fact that he received his Ph.D. degree from
Princeton University and spent most of his life abroad living in the United States. One of the
key problems may have been the intense distrust that Syngman Rhee had of his fellow Korean
leadership, many who had been his rivals ever since the start of the independence movement
during the long decades of Japanese rule. Michael Robinson describes the numerous draconian
measures that Rhee took to retain his grip on power in the 1950s.

After reading this passage, what are your thoughts on the prospects for democracy during the
1950s?

After 1953 Syngman Rhee consolidated his control by ruthlessly extending wartime emergency
measures into the postwar era. At the base of his authority lay the powerful National Police and its
internal security apparatus, whose power to arrest and otherwise intimidate Rhee's political opponents
was legitimated by a vague and flexibly interpreted National Security Law. This law, aimed principally
at uprooting the remnants of Communist subversion or insurgency that had arisen during the war,
provided numerous provisions for the arrest, interrogation, and imprisonment of elements in society
opposed to the state. Indeed, during the war over 60,000 people had been arrested for collaborating with
the North Koreans or under suspicion of being Communists. Its provisions were so notoriously vague
that Rhee could arrest almost anyone by calling them Communists or persons or organizations whose
activities were "deleterious of public order."

The president could also declare a state of emergency, which allowed the executive to rule by fiat,
providing even more latitude for the quasi-legal use of the security police. In many cases Rhee turned
this power against the formal political opposition, once ordering the police to round up opposition
lawmakers who had gone into hiding in order to ensure a quorum for legislation. The National Security
Law also allowed Rhee to muzzle the Korean press with censorship or the outright arrest of reporters.
During the 1950s the public grew to loath the abuses of the National Police, but few dared oppose this
powerful force.

Syngman Rhee also built a new political party, the Liberal Party. Through a combination of intimidation
and arrests of Rhee's political opponents, bribery and coercion of independents, and election fraud. In
the summer of 1952 Rhee's party further amended the constitution to switch presidential elections from
the National Assembly, as the constitution had originally stipulated, to a direct, popular vote. Rhee's
Liberal Party gained a firm two-thirds majority in the National Assembly by 1954. This meant that Rhee
could amend the constitution at will, which he proceeded to do the same year to remove the two, four-
year term limit for the presidency. By the mid-1950s Rhee's power was absolute in legal terms, quite
apart from his control of numerous extralegal channels of power. Although Rhee was in his early
eighties, he nevertheless intended to continue as president into a fourth term in 1960.

The president enjoyed enormous powers of political patronage within the ROK political system. He
appointed his cabinet and other high officials within the state bureaucracy, as well as provincial
governors, mayors, and county magistrates. As a consequence, an enormous number of people became
personally indebted to Rhee and amenable to his whims and orders. The poorly paid government
bureaucracy itself was awash in corruption at this time; bribes and favours were necessary to pry any
service, license, or approval from the government. Rhee and his cronies at the top of the government

,3 
used state revenue-a significant portion of which was made up of US grant and guaranteed loans-to
reward their supporters, support the government party, now called the Liberal Democratic Party, subvert
the opposition, invest in private business deals, and generally insulate themselves from criticism or
scrutiny from without.

The rampant corruption of the Rhee years demoralized the population. As the years rolled by, the effort
at rebuilding the economy and fostering economic growth lagged, burdened by government inefficiency
and indecision as well as graft. Yet it was clear that some in society were doing very well, as the ruling
class built mansions and lived lavishly within easy sight of the grinding poverty of those crowding into
shanty towns in Seoul and the other major cities.
© Michael Robinson, Korea's Twentieth-Century Odyssey (Hawaii University Press 2007), pp. 122-123

The Progressive Party Incident

Discussion of Cho Bong Am and his execution for suspected espionage

President Syngman Rhee operated under a constitutional order which provided a democratic framework
for the inauguration of the Republic of Korea. However, he was able to exercise a considerable degree
of authoritarian power through the National Security Law (NSL) passed in November 1948. The NSL
gave the Rhee regime considerable leeway to conduct anti-communist campaigns against his political
opponents. Any hint of communist subversion could be sufficient grounds for legal prosecution.

President Rhee first deployed the NSL multiple times against his political opponents throughout his rule,
but perhaps the most famous example was the case of Cho Pong-am (1898-1959). Cho Pong-am had
been an active member of the Korean Communist Party during the colonial era. He studied in the Soviet
Union and was a member of Comintern at Moscow. Upon his return to Korea, he travelled throughout
Korea and Manchuria while conducting his leftist activities and eventually became a Comintern
representative in Shanghai.

When liberation came in 1945, Cho Pong-am had a falling out with South Korea's top communist leader,
Pak Hon-yong and renounced communism. One of the interesting contradictions of the Syngman Rhee
regime is the fact that Cho Pong-am then became the first Minister of Agriculture of the Republic of
Korea in July 1948. Many experts believe that Syngman Rhee appointed him to the position because of
his strong desire to carry out populist land reforms to establish rural support for his rule.

During the 1950s, Cho Pong-am became the leader of the left-leaning Progressive Party or the
Chinbodang. The 1950s was an era of staunch anti-communism, and the existence of a socialist-oriented
political party is often considered an anomaly. By the 1956 election, President Rhee had lost a
considerable degree of popularity, and it seemed that might lose the election to his primary opponent,
Sin Ik-hui (1892-1956), except that Sin would die a few months before the election.

While Syngman Rhee easily won the 1956 election, Cho Pong Am still received 30% of the vote as the
Progressive Party's presidential candidate, which suggests that leftist ideals still had a presence in South
Korean society, despite the overwhelmingly anti-communist sentiments. Rhee considered Cho Pong-
am's popularity a major threat, and he would be accused of being a North Korean spy. Cho Pong-am
was subsequently tried and executed in 1959. While the opposition Minjudang Party was a staunch
enemy of Syngman Rhee, the two sides came together condemning the Progressive Party's activities and
pushing forth Cho's execution.

The National Security Law was used repeatedly to suppress opposition to the South Korean government
throughout the subsequent decades. The law is still in effect in South Korea, and those who make pro-
North Korean statements are subject to legal prosecution. Those who visit North Korea or have contact
with North Koreans without permission are subject to the law. Opposition leaders have called for

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revision or repeal of the law, yet conservative Koreans believe that the law is necessary as long as the
division of the country persists.
What are your thoughts on the NSL and might a law that restricts contact with the North be necessary
in light of Korea's continued division?
© Michael Kim

The April Student Revolution and the Second Republic

One of the most significant events in modern Korean history would take place in the spring of
1960, when irregularities in the vice-presidential elections led to a civil uprising that led to the collapse
of the Rhee government. Rhee’s primary opponent during the presidential election of 1960, Cho Pyong-
ok (1894-1960), died during the election process, so Rhee was assured of being elected. The focus of
everyone’s attention then shifted to the vice-presidential candidates, because Rhee was 85 years old at
the time and there was great uncertainty as to whether or not he could finish his term. The vice-
presidential election was held separately from the presidential election, and therefore an opposition
candidate could hold the position.

Rhee’s Liberal party took extraordinary measures to insure that his potential successor Yi Ki-bung
(1896-1960) would be elected vice president. Protest broke out in several parts of the country when Yi
Ki-bung won the election under a cloud of suspicion. The discovery of the body of a seventeen year old
protester, who was apparently killed by being struck by a tear gas canister in the city of Masan, ignited
an even larger-scale protest. In the capital city of Seoul, a group of student protesters from Korea
University were attacked by an anti-communist youth group on April 18. The following day on April 19,
police fired upon a group of approximately 30,000 high school and university students, which led to the
death of 130 and another 1,000 injured.

A week later, on April 25 Syngman Rhee resigned the presidency and went into exile in Hawaii. Rhee's
conservative opposition, the Democratic Party then formed a new government under Prime Minister
Chang Myon (1899-1966). The constitution of the Second Republic was revised into a parliamentary
system, and a number of democratic reforms were enacted. Considerable hope for the new government
filled the air as it tackled a wide range of issues such as economic development and political reforms.
Ultimately, the Democratic Party, had toppled Rhee's rule thanks to the April Student Revolution, but
they were not able to satisfy the many demands for change.

New-found freedoms encouraged protests over a wide variety of issues, and the fledgling democracy
seemed to have unleashed social chaos. At issue was the question of whether or not the public at large
could responsibly make democratic demands for change. The general sense that corruption continued
throughout the government and that the state was not firmly in control would encourage Park Chung
Hee to launch his coup on May 16, 1961.

While the Second Republic only lasted a little longer than a year, it may be important to keep in mind
that it did not collapse on its own. South Korea’s experiment in democracy did not last, but we will
never be able to know if the political situation could have stabilized in time. Instead, the Second
Republic remains largely a footnote in South Korean history. Future research, however, may be needed
to assess the viability of the democratic developments that took place during this brief interlude between
the authoritarian rule of Syngman Rhee and Park Chung Hee.
Extra resources
Taehan News (April 27, 1960) * This clip shows brief images of the demonstration and headlines
announcing the resignation of Syngman Rhee. The rest of the clip shows the cleanup after the
demonstrations and the collection of donations for the victims.
http://www.ehistory.go.kr/page/pop/movie_pop.jsp?srcgbn=KV&mediaid=228&mediadtl=1670&gbn=
DH&quality=W
© Michael Kim

,3 
 The Yusin Constitution
South Korea in the 1970s was in disarray due to external instability and domestic discontent. President
Park push into heavy-chemical industries while keeping industrial wages low destabilized the nation.

Park Chung Hee and the Yusin Constitution

Michael Kim discusses the origins of the Yusin system that represents one of the most
authoritarian periods in modern Korean history. The geopolitical factors were just as important
as the domestic ones in creating an atmosphere of crisis. The Yusin decade would end with the
assassination of President Park in 1979.

President Park made various experiments in democratic governance. Yet at the end the rule was the
most authoritarian phase of his years. We could cite many factors for the establishment of the Yushin
system in 1972. President Park's grasp on political power was shaken by the results of the 1971 elections,
where Kim Dae-jung took 45% of the vote. Most importantly, Kim Dae-jung carried the cities by 52%
and almost 60% of the Seoul vote. President Park barely won that election. But in the assembly election
that year, Kim Dae-jung's party gained 44 seats, and President Park no longer had the 2/3 majority that
he needed to pass constitutional amendments.

In this sense, President Park realised that he no longer could hold power on the Democrat-elected
government. This political instability appeared at a time when the international environment became
uncertain, and Korea's export-oriented growth began to falter. The US withdrew an entire military
division from Korea in the early 1970s. And the fall of Saigon suggested that the US may be reducing
its military commitments to its Asian allies. South Korea also encountered increasing American
protectionist barriers against textiles, which was a key export industry. Preston Park wanted to prepare
the country for the Third Five-year Plan that targeted heavy industries. But the OPEC oil shock and the
global recession made his plans very uncertain.

All these factors led to Park declaring a state of emergency in December, 1971. And 10 months later, in
October 1972, he declared martial law throughout Korea and launched the Yushin system, which means
revitalisation in Korea. Under the newly proclaimed constitution, the president could be elected for life.
The president was no longer elected directly by the people and instead, appointed by the National
Council for Unification, which the president, himself, headed. In essence, there was no longer any
constitutional limitations on President Park's rule. President Park launched a number of controversial
moves, including the development of a nuclear programme, and his government came under criticism
for abusing international human rights.

The sense of crisis in the Yushin system was heightened by the assassination of President Park's wife in
August, 1974. The repressive policies of the Yushin system alienated many members of Korean society.
Some of the most vocal critics of Park's rule were university students, who had gradually formed a
subculture of protest and resistance that had their own extensive organisation. And a growing list of
heroes and martyrs were born during a long struggle against the South Korean state throughout the
1970s. During the Yushin system, the opposition to Park's rule included many other groups of people,
including members of the emerging middle class, as well as factory workers. Labour unrest had been
relatively dormant during the early Park Chung-hee years.

However, in November, 1970, a worker named Jeon Tae-il committed suicide by burning himself to
death as a means of protesting the exploitation of garment workers. By the mid 1970s, labour activism
began to boom, and workers became increasingly more organised. In response to social protest of
students and workers, the South Korean state made it illegal to criticise the president or the Yushin
system in May, 1975. This period of authoritarian rule could not continue for long. And by the end of
the 1970s, the Yushin system began to fall apart. The immediate events that led to Park Chung-hee's fall

50 KR206
was a labour dispute in August, 1979, where police had broken up a demonstration of about 200 female
workers from the YH Trading Company.

During the struggle with the police, one woman was killed. Two months later, Kim Young-sam gained
control of the Opposition Party, which led to his expulsion from the National Assembly. This will lead
to massive demonstrations in Busan and Masan, which was a region where Kim Young-sam was born.
And this incident is now known as the Buma Incident. Dispute over how to handle the protests in Busan
eventually will lead to Park's assassination by the KCI director, Kim Chae-gyu. Park's assassination
initially generated shock and confusion, since he was the only leader that many Koreans had known for
18 years. Today, President Park's legacy continues to be a controversial issue.

But there's no question that he left a powerful legacy of economic growth and established many of the
key institutions and industries that shaped the future direction of South Korea.

© Michael Kim

Democracy on hold: The Yushin Constitution and

the Fourth Republic
This section discusses Park Chung Hee's military coup and the political situation.

Park Chung Hee initially attempted to rule under a democratic system but he would eventually
move in an authoritarian direction. The challenges of maintaining social order and holding on
to power proved to be too great to bear for Park Chung Hee. Michael Robinson discusses the
suspension of the democratic order and the emergence of the authoritarian Yusin System. He
explains how President Park launched an internal coup d'etat in 1972, but there had been
undercurrents of authoritarian rule even during the years when he was a democratically
elected president.

What are your thoughts on this authoritarian direction in modern Korean history? Did the
crisis of the 1970s make such a move inevitable considering Korea's circumstances at the time?

Park Chung Hee's first term as ROK president (1963-1968) brought order in the streets, but this came at
a price. Park severely repressed the political activities of university students, insinuating covert agents
onto campuses to subvert student political organizing. Arrests of radicals and suspected Communists
during these early years filled the ROK prison system. Park also wielded the new anti-Communist Law
and a bolstered National Security Law (NSL) to throttle the South Korean press. Thus the Military Coup
in 1961 abruptly ended a brief era of relative freedom of the press, and debate in the public sphere
became increasingly circumscribed. The administration used outright censorship and intimidation to
direct public discourse away from Park's abuses of free speech and other basic rights and toward
national unity for defence and economic development.

Park was, however, ruling within a system that provided some restraints on his power. Although his
Democratic Republican Party (DRP) enjoyed a large majority within the National Assembly and could
legislate almost at will, the opposition Democratic Party began to gain electoral strength by the end of
the 1960s. When Park ran for his second term as president in 1967, the formerly divided opposition
unified into a new coalition party, the New Democratic Party (NDP), but it could not defeat Park or
significantly reduce the ruling DRP's majority in the National Assembly. Park continued to enjoy strong
support in conservative rural Korea and grudging acceptance of the new stability in the cities. In 1969,
however, Park forced a constitutional change to allow him to run for a third term. This move galvanized
the opposition, and in 1971 the NDP candidate, Kim Dae Jung (Kim Taejung, 1925-2009 ) narrowly
missed unseating Park in the closest presidential election in ROK history. Kim garnered 45 percent of

,3 
the vote, and his margin of victory in the cities was 56 percent. His electoral success established him as
a major opposition leader and made him the object of intense state suspicion.

The erosion of Park's power within the Assembly and the growing threat of an opposition victory in
future elections came at a time of dramatic power realignments in Asia. Park's government was shocked
and completely unprepared for President Richard Nixon's overtures to China in 1971 and his almost
simultaneous announcement of a gradual US troop withdrawal from Vietnam. Park saw both moves as
destabilizing to ROK security arrangements in the region. To counter the perceived security threat, he
announced a National Emergency Decree to strengthen national defense. This precipitated a sit-in strike
in the National Assembly by the opposition party and renewed anti-government demonstrations by
university students. For their part, Park and his supporters worried that, given the fluid international
situation, a change of leadership would jeopardize the economic program and national security. He
resolved, therefore, to restructure the government in order to continue in power.

The restructuring amounted to an internal coup d'etat. Park declared martial law, dissolved the National
Assembly, abrogated the old constitution, had a new constitution written by an Extraordinary State
Council made up of his appointees, and then legitimated the new structure in a national referendum in
November of 1972. The result was the promulgation of the Yushin (Yusin) or "revitalization reforms"
Constitution and the birth of the Fourth Republic of the ROK. In effect the Yushin Constitution created
a legal dictatorship for Park. Indirect election of the president by a 2,359-member National Conference
for Unification (NCU) replaced the old direct election system. One-third of the new electoral college
was to be appointed by the president, thus virtually assuring the continuation of the incumbent in office.
In subsequent National Assembly Elections, Park's DRP and a new allied party called the Yujanghoe
captured a two-thirds majority. Park had secured control of selection of the president and an
overwhelming legislative majority that would rubber-stamp his initiatives.

Extra resources
Taehan News (November 25, 1972) * This clip shows the announcement of the passage of the
Yusin Constitution. The scenes include the election committee that ratified the elections, and voting at
the ballets by Koreans. President Park, his wife and his oldest daughter Park Geun-hye are also shown
voting for the constitution.
http://www.ehistory.go.kr/page/pop/movie_pop.jsp?srcgbn=KV&mediaid=839&mediadtl=6640&gbn=
DH&quality=W

© Michael Robinson, Korea's Twentieth-Century Odyssey (Hawaii University Press 2007), pp. 135-137

Korea-US relations and Park Chung Hee

In the late 1960s a series of events took place that triggered a sense of crisis within Korea-US relations.
South Korea's cooperation with the US achieved one of its highest levels due to the dispatch of Korean
soldiers to the Vietnam War, but the situation changed rapidly with a series of North Korean
provocations: the Blue House Raid (January 1968), which was an attack on the presidential residence by
a group of North Korean commandos, the Pueblo Incident (January 1968), which involved the capture
of a US warship, and the EC-121 Incident (April 1969), which involved the downing of a US spy plane
by a North Korean MiG-17. When the United States appeared lukewarm in its responses to these North
Korean provocations, the Park Chung Hee government began to doubt the level of US commitment to
the Korean peninsula.

United States at the time was reassessing its foreign policy direction under the Nixon administration.
The primary shift reflected the setbacks in Vietnam that demonstrated the limits of American power. It
is also important to keep in mind that the United States and South Korea did not have a mutual defence

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treaty like NATO, where declaring war on one country is the equivalent of declaring war on all of the
treaty nations. The United States promises to take appropriate actions to an attack on South Korea but
did not specify what those measures would be. This ambiguity in the US responses to North Korean
provocations became the source of considerable anxiety and instability from the perspective of Park
Chung Hee.

Changes in the Nixon administration policy towards Korea first became evident in the Nixon Doctrine
(1969) when US reaffirmed its security commitments and confirmed that a nuclear shield extended to
the region. However, there was also an insistence that the recipient nations of US aid should assume the
prime responsibility for its defence. Historians view this announcement as an attempt to 'Vietnamise' the
Vietnam War, but it also had major implications to South Korea. The fears of a reduced US commitment
led to a number of Korean reactions. President Park attempted to modernize the Korean military and
develop the Korean defence industry. The US provided aid support for these goals as they wanted to
make the Republic of Korea less dependent on US military assistance. However, it was also understood
that the expanded US aid may be a step towards a US exit from the Korean peninsula.

The 'Nixon Shock' generally refers to the abandonment of the Bretton Woods Agreement and the free
floating of the dollar in 1971. However, in East Asian history, the term 'Nixon Shocks' also refers to the
rapprochement with China in 1972, because the US did not inform its Japanese and South Korean allies
prior to the announcement. The instabilities in the Korea-US relationships provided the context for
understanding the announcement of the North-South Dialogue in June 1972 and the promulgation of the
Yushin Constitution the same year. Fears that US support would wane necessitated the lowering of
tensions on the Korean peninsula, and President Park justified his authoritarian politics as the only way
to achieve this goal.

The Park regime attempted a controversial means to strengthen US support for the defence of South
Korea by directly influencing the US Congress. The Koreagate Scandal, which involved the Korean
Georgetown lobbyist Pak Tong-son in Washington D.C., resulted in the distribution of illegal campaign
contribution to US Congressmen. Investigations later alleged that over 115 congressional members
accepted bribes from Park, although ultimately only 10 were implicated. The contributions were
intended to gain congressional support for U.S. military and economic assistance to South Korea.

The fears of abandonment by the US led the South Korean government in the 1970s to launch the
development of a nuclear program. The Park regime attempted to acquire French technology which
could be used to make a nuclear weapon. The program did not go beyond the preliminary stages, but US
acted quickly to pressure the Koreans not to pursue that route. However, President Jimmy Carter's
announcement that he would withdraw all US soldiers from Korea in February 1979 confirmed Park
Chung Hee's fears. Ultimately, the US State Department and the US Military persuaded President Carter
from pursuing the troop withdraw a few months later, but it was also true that the Korean-US
relationship was perhaps at its lowest point right before Park's assassination in 1979.
Extra resources
Jimmy Carter's Statement on the United States Troop Withdrawals From the Republic of Korea
(1979) * You can read the official presidential statement in July 1979 that explains the reason for
reconsidering the troop withdraw announcement.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=32622

The Nixon Doctrine (1969) * Nixon's remarks made in a stopover in Guam that announced to US
allies in Asia that they must take care of their own defense.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=2140

© Michael Kim

,3 
Beneath the Miracle: Social Change and Discontent
This section discusses Social Change and Discontent.

The following excerpt from Michael Robinson discusses the darker side of South Korean labour
conditions. Low wages was essential for producing products for the world market, but the
human cost was a heavy price to pay. Korea's major move into light industry like textiles meant
that large numbers of women were brought into the factory. In general, Korean women
proved to be a docile work force, but numerous spectacular labour incidents emerged that
greatly shook the stability of President Park's Yusin regime.

What are your thoughts about the situation of Korean labour during the President Park years?

From 1965 until the late 1970s South Korea experienced very high rates of economic growth and a
continuing expansion of wealth. There was, moreover, a dramatic expansion of the urban middle class,
largely white-collar workers in the expanding bureaucracies of commerce and government. Workers in
the new export industries also experienced relative economic mobility, for they were earning wages
hardly conceivable in the 1950s. But the dynamic expansion of the economy was also made possible by
the efforts of an army of very poorly paid workers toiling in small- and medium-sized factories.
Particularly in the textile industry, working conditions were horrible and dangerous.

Since the workers had no recourse to labour organization, employers freely exploited them, replacing
recalcitrant workers at will. The urban working class was crowded into substandard housing, in many
cases company dormitories. During the early years of expansion, workers were more willing to put up
with the difficult conditions for a chance to leave the countryside and establish themselves in the cities.
Also inhibiting protest was the fact that a large portion of the growing labour force was fresh from the
countryside and inexperienced with labour organization or they were young females working limited-
tenure jobs and still under the sway of patriarchal controls, whether parents or the boss. But during the
1970s the growing gap between the consuming power and lifestyle of the white-collar middle class and
the low wages and miserable conditions of labour became more obvious and intolerable. And year by
year labour strife increased (Koo, 2001).

Just because the deck was stacked against labour organization and the full force of the government's
considerable coercive machinery was deployed against it did not mean labourers were utterly cowed or
quiescent during the economic boom years. Indeed there was always worker resistance, and labour
actions increased after the fall of the Rhee government. Again in the late 1960s and early 1970s wildcat
strikes and sit-downs were not uncommon. In 1970 a textile worker, Chon T'aeil, immolated himself in
the East Gate Market, site of numerous textile sweatshops, protesting the treatment of young women in
the industry. As the decade went on, this individual act became a rallying point for increasingly militant
labour. Indeed, the Yushin system had been born, in part, out of the government's desire to curb labour
unrest. At the same time, the more socially conscious and active segments of the Christian church, such
as the Urban Industrial Mission, worked hard to keep the plight of labour in the public eye (Ogle, 1990).

In 1974 workers rioted at the Hyundai Heavy Industries shipyard in Ulsan. Less privileged women
workers also began to organize to resist the oppressive conditions and low wages in the textile industry.
In 1976 women workers of the Dongil Textile Company, who had been locked in their dormitory during
a fraudulent takeover of their union by company-sponsored male workers, broke out and staged a sit-in
in the union hall. By the second day the number of women in the strike had grown to 800. When the riot
police came to forcibly break up the sit-in, women workers stripped naked, temporarily immobilizing all
present with this extraordinary spontaneous act. Ultimately, however, the police set upon the naked
women, and the strike was brutally suppressed. The Dongil struggle continued for over a year, with the
women ultimately losing control of their union, but their sacrifice publicized the plight of workers and
drew sympathy for their cause throughout the country.

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In 1979, during the second oil shock recession, police brutality toward women workers holding a sit-in
strike at the YH Trading Company further exposed the workers' horrible conditions. The YH women
ended up occupying the headquarters of the opposition New Democratic Party, where the police again
attacked them, injuring dozens and killing one woman (Koo, 2001, chap. 4). The Dongil Strike and YH
incident galvanized the labor movement by bringing together intellectuals, religious leaders, and
students to publicize the plight of women laborers. In the fall of 1979 labour unrest began to spread to
the Masan Free-export Zone, an area dominated by large manufacturing plants and relatively privileged
male labour. Eventually the labor strikes in turn stimulated urban protest sparked by student
demonstrators in Pusan and Masan. Troubles were deepening for the Park administration.
Extra resources
Taehan News (March 20, 1971) * This clip features scenes from the 13th "Labor's Day" where
workers parade in their different uniforms and President Park awards medals to workers who made a
great contribution to the workplace. Laborers were celebrated as national hero but absent from the award
ceremonies were women who were a major part of the labor force in the 1970s.
http://www.ehistory.go.kr/page/pop/movie_pop.jsp?srcgbn=KV&mediaid=704&mediadtl=4851&gbn=
DH&quality=W

© Michael Robinson, Korea's Twentieth-Century Odyssey (Hawaii University Press 2007), pp. 137-139

Discussion
Park Chung Hee's legacy
The election of the current President Park Geun-hye in 2012 presents an interesting divide in Korean
society between those who see her father's accomplishments in a positive light and those who view his
rule as an era of dictatorship.

Without question, Park Chung Hee was a polarizing figure in Korean history. He entered the historical
stage as a Japanese collaborator and leftist agitator, but quickly becomes a national hero for guiding his
nation through the tumultuous years of Korea's economic growth. The human rights abuses during his
reign will never be forgotten by the families of the victims, but in an era of division and conflict with the
North, some believed that national security should be the highest priority of the nation.

The question of whether or not Park Chung Hee's authoritarian rule was necessary for South Korea to
achieve economic growth has been hotly debated by Korean historians. Some argue that Korea could
have developed even faster and more transparent had a democratically elected government been in
charge of the Korean economy. Others argue that Park Chung Hee's firm leadership and his willingness
to take the hard-line with labour was essential for the success of Korea's export-oriented economic
model.

>How do you weigh in on the controversies surrounding Park Chung Hee? What are your thoughts on
his legacy after taking the steps in this course?

© Michael Kim

,3 
 Social protest movements in South Korea
1960s-1970s
The social movements in South Korea are perhaps some of the most dynamic aspects of its modern
history. This section discusses how the student and labor movements came together to become a
powerful force for change.
Demonstrations against the normalization of
relations with Japan
Protest movement against Japan-Korea normalization

The student protests that erupted with the April Student Revolution had subsided with the emergence of
the Park Chung Hee military coup and his subsequent election as the President of the Republic of Korea.
However, massive student protests would emerge again in 1964 because of the negotiations behind the
Korea Japan Normalization Treaty of 1965. The negotiations between Japan and Korea had taken place
ever since the mid-1950s but the financial compensation offered and the generally dismissive attitudes
of Japanese officials towards the colonial legacy had infuriated the Korean public. The protesters in the
mid-1960s were outraged by the terms of the treaty because they believed that their Korean negotiations
were selling out the country in agreeing to unfavourable terms. The following excerpt from Kyung
Moon Hwang's A History of Korea describes the event in this way:

"In the spring of 1964 as throngs of young people in Britain and the US were enraptured by
Beatlemania. their counterparts in South Korea also filled the streets for mass gatherings, but
for a far less joyous occasion. With news that the South Korean government was close to
reaching an agreement to formally re-establish diplomatic ties with Japan, Korean students
exploded in protest. To them, the shameful period of Japanese colonial occupation, especially
the horrors of wartime mobilization, remained a contemporary event. They could not fathom
why the South Korean government, under the direction of President Park Chung Hee, would
even consider such a thing. Their demonstrations reached a crescendo in June of 1964, when
tens of thousands of students disrupted campus life throughout the country and invited a
government crackdown as well as the imposition of a state of emergency. Such a back-and-forth
between students and state power would act as defining moments for much of the 1960s, just
as they did in other parts of the world." (Kyung Moon Hwang, A History of Korea (Palgrave
2010), pp.225-226.

Kyung Moon Hwang explains the controversial circumstances behind era of high-speed growth. The
opposition to Park Chung Hee's rule coalesced behind the Normalization Treaty protest known in Korea
as the 6.3 Incident. One of the student leaders of the protest, Lee Myung Bak (1941-) would later win
the 17th presidential election as a conservative candidate. Lee Myung Bak had been the student
president of Korea University and he was arrested for his involvement in the protests. The critics of the
Normalization Treaty claimed that the agreement was the equivalent to Japan's annexation of Korea in
1910.

At issue was the amount of reparations which was $300 million in grants, $200 million in loans and
$300 million in commercial credits (raised to $500 million in 1967). The amount was considerable, yet
protesters felt that it was not enough to compensate for the humiliation of colonial rule. The agreement
stipulated that the South Korean government would compensate the survivors of the colonial period who
had a claim on the Japanese government. The Korean government used the funds for economic
development projects, but did not directly compensate the individuals with reparation claims. This
controversy lingers today, as the issue of compensation to the victims of Japanese colonialism is still not
resolved.

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Right after the military coup in 1961, many intellectuals shared a cautious optimism about the prospects
for Park Chung Hee's rule. Even the opposition journal Sasanggye expressed hope that the military
government would be able to solve some of the problems of Korean society. However, the sudden and
seemingly coercive nature of the Japan-Korean Normalization Treaty would galvanize opposition
against Park Chung Hee's rule.

During the protest, the Park Chung Hee government arrested members of the Inhyokdang or the People's
Revolutionary party for organizing according the the directives of North Korea. No conclusive proof of
North Korean involvement arose, but the leaders of the party were imprisoned. Later in 1975, the
People's Revolutionary Party would again be accused of following North Korean directives to organize
protests and 8 members would be put to death. In 2002, a South Korean government commission would
determine that the incident was a fabrication of the Park regime and that the victims had been unjustly
accused of crimes against the state.
© Michael Kim

Sasangye and Kim Chiha’s 'Five Bandits'

Opposition to Park Chung Hee's rule emerged from several different sectors of Korean society, but
perhaps one of the most prominent examples was the journal Sasanggye or the 'World of Thought'. The
journal began as an anti-communist publication sponsored by the Educational Ministry in 1952. Later,
Chang Chun-ha (1918-1975) turned the publication into the premier intellectual journal of its day. The
writings of many prominent academics and intellectuals filled the pages of Sasanggye with concerns
about the problems of Korean society and opinions on world events. The journal became one of the
most widely circulated magazines in the 1950s by reaching over 40,000 copies by 1959.

Chang Chun-ha was one of the most colourful personalities of this period. He was once an agent for the
OSS before he returned to Korea in 1945 along with the Korean Provisional Government from Shanghai.
He later played a key role in the Second Republic by serving as part of the brain trust that formulated
numerous policy initiatives. After becoming the editor of Sasanggye, Chang Chun-ha increasingly
became an important opposition political figure. He later successfully joined the National Assembly in
1967 and became known as the 'President of the Opposition' against Park's rule. He died under
mysterious circumstances in 1975 while hiking in the mountains and a cloud of suspicion still hovers
over his death.

During the Korea Japan Normalization Treaty protests Sasanggye played a key role in shaping public
opinion and voicing the views of the opposition. The April 1963, which came out right after the
Normalization Treaty controversy began, sold out all 50,000 copies in just one week. The Park Chung
Hee government then tried to suppress the sale of the journal by pressuring book stores to not carry the
publication. The journal continued its critique of President Park's policies throughout the 1960s and was
finally shut down in May 1970 due to the publication of a controversial poem by Kim Chi-ha (1941-)
called the "Five Bandits." Kyung Moon Hwang explains the significance of the poet Kim Chi-ha's and
the intellectual resistance to the Yusin system in the following excerpt:

"Kim Chiha, a budding poet laden with personal travails from the 1960s, published one of his
earliest major works in 1970, and was promptly arrested. His alleged crime, and that of his
publishers, was violation of the Anti-Communist Law, although the poem in question, 'Five
Bandits' made no mention of support for North Korea or communism. It simply satirized the
gross inequalities in South Korean society due to corruption, though in an unmistakably
condemnatory and mocking fashion. For continuing to protest the political and economic
injustices of the increasingly autocratic and rapidly industrializing South Korean system, Kim
Chiha spent most of the 1970s in jail, even receiving a death sentence in 1974. Kim was not

,3 
 alone in lobbing criticisms of the dramatic changes that Korean society was undergoing, for
the primary thrust of cultural expression in this period carried a political undertone. But Kim
Chiha, through his connections and impact, can be seen as the embodiment of the watershed
decade of the 1970s, the memory of which continues to be coloured predominantly by the
term, "Yusin;' in reference to the constitutional dictatorship forcibly implemented in 1972."
Kyung Moon Hwang, A History of Korea (Palgrave 2010), pp.236-237

The 'Five Bandits Incident' was but one example of the writers, artists, musicians and religious leaders
who were jailed for making political statements during the 1970s. It became a crime under the Yusin
Constitution to criticise any aspect of the government. The climate of fear was heightened by such
famous incidents as the Kim Dae Jung kidnapping in August 1973. Kim Dae Jung went into exile to the
the US and Japan after almost narrowing defeating President Park in the 1971 election. Kim Dae Jung
continued to criticize the Park regime from abroad and he was kidnapped at the Grand Palace Hotel in
Tokyo. He was then taken to a ship and tied to an anchor, and he may have been thrown off the deck,
except a Japanese naval ship was in hot pursuit of the kidnappers. Kim Dae Jung was later released in
Busan, but this became one of the most notorious incident of the Yusin era.

Indeed, the vast majority of the Korean population in the 1970s chose quiet compliance rather than risk
state suppression. However, even after the closing of Sasanggye, Chang Chun-ha and other opposition
figures like Ham Sok-hon (1901-1989) continued to publish oppositional writings under another journal
called Ssialui sori or the 'Sound of the Seeds' which continued to publish until it was shut down in
January 1980. The opposition to the Yusin system continued despite the best efforts of the Park Chung
Hee regime to censor all protest. Today, Koreans recall the economic achievements of the Park era but
they tend not to remember the lone voices that suggested an alternative path for modern Korean history.
© Michael Kim

Protest movements in the 1970s

One of the defining characteristics of South Korea's modern history is the strength of its protest
movements. While we can trace large-scale protest movements back into the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, such as the Tonghak Rebellion (1894) and the March First Movement (1918), one
of the largest protests took place during the April Student Revolution of 1960. The protest movements
then subsequently developed in a number of student-led movements such as the demonstrations against
the Japan-Korea Normalization in 1965.

During the 1970s, the protest movements galvanized laborers and ordinary citizens after two remarkable
incidents, the death of Chon T’ae-il (1948-1970), who immolated himself in 1970 and the 1971
Kwangju Residential Complex Incident, which was an insurrection by those evicted from a development
project. Korea's rapid development produced precarious working conditions among underpaid laborers
who toiled for long hours each day. South Korea had established basic labor standard laws, but they
were commonly breached. The rapid industrialization began to eliminate the traditional rural
communities and pulled the South Korean population into the urban slums of major cities.

Much of the industrial labor force during the 1960s and 1970s were young female laborers, because the
driving force was light industry such as textiles and wig production. Laborers increasingly began to
demand better working conditions and violence within the factories erupted as a result. Chon T’ae-il was
a labor activist who assisted female garment workers to organize protests. He set himself on fire while
demanding improvement of their desperate working conditions. His actions served as a rallying cry for
the labor movement which had remained largely dormant during the postliberation era for students had
been the primary driving force of protest movements.

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Furthermore, the Kwangju Residential Complex Incident, where evictees violently expressed their anger
against their impoverished condition as a consequence of the Park Chung-Hee government’s urban
policy and poor planning. The largescale construction project disrupted the lives of those evicted from
the area without providing any opportunities for employment, education or commerical activity. The
protest movement was in many ways one of the first in modern Korea to demand basic economic rights.
The protests led to the passage of the Interim Housing Improvement Act of 1973 which provided a path
to allowing illegal buildings to be legitimate and unlicensed plots of land to be given preemptive rights.
Thereafter evictions would provide some provisions for displaced individuals. However, controversies
would continue to flare up over urban redevelopment projects as once the law was enacted there was no
means to refuse the provisions offered and individuals had no choice but to relocate.

The protest movements of the 1970s were largely democratic and liberal in character. In contrast to the
later anti-Americanism, protesters in general did not focus on the geopolitical situation of the Korean
peninsula. Instead, the movements tended to be more focused on basic economic rights and
improvements over the working conditions. In the subsequent decade, the protest movements would
become more anti-American and pro-North Korean.

Extra resources
Taehan News (March 27, 1971) *The first half of the clip shows President Park making a speech at
the construction grounds of a nuclear powerplant and his visit to a glass sheet factory. The second half
shows the ceremonies to begin the construction of the Kwangju Complex that led to large scale protests
in August 10, 1971.
http://www.ehistory.go.kr/page/pop/movie_pop.jsp?srcgbn=KV&mediaid=705&mediadtl=5109&gbn=
DH&quality=W

© Michael Kim

Political developments in the 1980s

The 1980s began with a civilian massacre in the city of Kwangju as South Korea struggled to
end military rule. A student-led civilian protest movement led to a peaceful democratic
transition after decades of military rule.
Park's assassination and the Seoul Spring
This section describes the end of the fourth Republic.

The immediate events that led to Park Chung Hee’s fall was a labour dispute in August 1979 where
police brutally broke up a demonstration of about 200 female workers from the Y.H. Trading company.
During the struggle with police, one woman was killed. Two months later, Kim Young Sam (1927-)
gained control of the opposition party, which led to his expulsion from the National Assembly. This
would lead to massive demonstrations in both Pusan and Masan, which was the region where Kim
Young Sam was from, and this crisis became known as the 'Pu-ma Incident' among Koreans.

Disputes over the handling the protests in Pusan and Masan may have lead to Park’s assassination by the
KCIA director Kim Jae Kyu (1926-1980). Kim Chae-gyu claimed that he had argued for moderation,
but Park may have considered the advice of the head of his security detachment Cha Chi-chol (1934-
1979) who advocated the dispatch of soldiers to break up the demonstrations. Kim Jae Kyu would later
justify his assassination of Park as an attempt to save the protesters. However, some raise doubts about
his story, because he was the head of Korea's most feared agency, the KCIA, and he had engaged in a
long-running feud with Cha Chi-chol.

Park’s assassination initially generated shock and confusion, since he was the only leader that Koreans
had known for 18 years. Yet soon there was considerable hope and expectation that the end of the Yusin
system would provide a new opportunity to form a democratic government. Park’s successor Choi Kyu-

,3 
hah (1919-2006) was elected president through the Yusin constitution, but he promised that a
referendum for a new constitution would be held within a year. Choi Kyu-hah also released political
dissidents like Kim Dae Jung and restored the political rights of 700 other former political prisoners.
Many historians now call the optimism of early 1980, the “Seoul Spring” when it seemed that the end of
two decades of military rule would lead to a democratic transition.

Yet bitter infighting among the opposition leaders and the social instability that followed the end of the
Park Chung Hee provided an opportunity for another strongman to rise to power. On December 12,
1979, an event now known as the 12-12 incident took place, when Chun Doo Hwan (1931-) and his
close associations Roh Tae Woo (1932-) led a mutiny within the army. When Chun was a young officer,
he formed a secret association within the Army called the Hanahoe. The Hanahoe members had received
fast promotions and special patronage from President Park himself. Chun had led the chase for North
Korean commandos who attacked the Blue House in 1968. During his insurrection within the army,
Chun arrested the Army Chief of Staff and other high army officers, and he moved troops that supported
him into the areas surrounding Seoul. Chun also gained influence within the ranks through this role in
the investigation of Park's assassination.

A bloodless coup ensued, and Chun Doo Hwan quickly grabbed power. The route that Chun took was
almost identical to the one that Park Chung Hee had taken in 1961. We now know that the American
officials in Washington within the Carter Administration were initially concerned with Chun’s military
coup. When Chun had completed his take over, he met with US Ambassador Gleysteen and insisted that
he supported President Choi Kyu-hah. However, his actions proved otherwise. The Carter
administration held a major review of US policy to consider measures that would make it known that
Washington was not happy with Chun’s moves, such as economic sanctions and postponing the annual
security meetings. However, many American officials opposed to these sanctions and argued that such a
course would destabilize Korean society and invite North Korean provocation.

The brief interlude of freedoms after Park Chung Hee's assassination raises many questions about
whether or not Korea was ready for a democratic transition in 1979. The emergence of Chun Doo Hwan
would end such speculations, but just like the situation after the April Student Revolution of 1960 the
civilian government showed no sign of collapse before the military coups seized power. Some historians
argue that we should not view the rise of military governments in Korea as inevitabilities, because the
fledgling democratic movements of 1960 and 1979 did not have a chance to establish themselves before
the military coups seized power.
Extra resources
Taehan News (November 9, 1979) * This is a 13 minute clip of President Park's funeral
procession. While it is a long clip, it is worth watching to understand how Koreans at the time wanted to
memorialize his rule. The clip shows funeral ceremonies with visiting foreign dignitaries and features
highlights such as his visit to arms factories and military inspections.
http://www.ehistory.go.kr/page/pop/movie_pop.jsp?srcgbn=KV&mediaid=10234&mediadtl=21206&gb
n=DH&quality=W
Promotional Video for Democracy Park in Busan. * This link provides many images from the
Korean democracy movement. If you do not want to watch the entire clip, you might start from 6:10
which shows images from the New Village movement and scenes from the Yusin period of the 1970s.
Starting from 7:10 the clip shows images from the Y.H. Trading company protests that escalated into
the Pu-Ma incident on 1979. From 8:50 the clip shows images of the crackdown and Park's assassination.
Finally, from 9:30 the clip shows images from the Seoul Spring when democracy activists found sudden
freedoms. The historical clips end at 10:27.
http://www.demopark.or.kr/eng/Demopark/promo_video.asp

© Michael Kim

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The Kwangju massacre and US policy towards
South Korea
This section describes the Kwangju Massacre and the Road to Democratization.

The rise of Chun Doo Hwan greatly reshaped the Korea-US relationship. American officials at first did
not know what to do about his emergence, and some key decisions that they made during the subsequent
crisis would have a negative impact in generating considerable anti-US sentiments. At first there was
hope that the a moderate South Korean government had emerged in early 1980 due to the release of
dissidents like Kim Dae Jung from prison. Yet when Chun assumed control of the KCIA without giving
up his military positions, massive protests ensued. Demonstrators demanded Chun’s resignation and the
lifting of martial law.

The US urged restraint on Chun Doo Hwan when dealing with the protesters, but at the same time
security concerns remained paramount. US officials met with both Chun and with opposition leaders
like Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam and encouraged them to discourage the student protests. While
US officials tried to mediate the disputes, at the same time they let it known that they did not object to
Chun’s use of force to suppress the demonstrations. US Ambassador Gleysteen suggested to Chun that
the US would not oppose the use of the ROK army to back up the police if the protests got out of control,
which Chun may have interpreted as a green light from the US government.

On May 15, student demonstrations took place within Seoul that involved approximately 100,000
protesters. Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung feared military involvement so they encouraged the
students to break up their demonstration. The student demonstrations ended, but opposition leaders like
Kim Dae Jung were still arrested for fomenting unrest. At this point, US officials became concerned that
Chun Doo Hwan was using excessive force to suppress the demonstrations. They urged restraint and
warned Chun that he was going too far. However, when a small group of Chunnam National University
students gathered to protest Kim Dae Jung’s arrest on May 18, paratroopers were sent into Cholla
province, which triggered the tragic events of the Kwangju Massacre.

On May 20, student protesters burned down local MBC station for misrepresenting their struggle and
soon an estimated 300,000 Kwangju residents had joined the protests. The paratroopers, who had been
trained in close hand-to-hand combat began to indiscriminately club and bayonet both demonstrators
and spectators. The brutality outraged the citizens of Kwangju and some began to gather weapons from
nearby military deposits. By May 21, the citizens of Kwangju had taken over key government buildings
and the paratroopers were forced to retreat from the city.

Anti-government demonstrations spread to other cities in the region, and Kwangju was surrounded by
thousands of soldiers. A counsel of city leaders tried to negotiate a truce with the army and even
appealed to the United States to intervene, but they failed to generate a dialogue. On May 27, regular
troops from the ROK 20th Division entered the city and recaptured the government buildings that had
been occupied by protesters. While official death totals state about 200 with over 3,000 injured. The
numbers are still in dispute as over a hundred more may be missing and a final death toll may never
emerge.

After the brutality of the Kwangju massacre, Chun Doo Hwan completed his seizure of power and
consolidated his rule. How to understand the US involvement in the Kwangju Massacre had been a issue
of considerable controversy in modern Korean history. We know that US officials were afraid that
Korea would turn into another Iran, where a conservative pro-American government was replaced by
one hostile to US interests. General John Wickham, who was commander of US forces in Korea, had
operational control over the join US-ROK military personnel. Wickham had released the 20th Division
to move into Kwangju, but there is no evidence that the Americans had any involvement in the violence
that ensued. Later reports established that the US officials did express considerable concern and had no

,3 
prior knowledge of what Chun would do with the soldiers. The US had no direct control of the 20th
Division during the Kwangju crisis, but the way in which this decision became interpreted had profound
implications for the emergence of anti-Americanism in South Korea.

Once the magnitude of what took place in Kwangju became clear, US officials insisted that the Chun
regime make key promises regarding human rights issues. Considerable controversy then developed
over the fate of Kim Dae Jung who was blamed for instigating the events. The Carter administration put
pressure on Chun and warned against executing Kim Dae Jung. The newly inaugurated Reagan
administration was much more anti-communist and conservative in character than the Carter
administration. Ultimately, a deal was worked out that in return for sparing Kim Dae Jung’s life, Chun
Doo Hwan would be invited to the United States. Chun was the first head of state to be invited to the
White House in February 1981. During the visit, Reagan warmly embraced Chun and reminisced about
Douglass MacArthur handing back the city of Seoul to Syngman Rhee after liberating the capital from
North Korea. Reagan reaffirmed the special bond that existed between the US and the ROK during this
meeting despite the violent circumstances behind Chun's rise to power.

A memorandum from the Secretary of State Alexandar Haig to Reagan during this period pointed out
that the visit of the President Chun would symbolize the normalization of US-ROK relations after a
period of prolonged strain. The 1970s had not been an era of close relations due to America's retreat
from Vietnam and fears of abandonment by the Park Chung Hee government. Reagan visited Korea two
years later and encouraged Chun’s government towards democracy, but many dissidents in Korea
doubted his sincerity. Reagan eventually increased the number of US troops to 43,000 and approved the
sale of F-16s which had been agreed to in principle earlier but had been held back by the Carter
administration.

The US policy decision regarding South Korea in many ways accommodated the political realities of a
divided Korea and the concrete North Korean threat during the height of the Cold War. However, the
subsequent decades would witness the emergence of a powerful anti-American protest movement that
demanded the departure of US troops from the Korean peninsula. Kwangju would prove to be a major
turning-point in Korea-US relations even though the US had played mostly a passive role in the crisis
and made efforts to intercede on behalf of Kim Dae Jung. The democratic ideals that the US
championed would give birth to a major protest movement that increasingly identified US influence as a
major obstacle in achieving the reunification of Korea.
© Michael Kim

The Minjung Movement

Discussion of the Minjung protest movement

One of the major characteristics of the South Korean protest movement in the 1980s was the
identification of its members with the concept of 'minjung'. The word minjung (㹡䢥), which generally
means 'the people', can be found in earlier historical texts, but its rediscovery in the 1970s gave it a
radical meaning. The term became a label for the poor and neglected people. Minjung Theory emerged,
influenced by Liberation Theology and mixed in with Korea's historical experiences under colonial and
military domination.

The protest movements gradually embraced Minjung Theory and demanded that the ruling elite pay
attention to the pressing needs of social justice. Intellectuals criticized the alienation and wealth
disparity that emerged from rapid economic development and urbanization. In a sense, the concept
referred to a historical consciousness of the downtrodden and neglected who were compelled to accept
the social realities and consequences of high-speed growth, even though they had been completely
excluded from the decision-making process due to the lack of democratic developments.

62 KR206
The minjung activists in the 1970s were mostly a small number of students, intellectuals, opposition
politicians and religious figures. However, events during the 1980s would propel the movement into the
front stage. After the May 18th Kwangju Uprising of 1980, Marxist theorists and pro-North Korean
sympathizers reshaped minjung ideology into a radical program for revolution. Immediately after the
May 18th Kwangju Uprising, leftist ideology would make a comeback in South Korean society, after
going dormant during the Korean War. The shock of the Kwangju Uprising had triggered a movement
among critical intellectuals to abandon the abstract theorizing about the minjung and instead embrace a
plan of action for social change.

A major debate then emerged among intellectuals over how to shape a radical reform agenda. The
minjung theorists split into two camps.The National Liberalization (NL) faction believed that the social
movements should adopt the example of Kim Il Sung’s Chuch’e ideology and prioritize reunification.
Another group called the People’s Democracy (PD) faction followed Leninist principles and prioritized
the proletariat revolution. The NL and PD factions both cooperated as well as fought against each other
in their struggle against the South Korean state. In 1980s, the NL faction led the anti-American
movement, while the PD faction devoted itself to the labour activism.

Consequently, the protest movements of the 1980s had a radical dimension that had previously not been
seen in South Korea. The NL faction openly supported North Korea and led anti-American protests,
which sometimes erupted into violence. The PD activism among South Korean workers led to student-
labour alliances that struggled against the state. Many university students began taking jobs in factories
to work closer with the labour movement and they ran night schools for workers that taught a radical
agenda. The popularity of Kim Il Sung and North Korea ideology need to be understood in light of the
gap in economic development that had emerged between the two Koreas. North Korea was actually
ahead economically into the 1970s and many student leaders viewed it as a more 'pure' Korea that had
been untainted by Western influences.

Many politicians active in South Korea trace their origins to the student activism of the 1980s. These
former student activists had been radical intellectuals until the collapse of the Soviet Union discredited
Marxist ideology in South Korea. The North Korean famine and the collapse of the North Korean
economy further served to dissuade South Korean activists from their radical path. Yet we must
understand the presence of this radical activism in South Korea if we are to grasp the significance of the
social movement that would ultimately overthrow the military regime of Chun Doo Hwan and unleash
powerful social forces in the 1980s and 1990s.

© Michael Kim

The 1987 Declaration and election

This section discuses the largest mass protest in South Korean History, 1987 Declaration and election.

The first few years of the Chun Doo Hwan regime were relatively peaceful as economic
development quickly returned to its torrid pace in the early 1980s. However, civil discontent
proved to be difficult to contain and student protest movements gained steam throughout the
1980s. Disturbing images and video from the Kwangju Massacre, in particular, served to
galvanise the protest against the Chun Doo Hwan regime. University students were routinely
tortured and arrested for subversive activities against the state. The underground student
movement then linked together with ordinary citizens to forge a democracy movement on a
scale that had no other precedent in modern Korean history. One of the pivotal moments took
place when a Yonsei University student, Yi Han-yol (1966-1987) died when he was struck by a
tear-gas canister. The public outrage at the death of a young protester drove countless numbers

,3 
 of ordinary citizens into the streets. In the following exerpt, Kyung Moon Hwang describes the
important events leading up to the ouster of the Chun regime in 1987.
>What are your thoughts on the historical significance of the 1987 Democracy Movement?

However essential this group of young people was to the democratization cause, the breakthrough of
1987 would have not occurred without the massive show of support from the growing middle class. To
understand this phenomenon, we must return to the core problem of the Chun Doo Hwan dictatorship:
its lack of legitimacy. Following his consolidation of power from late 1979 to late 1980, Chun instituted
a rule that largely continued the 1970s Yusin patterns of state surveillance, suppression of dissent, and
the encouragement of state-directed economic growth dominated by the family-run conglomerates. The
US and other major governments recognized his regime soon after it began and, for a while at least,
economic growth continued apace. While these developments might have helped in procuring the right
to host the 1988 Summer Olympics, they could do little to garner recognition from the South Korean
populace. When the economy started to slow down and an atmosphere of corruption and brutality
emerged around the Chun junta, the bitter memories of 1980 brought forth an entrenchment of resistance
to his rule. This sentiment went far beyond the semi-permanent base of anti-government activists.
Indeed, when the long-reigning dictator of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, was overthrown by a
popular uprising in 1986, South Koreans felt emboldened to take steps that would ensure the imminent
end to their own humiliating condition of chronic dictatorship.

Unsurprisingly, then, protests erupted when, contrary to the expectations of most people, Chun Doo
Hwan announced in June of 1987 that the end of his "term" later that year would be followed by a
parliamentary, not popular, election of the next president. This blatant move would ensure that his hand-
picked successor, Roh Tae-woo, would take office, but it also triggered an outpouring of anger that
spilled into the streets and begat the largest mass protests, with upwards of a million demonstrators
throughout the country, in South Korean history. The students who initiated these efforts had little idea
that they would soon be joined by salary workers, managers, housewives, and others. Unlike in the past,
when political dissent remained the purview of students and hard-core activists, this time the middle
class flooded the streets and expressed their support for the protests in numerous other ways as well.
The Chun regime had grossly miscalculated the degree to which the people would succumb to the latest
machinations of dictatorship. As revealed later, the regime also overestimated its support from the
military and bureaucracy for a potential crackdown.

The final, major actor to intervene in order to avert disaster was the man picked to be Chun's successor,
Roh Tae-woo. Roh understood that any crackdown would severely stain his reign, just as Kwangju had
marked Chun's. With Chun's grudging consent, Roh issued a declaration on June 29, 1987, calling for a
direct presidential election and a new constitutional system that would make permanent an entire range
of democratic reforms. The Sixth Republic that this new constitution ushered in continues to this day.
Even with this concession, however, Roh was not prepared to forego his political ambitions, and he
placed himself as the presidential candidate from the ruling party in the direct presidential election to be
held at the end of the year. Given the distaste of much of the public for Chun's stewardship, Roh should
not have anticipated electoral success, but the two leading politicians in the democratic resistance since
the 1970s, Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam, failed to reach a compromise to select a single
opposition candidate. The result, to the dismay of so many who had waged the democratization struggle,
was the election of Roh with a plurality of less than 40 percent of the ballots, as the Kims split the
opposition vote.

Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung would eventually get their tum at the coveted prize of the
presidency in the 1990s, with each new president, and each new peaceful transfer of power, further
consolidating the democratic political culture. Notwithstanding, or perhaps due to, his historical baggage,
Roh made no attempts to reverse the democratization process. He even overturned long-standing
national imperatives through his "Nordpolitik" strategy of establishing diplomatic relations with China
and the Soviet Union (soon Russia), which led to the further isolation of North Korea just as the Cold

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War came to a close. Kim Young Sam's election in 1992, which came about after he joined hands with
Roh in order to procure conservative support, represented the first civilian presidency since the early
1960s, following three decades of rule by military leaders. The election of his successor in 1997, Kim
Dae Jung, constituted the first peaceful transfer of power to the opposition candidate in South Korean
history.

© Kyung Moon Hwang, A History of Korea, pp.266-268.

Discussion
South Korea's democratic transition
In many ways, South Korea's peaceful transition to a democratic order is just as impressive as its
economic growth. As the recent Arab Spring has shown us, the transition to democratic systems can
sometime collapse into violent insurrections. Korea during the President Park Chung Hee era had
pursued economic development with great success, but democratic issues had retreated into the distant
background. The tragic events of Kwangju had awakened lingering resentments against US rule while
the seeming successes of North Korea attracted the sympathy of those on the radical edge of South
Korean politics. There were numerous martyrs in the democracy movement and violent incidents, but
the overall transition in 1987 took place through peaceful protest movements and key concessions by the
ruling elites.

>What are your thoughts on what factors allowed South Korea to make a peaceful transition to a
democratic society? Can we judge democratic developments in South Korea to be a success or are
there factors such as the heavy concentration of power in the chaebol companies and the South
Korean state that remain obstacles to democracy? Can we include democratic development among the
key successes of modern Korean history?

© Michael Kim

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 North Korea’s Separate Path
The Emergence of North Korean State and
Society
Kim Il Sung created a state in his image and rebuilt North Korea out of the ashes of the Korean
War. His particular vision of self-reliance or Chuche characterizes a close society with a
unique hereditary social structure.

Kim Il Sung and North Korean Communist Party

North Korea today claims a historical legacy that goes back to the anti-Japanese
resistance in Manchuria. Kim Il Sung eventually emerged supreme but Michael Kim
explains why this was not an inevitable outcome. North Korea has an unusual social
structure which may be described as an inverted social order. Understanding the
operation of this social structure is essential for any study of North Korea. Ultimately,
North Korea thrived within the Soviet Block, but had to find an alternative path after the
collapse of the Soviet Union.

North Korea today is in many ways a nation established by Kim Il-sung, who created an elaborate
mythology and personality cult surrounding his guerrilla activities and nationalist vision. Kim Il-sung
led a detachment of guerrilla fighters through the colonial period. However, he was no means the only
Korean leader who fought against the armed struggle with the Japanese before 1945. Several leaders had
much better records and closer connections to Chinese communists, which leads to the interesting
question of just how he managed to emerge as Supreme leader of North Korea. Kim Il-sung's power
base comes from the fact that the Manchurian guerrilla faction, like Kim Chaek and Choe Yong-gon,
pushed him to top of their leadership.

But the most critical factor was Soviet support, and once he obtained it, he was able to gradually
eliminate all of his rivals to power and eventually emerged as the uncontested leader of North Korea.
Now, there were many challenges to Kim Il-sung's rule after the Korean War, for his rivals to power
denounced his personality cult and demanded that he take responsibility for the economic turmoil and
food shortages that took place 1950s. But Kim was able to silence his critics and eventually eliminate
them all through arrests, executions, or sending them into exile. North Korea that Kim Il-sung
established can be described as a country with a hereditary and inverted social order.

Those with peasant or worker background before the revolution were allowed to reach the top of society,
while those with backgrounds from the elite classes before the revolution were destined to be at the
bottom. Those with relatives who defected to the South were also considered to be suspect and
unreliable, and they could never reach the top of society. The social engineering began with land
redistribution to small landowners, which was later then collectivised back into large-scale, cooperative
farms. The social hierarchies are especially important in North Korea for they determine who can join
the Communist Party, which holds a monopoly of power and special privileges.

Most of the Communist Party members came from peasant or worker backgrounds, and they made sure
that only people of similar backgrounds could join the Party. North Korea today is in many ways
imagine their society to be one large family with the head of the state, the father of the country. The
other major aspect of North Korean system is called the Juche ideology, which is the notion that
Koreans should rely only on themselves and without interference with the outside world. Juche ideology
was more of a myth however as North Korea never managed to build an isolated system. Before the
collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a separate world economy among the socialist nations.

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North Korea was very much at the heart of the Soviet bloc and benefited greatly from trade with the
Soviet allies. And all this was made possible by the fact that North Korea was connected to the railroad
to China, so Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The Soviet bloc participated in a barter system that was
highly beneficial to North Korea. Yet when it collapsed, they could no longer rely on this system to get
resources and products. From that point on North Korea had to move into more controversial ways of
raising foreign exchange-- such as drugs, counterfeiting, and missile sales.

The fall of Soviet Union proved to be a major disaster for North Korea, and the country was plunged
into a serious economic crisis when Kim Il-sung died of a heart attack in July of 1994. It would take
decades for North Korea to recover from the economic disasters of 1990s. And much of its recent
history is the story of how it managed to avert a regime collapse, despite the incredible difficulties that
the regime faced after the collapse of Soviet Union.

© Michael Kim

Going it alone: The DPRK

This section discusses DPRK (North Korea).

In the following excerpt from Michael Robinson describes the many contradictions of North
Korea. Despite the numerous predictions of regime collapse, North Korea continues to survive
and develop along its own separate path. The persistence of the North Korean regime may
seem mysterious, but we need to keep in mind that some strong foundations for the North
Korean state had been established long before the economic collapse in the 1990s. Therefore
we need to critically examine the factors behind the North Korean state's longevity.
>What are your thoughts on what might allow the North Korean state to defy all predictions of
its demise?

The now famous satellite picture, published in February 2002 in the New York Times, shows a bird's-
eye view of the Korean peninsula at night. The southern half is ablaze with light, its cities and highways
easily visible, while north of the DMZ a perfect blackness outlines the landmass of the DPRK, a crisp
black shadow, between the lights of the South and the China north of the Yalu River. It is a stunning
image of a nation in a downward economic spiral and alone in the world. Indeed, many contemporary
observers of North Korea marvel that the country still exists. By all important measures of national well-
being, the DPRK is a very sick society. Its economy has been stagnant or in negative growth since the
mid-1990s. Its infrastructure is crumbling. Built with now outmoded Soviet technology in the 1950s, its
electric grid barely functions, negating what had been a major comparative advantage for the North in
the post war period. When the power is on, less than one-half of the power produced from its many
hydroelectric and coal-burning generators survives its course along the wires. The North's meager and
now uncertain electric supply symbolizes the broad failure of the DPRK economy and the general
decrepitude of its infrastructure.

A nation cloaked in darkness aptly describes the DPRK for at least the last two decades. North Korea
was once connected by trade and at least minimal participation in the affairs of the socialist world
economy, but since the collapse of this system, it has found itself alone in the world. Even within the
now-past world brotherhood of socialist states and economies, reclusive North Korea closely guarded
entry into its physical space, let alone into its secretive decision-making processes. Over the years it has
kept even its closest allies and benefactors, the Soviet Union and the PRC, in the dark about the
workings of its society and politics. Indeed, while South Korea's insinuated itself wholeheartedly into
the world system after the Korean War, the North set itself on a path that all but hermetically sealed off
its borders to the outside world, thus begging for itself the old title of Hermit Kingdom that had been
applied to Korea in the nineteenth century.

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The very idea that North Korea survives long after the collapse of Communism sticks in the craw of
triumphant, conservative Cold Warriors in the United States. By all accounts, the DPRK, with its
collapsed economy and failed agricultural sector, should have disappeared along with all the other
Eastern European socialist states and their Soviet mentor. Its continued presence, however, simply
proves that the DPRK was no satellite in the first place. Lumping North Korea together in American
foreign policy with the larger problem of world Communism allowed US leaders to ignore the
differences between the Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe and the unique historical context of the
DPRK's genesis. Certainly, the imposition of the joint occupation after World War II created the original
conditions for the flourishing of a North Korean state, but once established its claim to historical
legitimacy was at least as valid as the South's, and it enjoyed the solid support of its own peasants and
labouring classes. For decades the debates over Soviet involvement in the decision to attack the South
and the ultimate participation of the PRC in the Korean War also masked, in the minds of Western Cold
Warriors, the essential independence of the DPRK. In fact, even with Soviet aid after the war and
continuing close economic ties with the PRC, the DPRK remained obdurately independent of the two
socialist giants. This became even more so after the Sino Soviet split in the early 1960s.

The DPRK's survival also baffles those that would remake the world in the service of American
hegemony after the events of September 11, 2001. Reading US news accounts of the North Korean
regime creates a bizarre picture. The North is characterized as irrational, demonic, and self-destructive.
Its leader, Kim Jong II, is routinely represented as crazy, unbalanced, reclusive, venal, and depraved. At
one point US President George W. Bush slurred Kim as a "pigmy;' arrogantly disqualifying Kim of any
credibility or respect as a national leader, but such contempt cannot make the North disappear. Actually
in some ways the North's current fragility presents an even greater problem to its neighbours in North-
east Asia than it did as an economically more viable and bellicose presence in the 1960s and 1970s.
Since the end of the Cold War, the idea that North Korea could be easily absorbed by the South, thus
eliminating the problem, is now a dead letter. Moreover, solving the problems of the North's large
dependent population, its crumbling infrastructure, and its technological backwardness would require
enormous expenditures. Absorbing East Germany created serious economic and political dislocations
within the Federal Republic that continue to this day. North Korea covers a larger territory, contains a
more inert economy, and has a population equal to half that of the South; how could a South Korea less
wealthy than Germany and ideologically more polarized handle such an enormous problem? And how
would the PRC react to the massive refugee outflow and changing geopolitical environment that any
sudden collapse of the North might cause?

Since the early 1990s, North Korea's program to develop a nuclear bomb has offered another major
problem to the general cause of strategic realignment in North-east Asia. The first nuclear crisis of
1992-1994 was averted only temporarily. Then came a decade of wrenching economic disasters, the
collapse of North Korea's agriculture, and a horrible famine in the mid-1990s that left the North
prostrate and, contradicting its resolute stance on economic autonomy, accepting emergency food aid.
By 2002, the DPRK again startled the world with the announcement that it had continued its nuclear
bomb program, precipitating another political crisis. By the beginning of the second Bush administration
in 2005, the stand off with North Korea had no resolution in sight. The prospect of North Korea's
membership in the nuclear club threatened the regional status quo in fundamental ways. Most notably, it
challenged Japan's fifty-year commitment to pacifism; by 2004 Japan's Diet had passed a number of
laws widening the acceptable areas for the use of Japan's defence forces. There have also been
rumblings that Japan might join the nuclear club, an unthinkable idea only a decade ago. The very
concept of a rearmed and militarily more aggressive Japan sends shudders throughout East Asia and
destabilizes its relations with South Korea, China, and Taiwan.

Much of the consternation expressed by US policy-makers over North Korea could be easily resolved by
a better understanding of the DPRK's origins and early history. After all, North Korea did not suddenly
emerge in the 1990s as an obstacle to realignment of geopolitical power relations in East Asia or as a
threat to the nuclear non-proliferation regime. North Korea as it stands today, at the nexus of these

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important global issues, is the product of fifty years of political, economic, and social development. For
a good portion of this time, from 1953 to the early 1970s, the DPRK was at least economically the equal,
if not more, of a struggling South Korea. At the end of the Korean War, North Korea began to rebuild its
society with Soviet technical and financial support and the helpful labour of hundreds of thousands of
Chinese soldiers, the same soldiers who had saved North Korea by intervening in the war in December
1950. The nation's successful recovery from the war was followed by a rapid transformation of the
economy, solidification of a totalitarian state, its own social revolution, and, finally, its immuring itself
within its own ideology.

© Michael Robinson, Korea's Twentieth-Century Odyssey (University of Hawaii 2007), pp. 146-148.

The early life of Kim Il Sung

North Korea attempts to derive its legitimacy from a heroic past of anti-Japanese struggles which
is based on an elaborate mythology surrounding Kim Il Sung's legendary guerilla activities. While much
of his early life remains shrouded in mystery, we know that he was born in 1912 in Pyongyang and
given the name Kim Son-ju. His family later moved to Manchuria and he spent much of his childhood
years there. Later he would join the armed struggle against the Japanese in Manchuria and earn a
reputation as a guerilla leader.

Kim Il Sung's guerilla activities had initially come under question, because he was considered to be too
young to match the description of a guerilla fighter known as Kim Il Sung who was active in the 1920s.
When he was first introduced to North Koreans after the liberation period, many thought he was a fake
guerilla leader, because he seemed too young. However, historians now speculate that the name Kim Il
Sung may be a nom de guerre that several guerilla fighters had used during the anti-Japanese struggle.

Kim Il Sung's precise guerilla record may never be known for sure, but he did lead a detachment of
guerillas fighters and was accepted as a leader among the other prominent guerrillas like Kim Ch'aek
(1903-1951) and Ch'oe Yong-gun (1900-1976). Therefore, his strong reputation among the anti-
Japanese guerilla fighters suggests that he had played a leading role among them. His most famous
action during the armed struggle was an attack on Poch'onbo in 1937 which was a relatively minor
skirmish that had great symbolic value, because it was a deadly attack inside the borders of colonial
Korea.

Ultimately a hagiography emerged that allowed Kim Il Sung to claim a special status among the North
Korean leadership. North Korea today considers itself an inheritor of the armed anti-Japanese struggle,
even if the facts behind the legends are not always accurate. The Japanese had successfully suppressed
the guerilla movement in Manchuria at the end of the colonial period, and the Korean fighters were
forced into Soviet territories during WWII.
Even though North Korea derives its anti-Japanese legitimacy from Kim Il Sung, he was by no means
the only Korean leader who developed strong reputations during the armed struggle against the Japanese
before 1945.

Several other leaders had more impressive records, like Kim Won-bong (1898-1958), who formed the
Righteous Anarchist Brotherhood or the Uiyoldan, and the Mu Chong (1904-1951) who was an artillery
commander in the Eighth Route Army and a member of the Yenan faction. Thus while Kim Il Sung had
a reputation as a guerilla leader, there was no inevitability in his rise to become the supreme leader of
North Korea based on his anti-Japanese record. The most important factor was most likely Kim Il Sung's
close relationship with the Soviets who promoted him over his rivals to power in post-liberation North
Korea.

One of the more interesting issues that arise from North Korea basing its legitimacy on the armed
struggle against the Japanese in Manchuria is that South Korea does not share a similar mythology.

,3 
Many of the Manchurian guerilla fighters were part of the leftist movement, and South Korea during the
Cold War had little desire to recognize communist activists, even if they they fought against the
Japanese. At one point, Koreans formed about 10 percent of the communist party in China, because the
movement had been born in Northeast China. Koreans had a disproportionate influence in the Chinese
revolution, which is not a historical fact that fit into South Korea's anti-communist ideology.
The Republic of Korea today draws its legitimacy from its roots in the Korean Provisional Government
based in Shanghai, which generally did not involve itself in an armed struggle against the Japanese until
the very end of the colonial period. The differing ways in which the Two Koreas understand their anti-
Japanese past may provide some interesting insights into how newly formed nations can draw upon
different historical legacies to legitimate their rule.
© Michael Kim

North Korea before liberation

Historical background of North Korea

North Korea before liberation in 1945 had undergone a number of major transformations that would
later impact its modern history. In general, one can separate the populous Pyongan Province where the
capital Pyongyang is located as somewhat different in character than the rest of the region which is
mostly mountainous and was sparsely populated in the premodern era. Pyongyang was a major
population centre with its own distinct history and regional characteristics. There was a popular saying
that there are no members of the aristocratic yangban class in the north, which suggested that the region
did not have the same elite traditions. However, a disproportionate number of the passers of Confucian
civil exams came from the region, even though they encountered discrimination at the centre and few
made it to the highest ranks of the Choson Dynasty court.

Pyongyang's proximity to China allowed Koreans there to engage in more commercial trade activity,
and there is considerable evidence that a more open society existed in the north that was less tied to
traditions. In the early twentieth century, Pyonan Province became the centre of the Christian world
when thousands of Koreans suddenly converted to Christianity. The city of Pyongyang was called the
'Jeruselum of the East' by missionaries who helped build a major centre of Christian activity during the
colonial period.

The rest of northern Korea had been mostly remote mountain regions that was little affected by the
passage of time. However, during the nineteenth century Koreans migrated into southern Manchuria into
a region called Kando by the Koreans and Jiandao in Chinese. Over a hundred thousand Koreans lived
in an area that is now a part of China, but they had resided there before the Han Chinese population
came into the region in the nineteenth century. The Japanese created an ambiguous territorial situation
through the Kando Convention in 1909 when they recognized the region as belonging to Qing China but
kept administrative control. This area later became the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, where
the ethnic Korean population of China is now based.

The most remarkable transformation of northern Korea took place along the eastern coastline where the
Japanese created new industrial and commercial centres like the city of Hamhung, Wonsan and Najin.
The eastern coast of Korea served as a base for commerce between Japan and the newly industrializing
cities that emerged in Manchuria after the Japanese took over the region in 1932. Hamhung in particular
became a major industrial centre where finished goods were produced for export. Plentiful hydroelectric
power was available since the Japanese had damned up the rivers of North Korea. The Japanese
industrialists Noguchi Jun (1873-1944) established one of the largest fertilizer factories in the world in
Hamhung. The region later became a major centre of arms production as the Japanese moved some of
their heavy industries to Korea to avoid allied bombings.

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The rapid colonial industrialisation of northern Korea would leave a considerable legacy for North
Korea and greatly transformed the northern population. Most of the people who lived in the eastern
industrial zones came from the more populous southern region of Korea, which is why many in North
Korea today actually trace their origins to the south. Many new social groups emerged from this social
transformation, which would become a key issue when the new North Korean state after 1948 attempted
to organize its population into a revolutionary socialist hierarchy.
© Michael Kim

The politics of purges and the emergence of Kim Il

Sung
Despite the overwhelming prominence of the father-son pair of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il
today, North Korea in 1945 had numerous rivals for power. In general, we can divide the leadership at
the time into the Manchurian guerilla faction that included Kim Il Sung, the Yenan faction that had close
times to the Communist Chinese, the Soviet Koreans, and the domestic Korean communists who had
been active in Korea during the colonial era. Kim Il Sung initially cooperated with the different factions
until he was able to gain firm control of the North Korean state. Once he seized power, he gradually
eliminated all of his rivals to power and emerged as the uncontested leader of North Korea.

Kim Il Sung's first target was the domestic communists like Park Hon Yong. Many artists and writers
from South Korea like Kim Nam-chon (1911-1953?) and Im Hwa (1908-1953) were also members of
the domestic communist faction, and they provided much of the skill and expertise in
artistic/propaganda production to the new North Korean state. This group was the first to be purged
because of a growing rift between Pak Hon Young and Kim Il Sung over how to conduct the Korean
War. In August 1952, 13 members of the domestic communist faction were charged with subversion.
Later in March 1953, Pak Hon Yong himself was arrested and sentenced to death in 1955 for being an
American spy.

The Soviet Koreans faction included Ho Kai-I (1908-1953) and others who had mostly been born in the
Soviet Union and had Soviet citizenship. Many members of this faction had attended Soviet universities
and had been active in the Soviet communist party before their arrival to North Korea. Western
missionaries travelling in Manchuria in the late nineteenth century report that they had encountered
groups of Koreans living along the Trans-Siberian Railroad that sent their children to Russian schools in
Moscow and spoke fluent Russian. These Soviet Koreans who returned in 1945 provided technical and
ideological expertise among the North Korean leadership and held key positions in the early years of
North Korea. The Soviet faction only numbered a few hundred individuals, but they held considerable
influence due to their native language fluency and Russian connections.

The Chinese Yenan faction included members like Mu Chong and Kim Tu-bong (1889-1961) who had
close connections with the Chinese communists and many had participated in the Chinese civil war. The
Yenan faction included several members who had close high-level connections with the ruling
Communist Chinese elites. They spoke fluent Chinese from their long years in China and had the trust
of their Chinese comrades. The participation of the Chinese soldiers in the Korean War had enhanced
their role in North Korean politics, but they along with the Soviet faction became the key target of Kim
Il Sung's purges.

The main purges took place surrounding an incident between June to August 1956 when members of the
Yenan and Soviet factions openly criticized Kim Il Sung during his state tour outside of North Korea.
Kim Il Sung's opponents wanted to oust him from power during his absence, but they failed in their
attempt. When Kim Il Sung returned to North Korea, he arrested the Yenan and Soviet faction members
and broke up this serious challenge to his power.

,3 
Kim Il Sung would continue to purge his opponents throughout the 1960s, and he would not consolidate
his rule until the Fifth Party Congress held in November 1970. The final set of purges would involve
members of his own Manchurian guerilla faction who challenged his rule. Those purged were
imprisoned, tortured and sometimes executed in public. North Korea today remains one of the few
places in the world that still maintain the practice of public executions. Others vanished quietly and their
fate remains a mystery. What is clear is that Kim Il Sung rose to power through a protracted period of
internal violence. The political instabilities during the early years of the North Korean regime did not
allow for a systematic implementation of the Cult of Kim Il Sung, which did not take shape until the
1960s. However, once Kim Il Sung consolidated his power by the 1970s, he encountered no further
resistance to his rule, and he was able to reshape North Korea in his image without any opposition.
© Michael Kim

North Korean Economic Development

North Korea was one of the success stories of the Communist World, until the collapse of the
Soviet Union. The North Koreans built a model planned economy that proved to be
unsustainable in the long run.
North Korean economic development
Despite the problems of the North Korean economy today, there was actually a long
history of economic successes. North Korea had many favourable advantages and
received considerable foreign aid from fellow socialist nations. The successes continued
throughout the 1960s and 1980s and North Korea was in fact one of the fastest growing
economies. Understanding this past economic success will allow us to see why the
rivalry between the two Koreas was so intense.

Even though much of North Korea may be shrouded in a veil of mystery, there's actually quite a bit
about the country that we know of-- especially with regards to its economic development. Despite the
fact that the North Korean economy faces serious trouble today, there is actually a story of success here
that lasted throughout the 1980s. Now, it's important to note that most of the factories built by the
Japanese in Korea was actually located in northern Korea. While most of these factories were destroyed
in the Korean War, North Korea today had many of the factory technicians and managers who survived
into the postwar period.

North Korea was also assisted by China, the Soviet Union, and the Soviet bloc nations like East
Germany. The Soviets helped to rebuild Pyongyang, and East Germans help rebuild the industrial city of
Hamhung into the east. The Chinese also provided considerable manpower for the reconstruction of
North Korea, especially sense its army stayed there until 1958. This fraternal assistance from other
communist countries was critical for North Korea in its efforts to rebuild a devastated economy. But it
also contradicts the claims of having achieved a self-reliant economy based on the ideology of Juche.
Now, North Korea's socialist, command economy relies on 7 to 10 year plans to set production goals
and strategies.

North Korean economy is heavily geared towards heavy industries, and until recently much of its
agricultural sector was organised into large collective farms. North Koreans embarked on a three-year
plan then a five-year plan between 1957, 1961 to reconstruct its battered economy after the end of the
Korean War. An emphasis on heavy industries during this period left consumer goods at the bottom of
the priority list, but the North Koreans did manage to achieve impressive growth rates throughout the
1950s and 1960s. It is estimated that the North Korean economy grew at an annual rate of 25% in the
decade that followed the Korean War and about 14% between 1965 and 1978.

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North Korea issued a special programme in the summer of 1958 called the Flying Horse, or Chollima,
after a mythical winged horse that could fly 1,000 li a single day. Like the Great Reform in China, North
Korea hoped to jumpstart the economy through mass campaigns that increased industrial production.
The Chollima programmes were not entirely successful, but they had far better results then their Chinese
counterparts. The North Koreans managed to produce impressive growth rates, but there were several
human costs involved and many inefficiencies that were ever evident throughout the process. In an case,
the impressive growth rates of North Korea even had US officials worried in the 1970s that South Korea
could not keep up with the North.

Yet already by the early 1970s, North Korea had exhausted the growth potential that they could achieve
with the facilities left over from the colonial period and for the technologies that they could develop on
their own. North Koreans had spent as many as 30% of their budget on military defence throughout the
1960s, and this meant that they had difficulties achieving both an expansion of the economy and
military reliance. The overemphasis on heavy industry and defence spending left many areas of the
North Korean economy behind. North Koreans intended to obtain capital and funds to purchase factory
plants from the Japanese and the French, including a French petrochemical plant in 1971 and a cement
plant in 1973.

The purchase of foreign equipment and loans eventually forced North Koreans to assume billions of
dollars in debt that they had trouble servicing. And ultimately, they lost their international credit rating.
Still, the CIA in 1978 estimated that per capita GDP in North Korea was about the same as the South.
And many estimate that North Korea had kept pace with the southern economy until 1980s. Ever since
the mid-1980s however, the South Korean economy has far exceeded the growth rates of the North.

And it is therefore probably quite significant that the rumblings that would lead to a North Korean
nuclear crisis would begin in late 1980s and early 1990s at a time when the North was beginning to fall
behind and trying to make a better effort to keep up with the South. Other important factors worth
noting in this development is, of course, the fall the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union in
1992. China's liberalisation and its move towards a market economy also deprived North Korea of its
preferential rates and special support they received from the Chinese in the past. Today, North Korea
faces many challenges.

But it's important to keep in mind that because of the problems, there is still in fact a system in place
that have led to past economic successes and managed to survive the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Further studies in North Korea will try to unravel the workings of North Korean system so that we can
better understand how it survived numerous transitions and difficult crises and somehow managed to
keep up with the world with its nuclear programme.

© Michael Kim

The fraternal assistance of socialist nations

The Japanese had developed parts of North Korea during the colonial period into major
industrial centres due to the availability of plentiful hydroelectric resources in the region. While most of
these factories and industrial facilities were destroyed during the Korean War, it is far easier to rebuild
infrastructure than to start from scratch. The North built upon the favourable advantages that it had over
the South and was able to stay ahead economically for several decades after the Korean War.

Despite North Korea's claims to be entirely self-reliant, it was greatly assisted by China, the Soviet
Union and the Eastern European nations like East Germany. The Soviets helped rebuild Pyongyang
while East Germans helped to rebuild the industrial city of Hamhung. The foreign aid began during the
Korean War and increased dramatically in the years that followed the end of hostilities. The Soviet
Union was the biggest contributor of foreign aid, and Soviet technicians played a key role in

,3 
reconstructing the factories in North Korea. China also contributed greatly, with East Germany being the
third most generous. Numerous other Eastern European nations like Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania
and Hungry also contributed significant amounts.

The Chinese provided considerable manpower for North Korean reconstruction, especially since its
army remained in the North until 1958. The hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers helped rebuild
roads, bridges and irrigation facilities. All total, approximately 879 million rubles of foreign aid was
contributed to North Korea between 1953-1960 (Approximately 4 rubles for 1 dollar at the time,
although the ruble was not convertible), This fraternal assistance from other communist countries was
crucial for rebuilding the devastated northern economy, but it contradicts the North's claims to having
built its economy on its own.

The Korea has had a socialist command economy that relies on 7-10 year plans to set production goals
and targets. The North Korean economy was heavily geared towards heavy industries and until recently
much of its agrarian sector was organized into large collective farms after the land was initially
distributed to the farmers. North Korea's planned economy required considerable foreign expertise and
assistance to implement successfully. Establishing trade relations with the Soviet Block and China was
also critical for North Korean successes. We need to keep in mind that North Korea was connected via
railroad to the entire Asian mainland and Europe. In that sense, North Korea could connect to the rest of
the socialist world economy easily and benefit from participating in the expansive trade network.

The North Koreans embarked on a three year plan then a five year plan between 1957-1961 to
reconstruct its battered economy after the end of the Korean War. An emphasis on heavy industries
during the early plans left consumer goods at the bottom of the regime’s priorities, but the North
Koreans did manage impressive growth rates throughout the 1950s and 1960s. It is estimated that the
North Korean economy grew at an annual rate of 25% in the decade following the Korean War and
about 14 percent between 1965-1978. These impressive growth rates look less like a 'miracle' when we
consider how embedded North Korea was within the Soviet Block and the Chinese economy. Much like
South Korea, we can identify many key elements of North Korean economic growth through its
connections to the world economy.
Extra resources
The Destruction and Reconstruction of North Korea, 1950 – 1960 * You can read more
about the reconstruction of North Korea in this article by Charles Armstrong
http://www.japanfocus.org/-charles_k_-armstrong/3460/article.html

© Michael Kim

The Flying Horse takes a Great Leap Forward

This section describes postwar recovery and socialist construction of DPRK.

North Korea initiated a special program in the summer of 1958 called the Flying Horse movement or
Chollima after a mythical winged horse that could fly a thousand li (Chinese unit of measure: 䯍) in one
day. While the movement was clearly influenced by the Great Leap Forward, the results were far more
ambivalent than the disastrous circumstances in China where millions of lives had been lost. North
Koreans today recall this period as one of the highlights of Kim Il Sung's rule. Therefore, we need to
take a closer look at the events and evaluate their historical significance for North Korean history.

Like the Great Leap Forward, North Korea hoped to jump start their economy through mass campaigns
that increased industrial production. Millions of North Koreans 'volunteers' were mobilized for labour
duty in the factories and farms. The Chollima programs were also influenced by the pending decline of
foreign aid from the Soviet Union and other socialist nations that had sustained North Korea after the
Korean War. In September 1958, Kim Il Sung announced that the first Five Year Plan should be

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completed in less than three and a half years and that factories should double their output from the
previous year. The idea behind the movement was to decentralize production and allow every member
of North Korean society to participate in the economy.

The North Koreans managed to produce impressive growth rates during the Chollima campaigns, but
severe human costs and inefficiencies soon became evident. The speed of production and lack of proper
supervision often led to the output of substandard goods. The impossible production targets could not be
met through a carefully deliberated planning process, and short cuts were inevitable. Factory heads and
production leaders who could not meet the targets were disgraced as being 'hostile' to the state. The
economic efforts at the time took place in parallel to another wave of purges that swept through North
Korean society in the late 1950s and removed the last traces of the Soviet and Yenan factions.

By the spring of 1959, North Koreans began to declare that they had produced a self-reliant economy
and that the wildly optimistic production goals had been exceeded. The Chollima campaigns were
deemed to be an immense success by the North Korean state. Scholars remain somewhat divided in how
to assess the results of this campaign. The North Korean economy was clearly in better shape and the
subsequent rapid development suggests that despite the problems the superhuman effort had established
the foundations for economic development.

Kim Il Sung at the time was credited for introducing the 'enterprise system' or the Taean Enterprise
system, because he announced the measure during his visit to the Taean Factory in Pyongyang. The
system involved the operation of the factory through a 'factory management committee' that was run by
the party secretary. This system was different from other socialist nations where factory management
was handed over to the workers. North Korea had created a system that disregarded material incentives
and instead relied upon 'spiritual' mobilization and placed politics at the centre of industrial production.
The North Koreans would maintain this system until 2002, when they announced that the CEO of state-
run factories would directly manage the operations. The change sounded innocuous, but it may have
signified a move away from ideology in the factory workplace.

The successes of the Chollima campaigns would result in the ideological program being praised as the
backbone of the North Korean economy and even enshrined in the North Korean constitution. The idea
that the North Korean people could come together to build the national economy was a powerful motif
in the North, just as the New Village Movement had captured the imagination of South Koreans. While
the claims of self-reliance need to be viewed with a healthy dose of scepticism, the Chollima movement
may point to the importance of ideology in the North Korean system.

© Michael Kim

North Korea's Japan connection

For many decades, the North Korean economy had surprisingly strong connections to the
Japanese economy through the presence of Korean residents of Japan who had migrated between the
late 1950s to the 1970s. Cargo ships travelled regularly back and forth between Japan and North Korea
carrying both passengers and trade goods. The remittances sent from family members back in Japan
once amounted to tens of millions of dollars a year. Japan used to be North Korea's third largest trade
partner, and the volume of trade used to be in the hundreds of millions of US dollars. North Korean
ships made more than 1,300 calls to Japanese ports in 2002 before the Japanese government moved to
restrict this North Korean connection. Restrictions eventually came, however, as the Japanese
government suspected that key parts of North Korea's missile program had been exported from Japan.

The history of this North Korea-Japan connection is complex and stems back to the colonial era.
Koreans from the southern provinces often travelled to Japan as seasonal migrant workers and

,3 
eventually several hundred thousand settled there permanently. The number of Koreans swelled into the
millions during WWII, but many of the labourers who had been forcibly mobilized quickly returned to
Korea, and mostly the long-time residents of Japan remained after 1945. The Korean residents in Japan
are called the 'zainichi' (㘱㰀) in Japanese, and they split into two major groups as a consequence of the
division of Korea. Many were born in Japan, and some have never visited Korea. A substantial
percentage of the zainichi actually originate from Cheju Island and the numbers increased sharply after
the Cheju Massacre in 1949 as the refugees fled to Japan.

The Mindan is a pro-South Korean organization which recognizes the Republic of Korea as the
OHJLWLPDWH .RUHDQ VWDWH 7KH &KǀVHQ 6ǀUHQ 7KH *HQHUDO $VVRFLDWLRQ RI .RUHDQ 5HVLGHQts in Japan)
recognizes the legitimacy of North Korea, and they operate a network of ethnic Korean schools across
Japan that include a pro-North Korean ideology in their curriculum. School children from the zainichi
high schools in Japan used to take their graduation field trips to North Korea, and they studied a
curriculum that prepared them to 'return' to North Korea until the 1970s.

During the late 1950s, the pro-North residents conducted a 'home-coming movement' to North Korea,
which they hailed as a socialist "Paradise on Earth". The historical irony here of course is that the vast
majority Korean residents in Japan are actually from the South and have no family or regional
connections to the North. The repatriation of zainichi Koreans from Japan conducted under the auspices
of the Japanese Red Cross began to receive official support from the Japanese government as early as
1956 and officially began in 1959. Some scholars have pointed out that this may have been an attempt
by the Japanese authorities to solve their 'Korea Problem' by expelling unwanted Koreans from Japan.
Some 90,000 zainichi Koreans and their Japanese spouses moved to the North before the migration
eventually died down as the appalling conditions which awaited them in North Korea became
increasingly clear. The zainichi were promised modern housing and ideal work conditions that failed to
materialize upon their arrival. While initially welcomed for their technical expertise and financial
resources, the zainichi increasingly became suspect and most were placed at the bottom of North
Korea's social hierarchy.

Pro-North Zainichi have been called "North Koreans in Japan" but this is extremely misleading. The
zainichi settled in Japan before the creation of the modern state of North Korea, and in most cases
originate from the South. Their status as "North Koreans" is based almost entirely on their ideological
loyalties since the vast majority had no family connections to the North before their arrival. In fact,
some Koreans in Japan are still registered in the same colonial registry or koseki rather than the
Japanese registry. The best way to understand this is that the Japanese essentially have two different
official registries that separate Koreans and Japanese from each other. The zainichi used to be treated as
foreigners and fingerprinted. Many Korean in Japan today have moved into the Japanese koseki and
acquired Japanese citizenship to avoid discrimination but also to gain a Japanese passport for travel
abroad. Koreans registered to the colonial registry essentially have no nationality as they are not
formally recognized as citizens of neither North or South Korea.

At one point, the pro-North Korean residents of Japan had discouraged their members from taking up
Japanese citizenship. The also operate businesses that provide the necessary jobs, services, schools and
social networks for zainichi Koreans outside mainstream Japanese society. This isolation is not entirely
self-imposed as Japanese society has long been known to discriminate heavily against the Korean
residents in terms of education, residence and job opportunities.

The economic history of this North Korea-Japanese connection has yet to be fully examined but we
know that the connections are highly important. Today, the hostile relations between North Korea and
Japan has greatly diminished this exchange. Yet there was a time when Japan was a key part of the
economic development of North Korea due to the presence of so many Koreans with ties back to Japan.

76 KR206
 Extra resources
Following articles may helpful to enrich knowledge about Korean residents in Japan (Zainichi).

1) Zainichi Recognitions: Japan's Korean Residents' Ideology and Its Discontents by John Lie
( November 2008 )
http://japanfocus.org/-John-Lie/2939/article.html
2) Citizenship and North Korea in the Zainichi Korean Imagination: The Art of Insook Kim 鬞㨏
ൣඖ㺃൚ඩ൯൥റ㌌㕮മ഍ഔൎ㘱㰀㲟亹㋇റ䢴䧴 ( February 2015)
http://japanfocus.org/-Young_Min-Moon/4263/article.html
3) "Forty years after Zainichi labor case victory, is Japan turning back the clock? " (January,2015)
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2015/01/21/issues/forty-years-zainichi-labor-case-victory-
japan-turning-back-clock/#.VZ1bSfmqqkp
4) “Keeping North Korean in Japan” By Markus Bell , Online ASIA TIMES, 18 December 2013
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/JAP-01-181213.html
5) Movie " GO !" (2001 Movie ) based on Kazuki Kaneshiro's novel "GO" which tells the story of
Korean residents in Japan. Full movie with English subtitle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS7V2C_pkgw

© Michael Kim

North Korea's 'self-reliant' economy

This section describes postwar recovery and socialist construction of DPRK.

North Korea's ideology of self-reliance, known as Chuche, has many manifestations in North
Korean society, but perhaps the concept has its most important significance in the economic realm. The
notion that the North Korean people built their own economy without relying on the outside world had a
powerful resonance, because of Korea's history of foreign domination and colonial conquest. Arguments
that the Korean people could not develop economically on their own had been used by the Japanese to
justify colonial rule. North Korea after 1945 was determined to prove to the world that they could build
a modern economy through their own efforts.

While the concept of building a self-reliant economy may help shape nationalist dreams of wealth and
power, achieving the goal in practice was a far more difficult challenge. One of the best examples of the
problems of creating a self-sufficient economy may be the synthetic fibre called vinalon. The fibre is
produced from polyvinyl alcohol, anthracite and limestone. The Korean scientist Ri Sung-gi was one of
the inventors of vinalon during the colonial period, and he took the process to North Korea. Trial
production began in 1954 and in the early 1960s the massive Vinalon Factory was built in Hamhung.
The synthetic fibre became celebrated in North Korea as a triumph of the Chuche ideology and vinalon
clothing was manufactured for mass consumption.

The problem was the inefficiency of vinalon production and the fact that too much energy was required
to extract vinalon from anthracite. The clothing was difficult to dye, stiff, and far cheaper materials
could be imported. However, once Kim Il Sung praised the material and factories built, the North
pressed on with vinalon production despite the high cost of its production. Such examples of ideological
purity at the cost of practicality is not difficult to find. Michael Robinson describes the fate of the North
Korean economy in the following way:

>"Over the 1970s the limits of the North Korean economic system became obvious. A Six-year
Plan (1971-1976, extended to 1978) and a second Seven-year Plan (1978-1984, extended to
1986) both failed to achieve their ambitious goals. Increasingly the rhetoric of success was
belied by the announcements of "adjustments" and delays in starting new planning periods. As

,3 
 a consequence of the first oil shock of 1973, mineral prices on the world market fell drastically
and this constricted North Korea's most important source of foreign exchange earnings (iron
ore, gold, magnesite, zinc, and tungsten). Caught in an income crunch, the DPRK defaulted on
hundreds of millions of foreign loans, the largest of which were held by Japanese banks, which
precluded any continuing access to international capital. Initially the debts were rescheduled,
but by 1985 the North ceased payments to all its creditors. Classic problems endemic to
command economies emerged in the 1970s: bottlenecks and inefficient distribution of
materials, failure to upgrade technology, and lagging worker productivity. The state's "prestige
spending" compounded this problem. It lavished enormous amounts on festivals and the
construction of monuments for Kim II Sung's sixtieth (1972) and seventieth birthdays (1982).
Such spending continued even as the economy faltered in the 1980s. Rebuffed in its appeal to
jointly stage the 1988 Olympics with the ROK, the North spent $4.5 billion building facilities
and staging an international socialist athletic event, the Thirteenth World Festival of Youth and
Students in 1989." (Michael Robinson, Korea's Twentieth-Century Odyssey, pp. 152-153)

The impressive growth rates of North Korea had US officials worried at one point that South Korea
could not keep up with the North. Yet by the early 1970s, North Korea had exhausted the potential
growth it could achieve with the facilities left over from the Japanese colonial period and the
technologies that it developed on its own. The North Koreans had spent as much as 30% of their budget
on defence during the 1960s and this meant that they had difficulties achieving both an expansion of the
economy as well as the military.

The overemphasis on heavy industry and defence spending left many areas of the economy
underdeveloped. So the North Koreans attempted to obtain capital overseas to fund the purchase of
factory plants from the French and the Japanese, including a French petrochemical plant in 1971 and a
cement plant in 1973. The purchases of foreign equipment and loans eventually forced North Korea to
assume billions of dollars in debts that it had trouble servicing.

Still, the CIA estimated in 1978 that per capita GNP in North Korea was about the same as the South
and many estimate that North Korea had kept pace with the south until the mid 1980s. Ever since the
mid-1980s, however, the South’s economy has far exceeded the growth rates of the North, and the North
now faces considerable economic challenges. The search for economic autonomy and self-reliance
clearly had its limits. While the immediate cause for the collapse of the North Korean economy was the
fall of the Soviet Union, the ideological issues had been there from the beginning. The task of North
Korea today is to find a way to reconnect to the world economy in a way that allows it to play a
significant role in the global economy. Doing this may well require a reformulation of North Korean
'self-reliance' to make it ideologically palatable to re-engage with the outside world.

© Michael Kim

Chuch'e Ideology and the Cult of Personality

Kim Il Sung built a personality cult that was unrivaled in world history. He successfully built a
communist dynasty and passed on power to his son due to his unique style of leadership.
The Meaning of Chuch'e Ideology
This section discusses leadership of Kim Il Sung.

One of the most common words that observers of North Korea come into contact with is 'chuche'. The
word comes from a Sino-Korean combination of the characters for subject (㊑) and body (乯). The
concept first acquired a modern meaning as 'sovereignty' and 'self-reliance' through the historical

78 KR206
writings of Sin Chae-ho (1880-1936) who tried to discover a historical explanation for Korea's
colonization by the Japanese.

Sin Chae-ho was a Confucian-trained scholar who dabbled with anarchism in his later years. He blamed
the fall of Korea on the Silla Dynasty's (57 B.C. - 935 A.D.) conquest of the Koguryo Kingdom (37
B.C.-668 A.D.), which made Koreans forget that they once controlled vast areas of Manchuria to the
north and made them dependent on the Chinese. The specific target of his polemic attack was the
historian Kim Pu-sik (1075-1151) who wrote 'The History of the Three Kingdoms' for fostering a
'peninsular mentality'. Sin Ch'ae-ho criticized Koreans for 'sadae chuui' which means 'serving the great'
and used to describe Korea's tributary relationship with the Chinese. In Sin Chae-ho's formulation,
chuche was the exact opposed of sadae and described an autonomous subject who was capable of
forming an independent identity.

The link between chuche and an idealized statehood is perhaps the key to understanding the full nuances
of this concept. According to the principles of chuche, only subjects with an autonomous consciousness
can come together form a sovereign state. Those with a dependent consciousness can never successfully
form a modern state. Similar to Descartes' Enlightenment notions of cogito ergo sum or 'I think,
therefore I am', chuche describes a process of critical self-inquiry that ultimately leads to an awareness
of one's existence and offers a path towards personal freedoms.

One of the paradoxes of North Korea is how a theory about the formation of autonomous subjects could
become the basis of a repressive society. The important part here is the somewhat Hegelian notion that
individuals can only achieve their freedom and sovereignty through the collective nation. In a sense, the
individuals themselves become the target of mass movements. Individuals had to sacrifice themselves
and place the group interest above all else. Individuals with the proper consciousness about the national
community could become full members of North Korean society. Those who remained dependent on the
outside world and rejected their 'true' and 'authentic Korean' selves could not become legitimate
members of the North Korean nation.

In the official history of chuche ideology, Kim Il Sung first articulated the concept in a speech given to
workers in December 1955. He made the speech during the struggle with the Yenan and Soviet factions,
and many observers have noted that it signified the beginnings of Kim Il Sung supremacy. The concept
itself remained somewhat vague and general throughout most of the 1950s and 1960s. We can trace the
increasing importance of the term through the Sino-Soviet split and the declining aid from the Socialist
Block, which forced North Korea to find their own path. The success of the Chollima campaigns gave
new hope that a self-sustaining economy could be achieved in North Korea.

Chuche ideology became officially embedded into the North Korean constitution in December 1972.
The high level North Korean defector, Hwang Jang-yop (1923-2010) is often credited with formulating
the basis of the ideology before his defection in 1997. Nearly every praiseworthy aspect of Kim Il Sung
was described as an expression of chuche. North Koreans claimed that they had become a socialist
paradise precisely because it was they had the authentic version of an autonomous and 'pure' Korean
state that rejected outside influences. In this way, chuche also became a critique of South Korea society,
which was said to be an American dominated puppet state.

These sentiments of self-reliance and autonomy proved to be a powerful message for those who wanted
to believe that Koreans could achieve a modern nation state on their own. Perhaps the most interesting
aspect of chuche ideology is its similarities with religious ideas. Indeed, many observers have noted that
the North Korean state is a prime example of how politics can sometimes approximate a secular religion.

© Michael Kim

,3 
The Cult of Kim Il Sung
Kim Il Sung was born to accomplish magical deeds. His hagiography suggests that he rose above
all others through his personal virtue and love for his fellow Koreans. In a sense, Kim Il Sung represents
all that is praise-worthy and good in the world. He is the icon upon which North Koreans hope to project
their aspirations for a better world.

The historical reality of the Cult of Kim Il Sung suggests an actual birth date between the years 1966-
1972 along with the general elevation of Chuche Thought as the fundamental principle of the North
Korean state. This period coincides with the final purge which took place within the last surviving
political faction, which was the group that Kim Il Sung himself belonged to. Kim Il Sung removed the
remaining rival generals among those with Manchurian guerilla partisans backgrounds, and he finally
emerged as the uncontested leader of North Korea after decades of political struggle against his rivals.

The Chuche Constitution of December 1972 in some ways provides an interesting parallel to the Yusin
Constitution of South Korea which emerged in October 1972. Both the North and South moved towards
systems that consolidated rule into a single individual and the North-South Joint Communique in June
1972 outlined the steps necessary for a peaceful reunification. Both Koreas emphasised that
reunification was their shared goal, but the preparations involved an immense strengthening of political
power.

Similar to the Mao Cult in China, North Korea was reshaped into the image of Kim Il Sung. However,
the extent to which 'Kimilsungism' penetrated the daily lives of North Koreans greatly exceeded what
took place during the height of the Cultural Revolution. Kim Il Sung may have also had special powers
that even Mao lacked. His extensive personal lore suggests that he could identify a single musical
instrument out of tune while listening to a concert or instantly spot a minor problem on the production
line during one of his frequent visits to the factory floor. His superhuman powers of observation served
to reinforce the lesson that men of virtue are capable of rising above any human limitation.

North Korea after 1972 became an entirely different society. Kim Il Sung badges made their first
appearance, in many varied shapes and sizes that reflect the different ranks of the wearers. Statues of the
'Great Leader' or 'Suryong' proliferated throughout the country and his portraits became a mandatory
presence on the walls of every home. All images of both Kim Il Sung and his son Kim Jong Il became
sacred objects. According to North Korean defectors, when a fire swept through a home, the highest
priority was to save the sacred image of Kim Il Sung. During a visit by a North Korean cheering squad
to the Daegu Universiade in 2003 in South Korea, the women created a sensation when they reportedly
wept in front of a banner with the image of the 'Dear Leader' Kim Jong Il that had become wet from the
rain. Such stories of extreme devotion are common features of the Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il cult.

Kim Il Sung created a cult of personality that rivalled that of any other leader in the world. Yet to simply
dismiss the fanciful and fanatical elements of his cult would ignore the point that many North Koreans
genuinely believed that their 'Great Leader' had reconstructed the North out of the ashes of the Korean
War. The rapid economic growth and relative prosperity that North Korea enjoyed during the 1960s and
1970s became a part of the Kim Il Sung's legend. In a sense, North Korean society's worship of Kim Il
Sung is part myth and part reality. Unpacking the complexity of the Kim Il Sung years is a task that
remains incomplete in Korean historical studies and will require considerable more future research to
achieve.

© Michael Kim

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The rise of Kim Jong Il
One of North Korea's claims to fame in world history is the only successful case of a father-son
succession among the communist nations. The event was not the result of happen stance, as Kim Il Sung
began preparing for his succession in the 1970s. In many ways, the Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il duo
provide a near textbook example of how to pass on an organization's leadership to the next generation.

Kim Jong Il's official biography states that he was born at the foot of Paekdusan Mountain, which is
considered to be a sacred location in Korean mythology. However, he most likely was born somewhere
in the Soviet Far East where Kim Il Sung had fled when his guerilla operations in Manchuria became
too difficult to sustain. Kim Jong Il's mother, Kim Jong-suk (1917-1949) is considered to be a
revolutionary in her own right and was a female member of the guerilla partisans. Some speculate that
Kim Jong Il's revolutionary pedigree may have given him a special advantage over his many rival
siblings.

Kim Il Sung had many children with different women. Kim Il Sung had two official wives, but he also
had children with several other mistresses. Kim Jong Il had to nudge out his uncle Kim Yong-ju (1920-)
who many had believed would be the successor to Kim Il Sung until 1970. Kim Jong Il also had to
prove himself worthy for the succession, especially because many speculate that Kim Il Sung may have
favored Kim Jong Il's half brother Kim Pyong Il (1954-) who was born to Kim Il Sung's second wife
Kim Sung Ae (1928-). Since Kim Sung Ae officially married Kim Il Sung in 1963, she often appeared
by his side. However, Kim Jong Il apparently had a troubled relationship with his stepmother as all
memory of her was purged from the official records after his succession to power.

Kim Pyong Il may have been exiled from North Korea after a series of disputes with his brother in the
1970s. According to some reports, Kim Pyong Il led a flamboyant lifestyle that got him into trouble with
his father, and he was subsequently posted to a series of diplomatic positions like Hungry and Finland,
ultimately becoming the Ambassador to Poland in 1998. Considerable speculation surrounded Kim
Pyong Il during the succession from Kim Jong Il to this son Kim Jong Un, and the media speculates that
he may have been placed under house arrest. He is not considered an immediate threat to the regime but
is one of numerous potential rivals to Kim Jong Un's power. Kim Jong Un's other rivals include Kim
Jong Il's other sons, such as Kim Jong Nam (1971-), who has had become a somewhat of a critic of the
North after he went into exile for visiting Tokyo Disneyland without permission.

Kim Jong Il worked his way up the ranks of power through the Organization and Guidance Department
of the Korean Workers Party. He was the director of the Motion Picture and Arts Division and worked
on several propaganda film projects. The turning point in Kim Jong Il's career proved to be his entry to
the Politburo in 1973, and he quickly took a position of central leadership within the North Korean
political structure. Kim Jong Il's long political career allowed him to place his loyal supporters in every
key post in North Korea.

As a graduate of Kim Il Sung University's Economics Department, Kim Jong Il had many associates
among the North Korean elite. His academic record was so impressive that he was said to be the most
brilliant graduate of the institution. Regardless of the veracity of the claims, it is true that the North used
Kim Jong Il's academic record to establish his political legitimacy. Gradually, Kim Il Sung helped Kim
Jong Il replace the old guard with his loyal followers. In essence, Kim Il Sung shared power with his son
and helped him to transition into the leadership role by giving him the necessary experience and
allowing him to surround himself with his own people throughout the North Korean power hierarchy.

Among the many duties assigned to Kim Jong Il was the ideological interpretation of his father's chuche
philosophy. Kim Jong Il became the head of the Organization and Guidance Department in 1973 and he
was tasked with propagating chuche ideology throughout North Korean society. He led what was called
the 'Three Revolution Team Movement', which was a smaller version of China's Cultural Revolution.

,3 
Kim Jong Il is also credited with master-minding North Korea's numerous terrorist attacks against the
South. While the Cult of Kim Jong Il is modest in comparison with the father, he too is believed to be
capable of performing remarkable if not magical deeds. Ultimately, a colossal statue of Kim Jong Il was
placed next to the one of his father in Pyongyang and the two have become forever immortalised in
North Korean lore.
© Michael Kim

North Korea and the world

The post WWII system of nation states was shaped by the Cold War in many important ways.
Newly formed nations had to receive diplomatic recognition from each other and the United Nations to
be considered fully 'legitimate'. The concept of 'rogue states' may suggest that some nations do not want
to accept such conventions if it means they must give up their own path towards achieving their national
power. During the Cold War, international tensions complicated diplomatic relations and certain nations
found difficulties accepting interactions with nations in the opposing Cold War camp.

The Cold War context of the 1950-1980 created a fierce rivalry between the North and South to obtain
diplomatic relations with as many non-aligned countries as possible. For a long time, South Korea
claimed to be the only UN sanctioned government in Korea, since North Korea had held an
unsanctioned election in 1948. South Korea had been granted permanent observer status by the UN in
1953 and North Korea did achieve a similar position until the China seat changed in 1971. Later, both
were simultaneously admitted to the UN in 1991. Throughout most of the Cold War, North Korea
claimed that South Korea was simply a puppet state dependent on the United States for nearly all of its
military and economic needs.

By 1962, South Korea had only received diplomatic recognition from 29 countries, mostly among US
allies. The North faced their own problems of international recognition. During the 1950s and early
1960s, the North took few initiatives on the international stage, as it had to rebuild its shattered society
after the Korean War. The heavily reliance on the assistance of other socialist nations meant that North
Korea had to first find its place within the socialist block. However, the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960
gave North Korea new room for manoeuvres. North Korea's increasing insistence on its autonomy
would lead to attempts to reshape its image to attract support from the Non-Aligned Movement that
emerged in Belgrade in 1961.

North Korea in the late 1960s appeared to reach a rapprochement with the Chinese, which had grown
strained after the purge of the Yenan faction. The North Koreans hoped to make deft movements
between the Soviet and Chinese for economic and military support. However, the announcement of the
normalization of relations between China and the United States in 1971 was a major shock to the North.
Although the North officially interpreted the event as a major capitulation by the United States to China,
its leadership found it more difficult to accept than détente between the Soviets and the US. However,
the hopes that the US-China rapprochement would lead to the withdrawal of US soldiers from the
Korean peninsula may have led to the North-South Joint Communique in 1972, which established
peaceful reunification to be the goals of the Two Koreas.

North Korea began to articulate its own separate international identity in the 1960s, but it would be in
the 1970s that the message of chuche became repackaged as a program for the world. North Koreans
began to portray themselves as a model of development for Third World nations. Soviet observers
would note in the 1970s that North Korea acted too independently of the Soviet Block when it came to
activities among the Non-Aligned nations. Several nations, especially those in Africa found the North
Korean message of self-reliance to be attractive. North Korea even provided technical and military
assistance to friendly African nations. Seminars on chuche were held in locations like Mogadishu,

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Somalia in November 1973. North Korea developed particularly strong ties with Ethiopia and send
several hundred advisers to help the Marxist regime there in the 1970s.

North Korea's attempt to reach out to the world peaked in the 1970s as the South later became a more
attractive partner in the 1980s once the economic disparities became clear. The ideas of chuche proved
to have a more limited impact in the world than what the North Koreans had hoped. While we may
question the long-term implications of this North Korean effort to become a model for Third World
development, there was a period in the past when some countries actually looked to it for solutions to
their own development problems. History has long forgotten this chapter of the North Korean past, yet
perhaps this is another example of why we need to take this rivalry more seriously between the two
Korea in the past.

© Michael Kim

Discussion
The Cult of the Father and the Son
One of the most interesting features of modern Korean history is the cult of Kim Il Sung and the only
successful case of a communist succession from father to son. Many wonder how it may be possible to
create such an elaborate mythology of a living person. Kim Il Sung was not firmly in charge when he
first became the leader of North Korea. He had many rivals to power in the 1950s who could have
challenged his rule. However, he systematically eliminated his competition until he emerged supreme.
Tight control of the media and an intricate surveillance system prevents the North Korean people from
openly questioning the cult. While it is true that the cult was maintained through strict state controls,
there is no question that many North Koreans considered him a genuine hero because of the Korean War
and his leadership over the successful rebuilding of the North Korean economy.

The hereditary succession in the North might suggest that Kim Il Sung's rule was built upon a firm
ideological foundation. The chuche concept of self-reliance had a great appeal to a nation that had
undergone the humiliating experience of colonisation and wanted to achieve a 'Korean' modernity in a
globalised world that defined everything modern as 'Western'. The appeal of chuche ideology spread to
radical students in South Korea during the 1980s, which suggest that the vision of an alternative
'Korean' modernity had a powerful appeal. The idea of self-reliance proved to be largely a false vision
when the North Korean economy collapsed. However, the idea that the North Korean people can
achieve great deeds through their autonomous efforts is a notion that still lives on.

What are your thoughts on the father-son cult of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il? What
about the powers of chuche ideology? What might be the best way to understand the
power of his personality cult to bind all members of North Korean society?
© Michael Kim

North Korea and State Terrorism

During the 1960s-1980s, the North Korean state engaged in numerous acts of aggression and
state terrorism. This violent history greatly complicates attempt to normalize relations with the
North today.
The Pueblo Incident and the Blue House Raid
North Korea in the late 1960s engaged in a series of incidents with the United States and South
Korea which greatly destabilized the peninsula.

,3 
North Korea in the late 1960s engaged in a series of confrontations with the United States and South
Korea which greatly destabilized the peninsula. These events include the capture of the USS Pueblo
(January 1968) a commando raid on the Blue House (January 1968), and the downing of a US EC-121
spy plane (April 1969).

The consequences of these provocative events would have considerable ramifications for modern
Korean history, sometimes in surprising ways. The tensions between North and South had risen
considerably after the escalation of the US effort in Vietnam and the dispatch of 300,000 South Korean
soldiers to the war front. The increase in border incidents along the DMZ in the late 1960s was a direct
reflection of the escalation of tensions.

When President Park Chung Hee won the 1967 election in a landslide victory, the North may have
feared that he would stay in office for a long time. The North Koreans have a long history of dispatching
spies and armed infiltration units to the South, but the 1967 raid was the most spectacular of them all.
While the reasons for the attack are not completely clear, a team of 31 North Korean commandos tried
to attack the Blue House which is the official presidential residence in Seoul. Dubbed, 'Unit 124' the
commandos made it all the way within a few hundred yards of the Blue House before they engaged in a
fire fight and failed to carry out their assassination mission. The commandos were systematically hunted
down until only a two survivors were left, with one being captured and one making it back across the
DMZ.

President Park decided to retaliate in a similar fashion. But rather than send a team of elite commandos,
he recruited convicts and offered them pardons for joining the group. After a long period of intensive
training on a tiny island, improvements in North South relations convinced the South Korean
government to scrap the plan. The former prisoners then revolted by killing their handlers and headed
towards Seoul when they were killed or captured. A South Korean movie about the event called
'Silmido' provides a cinematic depiction.

The failure of the Blue House raid then led to the purge of North Korean generals within the
Manchurian guerilla faction who had been rivals to Kim Il Sung. In a sense, the Blue House raid may
have actually helped Kim Il Sung consolidate his power. The South Korean officer who led the manhunt
for the North Korean commandos was Chun Doo Hwan, and the event proved to be an important step in
the rise of his military career that ultimately allowed him to become Park Chung Hee's successor.

Only two days after the Blue House raid, the North Koreans again triggered another crisis by capturing
the USS Pueblo which was engaged in electronic information gathering along the East Sea. The USS
Pueblo had a crew of eighty-three and one sailor was killed during the capture of the ship. The crew was
then held for almost a year of intensive interrogations and hardships. The United States and the South
Korean government were outraged by the event, but the somewhat reluctant approach of the American
government to push the issue towards a confrontation alarmed the Park Chung Hee government.

The US had threatened action during the Pueblo crisis against North Korea and many feared that the
event would escalate to war. However, the US was eventually willing to provide an apology which it
then quickly repudiated once the sailors were freed. The motivations behind the US was complex, but
the decision was made not to escalate the crisis to avoid becoming entrapped in another conflict in East
Asia. President Park interpreted the lukewarm US response to both the Blue House Raid and the USS
Pueblo incident as a lack of US commitment to defending Korea. The later Nixon Shock and the US
withdrawal from Vietnam would all signal a declining US commitment to the Korean peninsula, which
all served as a prelude towards the establishment of the Yusin Constitution in 1972.

© Michael Kim

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The Panmunjom Axe Incident
Discussion of the Panmunjon Axe Incident and Operation Paul Bunyan.

The conditions of the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War established the
Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) along the 38th parallel. This buffer zone is approximately 992 square
kilometres and spans the entire length of the border between the North and South. Only a small number
of authorized residents are allowed to farm the lands there, and the entire region is off-limits to anyone
else. Today the DMZ remains a pristine undeveloped region of mountains, plains, rivers and basins, but
this borderline has been the site of numerous bloody clashes.

The most famous incident took place in the morning of August 18, 1976 when five South Korean
workmen along with a detachment of ten American and South Korean soldiers tried to trim down a
poplar tree next to the Joint Security Area (JSA). The JSA is a roughly 800 yards in diameter region at
Panmunjom within the DMZ without fortifications, which both sides administrate jointly. The Joint
Security Area was made famous by a movie with the same title made in 2000 that became an
international hit movie.

The tree in question in 1976 had blocked the view from observatory posts on the southern side, so an
attempt was made to trim the branches. A detachment of North Korean soldiers quickly confronted the
work crew and the entire incident escalated into a deadly clash. The tensions had been particularly high
along the DMZ in the mid-1970s because of the discovery of the first underground tunnels in November
1974 and February 1975. These tunnels were wide enough to move large military vehicles across the
DMZ in just a few minutes. The aggressive patrols in the mid-1970s led to frequent threats and shoving
matches. A year before the Panmunjom Axe Incident, an American officer had been kicked in the throat
by a North Korean soldier.

When the American officer in charge, Captain Arthur Bonifas ignored the protest of the North Koreans
who warned against the tree trimming, a scuffle ensued. Captain Bonifas was beaten to death with the
blunt edge of an axe seized from the work team. Another American officer, Lieutenant Mark Barrett
tried to come to his aid, and he was also beaten to death. Several other American and South Korean
soldiers were injured in the clash. The death of the two American officers were the first fatalities in the
JSA since it was established in 1953.

The Americans debated whether or not the attack was deliberate as no major troop movements had been
detected. It turned out that there had been a history of conflict behind the tree, as there had been
previous failed efforts to cut it down. The discussions about how to retaliate escalated and North Korea
was threatened with nuclear war and military invasion. US and South Korean forces soon staged the first
Team Spirit 76 exercises which then became an annual simulated invasion of North Korea and a
constant source of tension.

The reactions to the Panmunjom Axe Incident escalated because of the general consensus among US
officials that the death of American soldiers could not be tolerated. Some observers would later note that
the discussions regarding the retaliation were largely free of the broader restraints that complicated US
policy making. Any mistake on the Korean peninsula could potentially lead to a broader conflict and
raise concerns about intervention from the Chinese and Soviets. Yet the early reactions to the incident
pushed towards a major outbreak of hostilities. The US military prepared a massive show of force that
included the deployment of a squadron of nuclear-capable F-111 fighter-bombers and simulated
bombing runs by B-52 heavy bombers from Guam.

Various plans to bomb key targets along the DMZ were discussed, but ultimately cooler heads prevailed
and the decision was made to forego military reprisals. Instead, the Americans dispatched another work
detail to cut down the offending tree. Dubbed, Operation Paul Bunyan, it was clearly one of the most
expensive tree-cutting operations in world history. Twenty utility helicopters along with seven Cobra

,3 
attack helicopters hovered above the heads of the work crew. F-111 fighter bombers were armed and
ready to launch from Osan Airbase and the Midway aircraft-carrier task force was in perfect position to
support the tree-cutting operation.

The US informed the North Koreans of their plans to complete the task of trimming the tree. The North
Koreans scrambled a force of approximately 150 soldiers, but they stood by quietly as the controversial
tree fell. The entire operation took just 42 minutes. Within an hour of the operation, the North Koreans
requested a private meeting at the JSA, where they expressed 'regret' that an incident had taken place
and that both sides should make better efforts to avoid future misunderstandings. Perhaps a potential
nuclear war was averted on the Korean peninsula, and the Panmunjom Axe Incident became a footnote
in modern Korean history.
>What are your thoughts, though, on this extraordinary event?
© Michael Kim

The Rangoon and KAL Bombings

North Korea's acts of state terrorism in the 1960s and 1970s were arguably directed against
military targets and were not intended to harm civilians. This did not mean the civilian population was
safe from North Korean violence as the numerous examples of kidnappings can attest. However, it
remains true that the attempts to assassinate Park in 1968 via a commando raid and the 1974 shooting
that killed Park's wife by a ethnic Korean Japanese suspected of having North Korean involvement were
not intended to be indiscriminate acts of terror. Even the 1983 bombing in Rangoon that eliminated
several key members of President Chun Doo Hwan's cabinet were not directed towards civilians.
However, the bombing of a Korean Air Lines (KAL) passenger plane in 1987 was a simple act of pure
terror.

The first major bombing in Rangoon took place on October 8, 1983 when President Chun Doo Hwan
decided to pay an official visit to Rangoon with his cabinet. The North Koreans had developed
especially close ties with the reclusive Burmese government as part of its general push in the 1960s and
1970s to engage the Third World. North Korea's strategy had been to push a distinctive Asian brand of
socialism based on the principle of chuche and this effort received a warm welcome in Burma. North
Koreans, consequently, had easy access to Burma and several North Korean agents were able to slip in
and prepare a bomb in anticipation of President Chun's visit.

The bomb that went off in Rangoon that fateful day in October 1983 was detonated too early. The North
Korean agents mistook the arrival of the Korean ambassador who led the delegation for Chun, and sent
off the massive explosion. President Chun, who was considerably behind the ambassador escaped
without injury. However, four members of Chun's cabinet including Foreign Minister Lee Bum Suk,
Presidential Secretary General Hahm Pyong Choon, and a key architect of South Korea's economic
miracle Kim Jae Ik were killed. All in total, seventeen visiting South Koreans and four Burmese were
killed.

While the most famous examples of North Korean terrorism may have been directed at prominent
targets, there were also many innocent people kidnapped during the 1970s and 1980s. South Korean and
Japanese citizens were the predominant victims. The most famous victims of North Korean kidnapping
were the director Shin Sang-ok and his actress wife Ch'oe Un-hui who where were abducted in Hong
Kong in 1978 and forced to make movies for the North Koreans until their escape in 1986.

Perhaps more than a dozen Japanese who vanished in the late 1970s and early 1980s were taken to
North Korea from Japan, when they may have been used to train North Korean operatives dispatched to
Japan. Japanese citizens were useful for 'acculturating' North Korean agents so that they could pass as
Japanese when travelling abroad. Japanese passports allowed one to travel throughout the world with

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ease and so the proclivity to kidnap ordinary Japanese should be seen in this light. Kim Jong Il's
acknowledgement of this kidnapping program in 2002 is still a source of considerable friction with the
Japanese government.

The most spectacular case of North Korean terrorism, though, is without question the bombing of KAL
Flight 858. Two North Korean agents planted a bomb in an overhead storage bin and disembarked in
Abu Dhabi. During the next leg of the flight to Thailand, the bomb blew up and killed all 104
passengers and 11 crew members. Many of the 113 South Koreans on board were returning after many
years of working on South Korean construction projects in the Middle East. One of the bombers was a
young woman named Kim Hyun Hee, who became a celebrity of sorts when she failed in her attempt to
commit suicide by biting a cyanide capsule, and she wrote a book about her mission after being taken to
South Korea.

The numerous North Korean terrorist incidents branded the nation as a terrorist state in the minds of
many. Even the Soviets and Chinese warned North Korea against its acts of terror. An important factor
in the North Korean attempts, however, may have been the hope that these acts of terror would
destabilize South Korean society. The KAL bombing may have been also intended to scare nations from
participating in the 1988 Olympics. Yet rather than encourage mass insurrection, the North Koreans
only solidified its pariah status that still shadows the regime even after the passage of many decades.

Some North Korean specialists believe that these incidents allowed Kim Jong Il to gain credibility in the
regime, and they fostered an atmosphere of crisis for political purposes. The Kim Jong Il regime again
may have triggered a series of attacks on the South right before his death through the highly disputed
sinking of the ROK navy ship Cheonan and an artillery attack on Yeonpyong Island in 2010. Kim Jong
Il may have had a long career of escalating tensions for political gain. When Kim Jong Un took the
reigns of power, the North Koreans fired 100 shells into the disputed waters off the West coast of Korea
in July 2014. Some North Korean observers speculated that Kim Jong Un may share his father's
proclivity towards triggering a political crisis through external provocations. The meaning of these
North Korean provocations may be disputed, but what remains clear is the long record of such violent
actions that stretch back for several decades.

© Michael Kim

,3 
 North Korean nuclear confrontation,
famine and North-South relations since
1989
The collapse of the North Korean economy and
the nuclear crisis
The Fall of the Iron Curtain in the late 1980s proved to be disastrous for the North Korean economy.
North Korea's solution was to play the nuclear card which almost led to the outbreak of war on the
Korean peninsula.

North Korean nuclear crisis

The North Korea nuclear program in the 1990s almost brought a major crisis to the
Korean peninsula. War was averted, but it was clear that the United States was
considering military options at the time. The tensions were only resolved when former
President Jimmy Carter offered to mediate the dispute. It looked like major breakthrough
might take place, but the sudden death of Kim Il Sung brought an end to this direction in
modern Korean history.

North Korea, by the 1990s, was in a period of crisis due to the collapse of the Soviet Union. And its
food production system was also in trouble, as the amount of energy and effort necessary to maintain
agricultural production to support the North Korean population proved to be far greater than North
Korea had resources for. And therefore, in the 1990s, North Korea began its nuclear programme, which
would then turn into one of the most critical conflicts in inter-Korea relations in the modern era.

Now, to what extent war was about to break out in the Korean Peninsula may be questioned, but it's
clear that many of the players involved in the North Korean nuclear crisis were quite serious about
ending the North Korean nuclear threat. The Americans were highly reluctant to have a nuclearised
Korean Peninsula. And the consequences of introducing nuclear weapons to Korea were, indeed, far-
reaching, as we have to keep in mind that the minute North Koreans developed nuclear weapons,
Japanese would also have an incentive to develop nuclear weapons in kind. And, of course, the South
Korean state also had the technology and the capacity to develop nuclear weapons on its own.

And so the fear was that North Korea would begin a kind of domino effect, where if one were to allow
the North Koreans to have nuclear weapons, then the entire region would become nuclearised. And
therefore the Americans were very insistent that the North Koreans stop their programme. However, the
North Korean state was also equally insistent that they be allowed to develop their nuclear programme
as well. And so the stalemate that resulted was leading towards a rather tense situation in the Korean
Peninsula, which was only resolved when Jimmy Carter decided to intervene and propose that he visit
the north.

Now, surprisingly, it turns out that that's exactly what the North Koreans were hoping for, as they were
more than willing to engage in discussions with the United States towards the establishment of a lasting
peace and a peace treaty to end the Korean War and the possibility of developing further economic
relations with United States. However, just when the situation looked like they may be able to resolve
themselves, the sudden death of Kim Il-sung would end all attempts to continue discussions along these
lines.

© Michael Kim

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Falling behind in the 1980s
In this excerpt from Michael Robinson, he discusses the changing circumstances of the 1980s
and early 1990s that would lead to the South suddenly taking the lead and the North falling
rapidly behind. The North would never fully recover from the series of disastrous events that
took place near the end of the Cold War, some which they brought onto themselves. The
Japanese North Korea experts Wada Haruki characterizes the North as a 'guerilla state' to
describe its adventurous nature. North Korea became increasing isolated as a result of its
aggressive posture, but the regime was incapable of taking decisive actions to adjust to the
changing global environment. The limits to ideological suasion became clear with the collapse of
the North Korean economy. A different formula appeared to be necessary, but the 'Master
Helmsman', Kim Il Sung, struggled to find a viable path through the tortuous new waters.

What do you think about North Korea's inability to adapt to the shifting international landscape?
Was it a case of resting on your laurels or being blind to the changes taking place?

By the end of the second Seven-year Plan in 1984, it was abundantly clear that the power balance on the
peninsula had tipped in favour of South Korea. The meteoric rise of the ROK economy and its growing
importance in world trade placed the somnolence of the DPRK economy in stark relief. While the
military balance on the peninsula remained a stand-off, it was increasingly obvious that North Korea
was not keeping up with its dynamic southern neighbour in terms of economic and technological
development.

This had, of course, implications for any future reconciliation or reunification on the peninsula. As a
consequence perhaps, there was a notable shift in the relations between the two Koreas. If the North
Korean attempt to assassinate President Chun Doo Hwan in Rangoon in October 1983 marked a low
point in relations, by the end of the decade, the two Koreas were enjoying a major "thaw" in the
seemingly endless rounds of enmity and recriminations that had characterized their relations for the
three decades after the Korean War. President Rho Tae Woo's policy of nord politik, in which South
Korea normalized relations with North Korea's closest allies, USSR (1990) and the PRC (1992), also
fundamentally altered North-South relations. Thus by the end of the 1980s, North Korea found itself in a
fundamentally different position internationally.

The international realignments that led to North Korea's increasing isolation in the world began with
China's new economic policies that emerged in the wake of Deng Xiaoping's "Four Modernizations" in
1977. The Chinese abandonment of command economics led to increased diplomatic, economic, and
cultural contacts with the global community. The end of Maoist isolationism brought them into formal
relations with the North's sworn enemy the United States decisively complicating the North's
relationship with one of their main economic and political benefactors.

By 1989 and the fall of the Berlin wall, the collapse of the socialist world order that had begun with
rebellion in the Baltic states several years earlier was a virtual certainty. North Korea found itself alone
in its adherence to socialist economics. And South Korea's expanding economic ties with the Soviet
Union were a harbinger of worse things to come. The Soviet's search for hard currency and Western
technology that began during the halting economic reforms of the Gorbachev era changed the long-
standing economic relationship between its old socialist trading partners. Even before the fall of the
Soviet Union in 1991, the Russians had begun to demand payment in foreign exchange for its oil and
other crucial exports to North Korea. With little or no foreign exchange, North Korea suddenly could
not afford the strategic imports it had once relied upon and had obtained on easy terms or for barter
within the old system. Thus the ending of the Cold War meant not only the loss of a fraternal
community of socialist states but also full exposure of North Korea's economic weaknesses to the harsh
realities of the capitalist world system.

,3 
The second Seven-year Plan ended ambiguously in 1984. While announcing the plan a great success, the
government also called for a period of adjustments and delayed the start of the third Seven-year Plan
until 1987. A new foreign investment law and the recognition by DPRK economic planners that
increased foreign contacts would be favourable to further economic success was a part of the
"adjustment" announced in 1984.

As the decade wore on the gap between government announcements of triumph in the economic arena
and the grim reality of dwindling food supplies, scarcity of fuel and energy, the crumbling of an
outmoded infrastructure, and the absence of consumer goods became impossible to bridge. By the
beginning of the 1990s it must have been increasingly difficult to listen to the doublespeak of the annual
New Year's message that would laud the great successes of the preceding year and promise an even
better year to come-this in the face of scarcity and deprivation. How could the people think an even
better new year was in the offing? Indeed, the North Korean people must have felt like Alice in
Wonderland given the total lack of correspondence between public pronouncements and the reality of
life on the ground (Oh and Hassig, 2000, p. 76).

© Michael Robinson, Korea's Twentieth-Century Odyssey (University of Hawaii 2007), pp. 161-162.

The policy of Nordpolitik

North South relations in the late 1980s and early 1990s

One of the last initiatives launched under Foreign Minister Lee Bum Suk in June 1983, four months
before his death in the Rangoon Bombing, was to declare that normalization with the Soviet Union and
China would be the future direction of South Korean diplomacy. Dubbed Nordpolitik after the West
German diplomatic strategy of Ostpolitik towards East Germany, the aim was to ease tension on the
Korean peninsula through better ties with North Korea and its neighbouring countries. The series of
North Korean terrorist incidents in the 1980s did not allow for an attempt to improve North-South
relations, but during the 1987 elections Roh Tae Woo declared his intention to take bold new diplomatic
initiative towards the North.

On 7 July 1988, President Roh Tae Woo presented his pivotal Nordpolitik speech just months after
taking office under a cloud of controversy surrounding the 1987 democracy protest movement. Rho's
six-point program included the promotion of trade and high level visits with North Korea. Another key
point indicated that South Korea would no longer oppose North Korea's efforts to open ties with the US
and Japan. Perhaps more importantly, he announced an effort to improve diplomatic ties with China and
the Soviet Union.

The South Korean government had been attempting to improve ties with the Soviet Block nations as
increasing trade relations and informal contacts took place during the 1980s. The first breakthrough
came with Hungry when the head of the Daewoo Corporation flew to Budapest in December 1984,
which led to the opening of official trade ties and full diplomatic relations in 1988. The Hungarian
delegation to the 1988 Seoul Olympics was greeted with a enthusiastic welcome as a result. Also
notable during the Seoul Olympics was the enthusiastic support for Soviet Union athletes, especially in
a now famous basketball game between the USSR and the US, when Korean crowds cheered for the
Soviet side. Behind the curious Cold War reversal was the warming ties with the Soviet Union and the
anti-American sentiments that persisted after the Kwangju Massacre.

The collapse of the Berlin Wall and the emergence of Gorbachev in Russia would lead to rapid progress
towards the normalization agreement in January 1991. By that time, the Soviet Union was teetering on
the edge, and so the South Korean government offered a $3 billion economic package to assist in the

90 KR206
purchase of Soviet goods. About half of the money was dispersed before the Soviet Union collapsed in
November 1991.

Efforts to normalize relations with China also proceeded in parallel with the efforts to establish relations
with the Soviets. A series of incidents in the 1980s involving the hijacking of a Chinese plane to Seoul
and a mutiny on a Chinese naval ship near South Korea waters led to informal contacts between the two
nations. These events served to open up channels of communications that had been largely closed since
the end of the Korean War. South Korea's trade with China had grown steadily grew from 19 million in
1979 to $3.1 billion by 1988s while trade with North Korea had stagnated at approximately $500 million
a year in the late 1980s. The warming of ties came quickly in the early 1990s and lead to South Korea's
normalization with China in August 1992.

While South Korea had great success with North Korea's allies, the same could not be said in the other
direction. In retrospect, North Korea normalizing relations with the United States was impossible due to
its insistence that the US troops must be withdrawn from the peninsula first. Normalization with Japan
was equally difficult because of the unresolved reparations for the colonial period and the suspicions of
Japanese citizens kidnapped to North Korea. North Korea may have had an opportunity to initiate some
major policy initiatives near the end of the Cold War, but its leadership seemed to be locked in
indecision. Therefore, Nordpolitik in the early 1990s lead to South Korea making great progress on the
international front, while the North could only watch helplessly as its former allies embraced its bitter
rival.

South Korea's overtures to the North during this period were not initially ignored. Significant cultural
and academic exchanges took place and the warming of ties led to an exchange of family reunification
visits mediated by the Red Cross in the late 1980s. Some of the most moving images from the period
came from the families that were reunited for the first time since the Korean War separated them. The
1991 South North Basic Agreement that acknowledged reunification to be the goal of each government
and the Joint Declaration of Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in 1992 were promising signs that
rapprochement may be possible.

However, the rapidly declining economic conditions in the North and the sense of crisis that ensued did
not allow North Korea to bargain from a position of strength. North Korea's sense of abandonment by its
former allies may have contributed to a desperate move to play the nuclear card in the early 1990s.
Therefore, rather than a movement towards peace, we saw a rapid escalation of tensions on the Korean
peninsula. However, the historical events in the early 1990s suggest that more peaceful alternatives may
have been available at the time.

>What are your thoughts about the significance of this period? Was there a missed opportunity to
establish peace in the Korean peninsula at the time considering the international circumstances? Or
was North Korea trapped in the past and unable to move forward in inter-Korean relations?
© Michael Kim

The history of the North Korean nuclear program

Most experts today agree that on October 9, 2006 North Korea conducted its first nuclear test
that registered a 4.2 on the Richter Scale. However, the blast was smaller than expected and led to
speculation that the test was only partially successful. Subsequent tests were significantly larger in
magnitude, and today there is little doubt that the North Koreans have a viable nuclear weapons program.
The origins and the purposes of the North Korean nuclear program has been the topic of much
speculation of over the years, and we cannot attribute all the factors to military concerns. As we have
discussed, the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 deprived North Korea of its major markets, which

,3 
brings up the importance of economic factors. But another important consideration is the inability to
procure the necessary energy to keep North Korea running.

North Korea used to have one of the lowest rates of dependency on petroleum. This was possible
because of the abundant hydroelectric power and coal that was available at the start of the North's
industrialisation. North Korea only imported about 10% of its energy needs in the early 1990s. Most of
the mass transportation system is electrified and North Korea has few automobiles. Until the 1990s, the
per capita energy use by North Korea was actually higher than South Korea. This was all possible
because of the extensive network of damns and hydroelectric power that was a legacy of colonial
development efforts in the north.

Despite the head start in energy resources that the North enjoyed for many decades, the electrical power
grid that began its development before 1945 was largely outdated and required extensive upgrading by
the 1980s. The dilapidated equipment and inefficient energy infrastructure could not provide power to
the entire country, and North Korea attempted to seek out other methods of generating power. One of
the important areas where it sought to relieve its energy problems was through the development of
nuclear power.

Much of the disputes over the nuclear crisis revolve around two nuclear reactors located in the
Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center. North Korea obtained its first reactor from the Soviet
Union in 1962, which had a 4 megawatt capacity. The construction of the smaller plant at Yongbyon
was started in 1979 and completed in 1986. The construction of a larger plant commenced in 1984 and
this became the source of controversy. This larger North Korean reactor was similar in design to the
British reactors of the 1950s that produced the UK's first nuclear arsenal.

The smaller plant produces enough material to build one new bomb per year; if completed, the larger
plant could have produced enough for 10 each year. The North Koreans were able to develop their
nuclear technology because of a number of Korean scientists who were educated during the colonial
period decided to move North after liberation. So while the initial technology may have been obtained
with the help of the Soviet Union, but there were a number of Korean scientists who were capable of
implementing the program.

The North Korean nuclear crisis involved the introduction of nuclear weapons to Korea. However, if we
ask the question of who introduced nuclear weapons to the Korean peninsula first, then we have to go
back into the 1950s. Tactical nuclear weapons were brought to Korea by President Eisenhower as part of
his New Look policy that relied on massive nuclear deterrence. Some estimate that as many as 700
hundred nuclear warheads were in South Korea by the early 1970s, but President Carter reduced this
number down to about 250. These warheads were finally removed in the early 1990s by the Bush
administration.

The North Korean nuclear crisis that erupted in the early 1990s involved the rejection of inspectors from
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The media often refer to the IAEA as the 'UN's
Nuclear Watchdog'. The IAEA was established as an autonomous organization on July 29, 1957. In
1953, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower envisioned the creation of this international body to control
and develop the use of atomic energy, in his "Atoms for Peace" speech before the UN General
Assembly. The idea was to allow developing nations to share in nuclear power for economic
development in exchange for controls that would prevent its use for nuclear weapons. In order to
monitor and promote the use of nuclear energy, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was opened
for signature on July 1, 1968.

Essentially, North Korea ratified the NPT in 1985 right before its smaller Yongbyon reactor was about
to be completed. The IAEA inspectors attempted to monitor the disposal of nuclear fuel rods that could
be reprocessed into weapons, and when North Korea interfered in the process in the early 1990s, the

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crisis began. The nuclear crisis had a long historical evolution that requires many different
considerations, but ultimately the showdown that emerged would bring ominous clouds of war to the
Korean peninsula in 1994.
© Michael Kim

The nuclear crisis and the agreed framework

Agreed Framework of 1994

On March 12, 1993, North Korea announced its plans to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT) and refused to allow IAEA inspectors access to its nuclear sites. By early 1994, the United
States believed that North Korea had enough reprocessed plutonium to produce about 10 nuclear bombs.
The Agreed Framework of 1994 tried to contain North Korea's nuclear ambitions but failed to be
implemented, which ultimately led to the nuclear test in 2006. Much of the impasse in the negotiations
had resulted from the fact that the US on numerous occasions rejected North Korean calls for bilateral
talks concerning a non-aggression pact and only accepted six-party talks that also include the People's
Republic of China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea. Some specialists argue that North Korea's
difficulties in holding bilateral talks with the United States remains a major obstacle in resolving key
issues on the Korean peninsula.

Tensions on the Korean peninsula continued to build throughout 1993 and 1994 during the initial
nuclear crisis. War hawks in Washington D.C. called for a stern response to North Korea's nuclear
program. The extent to which war was eminent in Korea during this crisis may be debated, but the
United States did prepare plans to bomb several suspected sites in North Korea. A breakthrough was
achieved at the last minute in June 1994 when Kim Il Sung warmly welcomed former President Jimmy
Carter to Pyongyang and agreed to talks with the United States in Geneva in July 8, 1994. One of the
interesting historical speculations of this period is whether or not Kim Il Sung had intended to make a
major change in 1994 to accommodate the new realities after the fall of the Soviet Union. Kim Il Sung's
eagerness in hosting a dialogue with the US suggested that he may have been willing to come to the
bargaining table after years of dangerous brinkmanship. However, Kim Il Sung's sudden death on July 8
led to the cancellation of the Geneva talks, and we may never know his intentions in pushing the nuclear
confrontation.

When the talks were rescheduled, North Korea and the United States finally signed the Agreed
Framework, in Geneva in October 1994. Faced with diplomatic pressure and the threat of American
military air strikes against the Yongbyon reactor, North Korea agreed to dismantle its plutonium
program as part of the 1994 Agreed Framework in which South Korea and the United States would
provide North Korea with light water reactors and fuel oil until the new reactors could be completed.
Because the light water reactors require enriched uranium to be imported from outside North Korea, the
amount of reactor fuel and waste could be more easily tracked. The goal was to make it more difficult
for North Korea to divert nuclear waste for reprocessing into plutonium. However, with bureaucratic red
tape and political obstacles from the North Korea, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development
Organization (KEDO), established by the South to implement the Agreed Framework failed to build the
promised light water reactor. Construction began, but never moved beyond digging a hole in the ground
where the reactor was supposed to be built.

The North accused the United States of failing to uphold their end of the agreement and moved
aggressively to restart its nuclear program. US official countered with accusations that North Korea had
not entirely given up on its nuclear program. Analysts believe that the North had acquired the ability to
manufacture nuclear weapons through various channels. Pakistani may have supplied the key
technology and information to North Korea in exchange for missile technology around 1997. In
December 2002, the United States persuaded the KEDO Board to suspend fuel oil shipments, which
ended the 1994 Agreed Framework.

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North Korea responded by announcing plans to reactivate their dormant nuclear fuel processing program
and power plant north of Pyongyang. North Korea soon thereafter expelled foreign nuclear inspectors
and withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Behind the escalation of events in the early 2000s was
U.S. President George W. Bush naming North Korea as part of an "Axis of Evil" following the
September 11, 2001 attacks. The Bush administration considers the 1994 Agreed Framework to have
been a flawed agreement from the start. American suspicions of North Korea was further inflamed by
allegations of state-sponsored drug smuggling, money laundering, and wide scale counterfeiting.

Some scholars and analysts have argued that North Korea is using nuclear weapons primarily as a
political tool, particularly to bring the U.S. to the table to begin re-establishing normal relations and end
the long-standing economic embargo against North Korea. A key point of this argument is the
observation that the threat of nuclear weapons was the only issue that has brought the U.S. into serious
negotiations. But regardless of North Korea's motivations, it is true that its energy supply has been
deteriorating since the 1980s. For North Korea, the nuclear program may be considered its most
effective bargaining tool for opening diplomatic discussions and receiving aid. All these factors have led
to three North Korean nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013, each more larger and more successful.

>What are your thoughts on the factors that led to the North Korean nuclear tests? Why do you
think the Agreed Framework was insufficient to halt the nuclear testing?
© Michael Kim

North Korean Famine

One of the greatest humanitarian disasters of all time can be found in the example of the North
Korean Famine. The complex factors that led to the crisis require a careful examination.
Social status and the North Korean famine
This article discusses the great famine that took place in North Korea in the 1990s.

Sometime in the early 1990s and 1998, somewhere between 600,000 to one million people died
during one of the greatest famines in recent times. This truly staggering figure means that perhaps as
much as 3-4% of the entire population of North Korea may have perished during this humanitarian crisis.
Such a catastrophic failure of the North Korean system cannot be explained easily, and there are
numerous factors to consider. Even today, North Korea faces persistent food shortages and the problems
of food production have not been entirely resolved. Many North Koreans are still malnourished, and the
nation remains mired in a precarious economic position.

The North Korean famine had started several years before the flooding in the summer of 1995 that
devastated the country. Yet its leadership largely failed to respond adequately to these warning signs
that the food production system was breaking down. Agricultural production had been in decline before
the flooding. Inadequate energy for irrigation pumps and a shortage of fertilizer meant that farming
would become even more difficult in a mountainous region like North Korea. Once foreign aid was
mobilized in 1996, the North Korean government remained highly suspicious of the international
assistance and often threw up road blocks or may have diverted the aid to feed its army rather than its
citizens. Some estimate as high as 30% of the aid was diverted either to the military or the political elites
who were in no danger of starving during the crisis.

The distribution of food in North Korea had always been based on social standing. In understanding the
context of the famine we need to keep in mind that North Korea had created a rigid caste-like system
that classified the entire population according to political family background and reliability. The
proportion of the population that was considered highly reliable was rather small, which some estimate
around 30%, and party membership hovered around 10-15%. Only about 1 percent of the population are
considered to be a part of the inner circle of political and military leaders who receive all the advantages

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of North Korean society. The entire city of Pyongyang is, in many ways, a showcase for the benefits that
North Korean society can offer. The problem has always been, though, that the majority of North
Koreans in the lower social orders are not allowed to reside in the city. In fact, one of the important
characteristics of the North Korean system is that its citizens are denied the freedom of movement. One
must continue to reside in the area that one is assigned and perform the job that one is assigned. Failure
to perform one's work responsibilities or unauthorized travel can lead to dire consequences.

Even if there had been enough food, the stratified distribution system imposed a hierarchy on who
would get the food first. At the top of the order were the military and party officials and at the bottom
were the children, disabled and elderly. There were also an estimated 200,000 political prisoners who
had the lowest priority in food distribution. Some North Korea observers have suggested that there may
have been a policy of deliberate starvation during the famine. The three major classification of the
population of core, wavering and hostile was also a major factor. The hostile group included 29 distinct
categories from families of rich peasants, religious identities, intellectuals, and even returning Japanese
and Chinese Koreans.

The residents of Pyongyang which is about 15% of the population were largely isolated from the famine.
There were some reported shortages in Pyongyang, but it is unclear that anyone actually died of
starvation there. North Korea's social status system had evolved ever since the establishment of the
country, and those at the bottom were prevented from entering the Korean Worker's Party. Anyone with
relatives who went South or were the descendants of landlords or educated elites from the colonial
period were classified at the bottom of the hierarchy. Only those who could trace a lineage to poor
peasants and workers were considered to have impeccable revolutionary credentials and eligible to enter
the Party.

In a sense, North Korea had created a hereditary inverted social order that provided special advantages
to those who had previously been at the bottom of the hierarchy. Traditional Korean society used to
believe that 'blood ties' were important, and they should determine social status. Koreans today often
discuss what they call the 'songgol system' (䗹乣) which refers the the 'bone rank' system of the Silla
dynasty (57 B.C. - 935 A.D.), because Koreans tend to make strong status distinctions. While the notion
of hereditary status still persists in the South, social status can also be gained through success in higher
education and other means of improving one's social position. The North, however, still retains the idea
of 'blood lines' and maintains a rigid status system based on one's birth.

The intricate social status system had an unanticipated impact when it became clear that rationing of
food was taking place and those at the bottom of the social hierarchy did not receive the food allotments.
The country is also highly militarized, with a standing army of a million soldiers. Therefore, the army
had precedence over the entire population for the food. This population hierarchy had dire implications
for food distribution. Those in the higher groups would hardly suffer even during the darkest days of the
famine, while those on the bottom had to forage whatever food was available on their own.
© Michael Kim

Economic factors behind the great famine

This section discusses the causes of the famine of North Korea.

While the North Korean government explains that the food shortages had resulted from a series
of natural disasters, the economic factors cannot be ignored. North Korea's planned economy had
essentially collapsed after the fall of the Berlin War in 1989. The proud accomplishments of the
Chollima ideological campaigns created an elaborate system of privileges for the elite members of North
Korean society, but the majority of the people toiled in vain to prop up a collapsing order. The economic
system of barter with the Soviet Union and China came to an end in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and
North Korea was forced to pay for its trade goods with hard currency. Since food production was one of

,3 
the central aspects of the economy, this breakdown was indicative of far more serious problems that
plagued the economy.

Some have estimated that by the 2000s, North Korea generated roughly one third of its revenues from
foreign aid, one third from its conventional exports, and one third from unconventional exports such as
missiles and drug trafficking. However, the famine hit North Korea during the transition from the
previous system of barter to the post-Cold War order. Therefore, we may view the famine as a
consequence of this difficult period when North Korea struggled to find new sources of revenues as they
became increasingly isolated from the world community.

However, there were far more numerous factors than simply the collapse of North Korea's trading
partners within the Soviet Block. To look into the economic origins of the North Korean famine, we
must first examine the food production system. The North Koreans had achieved a fairly high
urbanisation rate of about 60 percent before the famine. The policy of following a Stalinist heavy
industrialisation policy placed many North Koreans into factories located in these cities. This meant that
only about 30 percent of the population engaged in agricultural production.

The collectivised farms had emerged soon after North Korea's initial land reforms that had given land to
the farmers and increase the popularity of the regime. The lands were quickly recollected into large
collective farms that eliminated private property. A proportion of the population was then allocated to
farming while the rest were allocated to industrial and other activities. Even if the North Koreans had
allocated more people to work on the farms, there was not much land available in this mountainous
country. Only about 20 percent of land in North Korea can be cultivated, as most of the rich farm areas
of the Korean peninsula are located in the South. North Korea’s mountainous terrain also made the
farming much more difficult and energy intensive. Water had to be pumped higher and there was a
heavy need to use fertilizer, which requires considerable energy to produce. Research on the North
Korean economy suggests that the energy shortage after the collapse of the Soviet Union had a critical
impact on the food production. North Korean had enough fertilizer factories, but they needed petroleum
to run them.

Another key economic factor was the collapse of the food distribution system. The collectivization of
agriculture and the suppression of markets meant that North Koreans who did the farming were not
allowed to keep their agricultural output. Instead, the food went into a centralized collection system that
had a social hierarchy imposed on both the production and distribution. The state placed a priority on
feeding the army, the party, the cities, and the loyal social status groups in the cities. This naturally led
farmers, who often faced the most severe discrimination near the bottom of the distribution priority, to
hide their harvest. During the famine, farmers avoided contributing to the centralized food collection,
which greatly amplified the food shortages. Instead, they tried to sell food on the black market, and
many specialist now observe that the growth of the underground economy in North Korea can be traced
back to this practice from the famine years.

The North Korean system essentially depended on farmers living on collectivised farms to give up their
harvests for well below market prices in return for rationed food, consumer goods and other daily
necessities. However, the problems of importing goods in the 1990s made it difficult to provide the
farmers with sufficient material rewards for their harvests. The severe problem of withholding
production appeared in the country side and the food input into the overall system may have already
declined before the disastrous series of flooding and draughts in the mid-1990s. In a sense, the food
production system was already in the process of collapse because shortages were being reported in the
early 1990s. Giving up grain without anything of value in return could not be sustained for long. So the
North Korean farmers resorted to pre-harvesting grain, hiding and hoarding harvested food, diverting
their effort to hidden private plots, and diverting food for sale to the black markets. The share of the
harvest that entered the distribution system was already declining rapidly before the worst weather hit
North Korea in the summer of 1994. Regular food distribution may have already halted by 1993 and

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stopped all together in 1996 according to interviews with refugees.

North Korea placed the control over the distribution system to local officials who were responsible for
coordinating supply and demand within their own regions. The potential for local patronage and
corruption in the system were clear. Most importantly, the urban workers had no source of food other
than this central distribution system. When the Soviets began to cut back on its subsidies and ended the
barter system in 1987, North Korea found that it could no longer maintain its food production system.
The decline in imports from Russia was equivalent to 40 percent of North Korea's imports. This directly
contributed to the collapse of the economy. As a result, North Korea began its efforts to reduce food
consumption with 'let’s eat two meals a day' campaigns in 1991, which was several years before the
famine struck.

Therefore, the fundamental structural problems in the food production system were evident years before
the droughts hit in the mid-1990s. In essence, the poor harvests greatly exacerbated the inherent
problems of the North Korean economy in the mid-1990s. Contrary to the triumphant claims of having
created a socialist paradise, the North Koreans found themselves in a dystopian dilemma that only a
massive international aid effort could resolve. The catastrophic loss of life was a high price to pay for
North Korea's separate path. North Korea after the famine was forced to deal with its critical problems
largely in isolation from the world. The solutions that North Korea attempted to escape from its
economic plight are the focus of many studies today.
© Michael Kim

The controversies over food aid

Once the international community became aware of the famine, international food aid began to
arrive in North Korea. At this point, another major problem emerged with the diversion of aid.
International agencies protested the restrictions on the relief aid, but surprisingly obstacles emerged
from the unrestricted aid from the South Korean government. The food aid process was just as complex
as any other aspect of inter-Korea relations and deserve a closer examination.

The scale of the food aid was considerable for between 1995 and 2005 as approximately 2.3 billion in
assistance was given to the North. Much of this aid declined by 2002, and what became clear was that
donor fatigue and the uncooperative nature of North Korean officials contributed to the decline. By 2005,
North Korea declared that it no longer needed foreign aid and tried to expel all foreign aid agencies.

The issue of monitoring foreign food aid became problematic as there was constant suspicion that North
Korea had diverted the aid for other purposes than famine relief. In general, the North did not follow the
basic norms of humanitarian assistance, which are based on the principles of access, transparency, and
non-discrimination in the distribution, with a focus on the most vulnerable groups. The North tried to
maximize the benefits it received from the aid and attached many conditions for receiving food
assistance. North Korea imposed strict limits on the number of aid workers and what parts of the
country they could access.

These restrictions lead to numerous controversies as NGOs and foreign government aid agencies
debated whether to continue aid or pull out of North Korea. Despite the problems, many aid agencies
continued to provide aid and in several cases engaged in protracted negotiations that allowed for better
monitoring. In some cases, they distributed the food locally themselves without going through the North
Korean distribution system. Many aid agencies report that local officials were much more cooperative
than central party officials, and they were much easier to monitor than central officials.

These aid relationships with local officials then became the target of North Korean government efforts
to eliminate outside ties. The main problem was that food provided to the central distribution system

,3 
would not be delivered according to the aid principles of non-discrimination. In effect, the hierarchical
nature of the North Korean distribution system clashed with the humanitarian principles of the aid
agencies. Therefore the agencies had to find ways to sidestep and deliver their aid directly to target
recipients like hospitals, schools and orphanages, etc. The initial aid efforts were severely hampered by
an inability to access many rural areas. Not until 1997 were aid agencies able to visit many of the hinter
areas. Only then did it become clear that the scope of the crisis was much wider than initially thought.

The aid issues came to a boiling point in 2005 when North Korea wanted all foreign aid workers out of
the country. Ironically, what allowed the North to take a hard line in the delivery of foreign aid was the
arrival of large volumes of South Korean aid. 2005 fall was also the best harvest in a decade. By the mid
2000s, the North had enough food coming in from the South as a result of the Sunshine Policy and the
North-South Summit of 2000, so they wanted development aid instead of food aid. The North was no
longer willing to make political concessions with donor nations to receive food. The Roh Moo-hyun
government’s pro-North Korean policies in the 2000s may have had the unanticipated consequence of
humanitarian norms being discarded in the North.

The South Korean government did contribute to the international aid channels, but the overwhelming
amount of assistance was through bilateral connections with the North. Much of the aid was fertilizers,
but food aid was also significant. The bilateral channels allowed the food assistance to bypass the
foreign monitoring. Until 2004, South Korean aid was not monitored at all. Only in 2004 did the North
Koreans finally agree to establish a monitoring regime for South Korean aid. The food had previously
gone directly into the North's public distribution system. The South Korean government of course
denied that the food was being diverted in any way, but they had little way of proving their assertions.
The February 2005 announcement that North Korea was withdrawing from the Six Party Talks caused
considerable controversy within South Korea, but public support for unconditional aid remained high
and the economic cooperation with the North continued all the way until the nuclear tests of 2006.

The Roh Moo-hyun government remained insistent that humanitarian assistance should not be linked to
political progress. It is the area of food diversion which remained highly controversial throughout the
aid effort. Some estimate that 30% of the food by 2005 may have been diverted. However, research has
suggested that large-scale central diversion to the army did not take place, although anecdotal evidence
suggests some food did go to the military. Much of the food was probably diverted more at the local
level, and much of it found its way to the black market. The black markets in North Korea allow both
the elites as well as the poor to purchase food from outside the official distribution system.. The net
result of food diversion may have actually allowed those who need the food to receive it through this
unofficial channel. Therefore, some North Korean experts have put forth the paradoxical claim that the
diversion of food actually allowed more in need to access the food. We cannot exclude this possibility
because of the social discrimination inherent in the distribution system.

The diversion of food to the black market may have also contributed to a decline in the price of food,
which helped those who need the food assistance. In fact, the volume of aid entering the black market
may have accelerated the development of markets in North Korea as an alternative to the centralized
distribution system. The end impact of the food aid may have greatly contributed to the monetisation of
grain production in North Korea, and the thriving black markets that now exist in the North may well be
an unintended consequence of the North Korean famine.
© Michael Kim

Discussion
The social context of the North Korean famine
In understanding the context of the Great Famine we need to keep in mind that North Korea had
created a rigid caste-like system that classified the entire population according to family background and

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political reliability. The proportion of the population that was considered highly reliable was rather
small, some estimate around 30%, and only about 1% of the population are considered to be a part of the
inner circle of political and military leaders.

At the top of the food priority were the military and party officials and at the bottom children, disabled
and the elderly. There were also an estimated 200,000 political prisoners who had the lowest priority
and some reports suggest that there may have been a policy of deliberate starvation. The residents of
Pyongyang, which is about 15% of the population, are all in the privileged population and while there
were some reported shortages it is unclear that anyone actually died of starvation within the capital city.

>The Great Famine offers an important window into the intricate operation of North Korean society.
What are your thoughts on the social factors behind the famine and its impact? How do you make
sense of a system that divides its population into such arbitrary categories?

© Michael Kim

The North Korean Threat and Human Rights

North Korea in many ways is far more famous than its southern rival because of the percieved
nuclear threat. The North Korean regime is also infamous for its human rights abuses. What
lies behind these complex issues?

The North Korean threat: the importance of threat perception

This section discusses the threat and perceptions of threat.

In the following passage, Hyung Gu Lynn asks us to take a step back and argues that we need to
consider the importance of threat perception when we examine the issue of North Korea. North
Korea is clearly a threat, but we may need to consider why the threat sometimes become
magnified. Global media coverage of the North may be somewhat nerve-racking when it comes
to the threat of nuclear weapons and ICBM missiles. However, the nuclear program clearly had
pragmatic implications to the North which need to be considered. The North was in quite a
quandary in the 1990s, and there is an aspect of the nuclear crisis where the most useful
comparison may be a high-stakes poker game.

>After reading the passage what are your thoughts on the North Korean threat. If North Korea
does pose a direct threat, then to whom in particular?

Looking at the grand parade of past betes noires of the US - Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Fidel
Castro, Moammar Qaddafi, Manuel Noriega - brings back memories of similar spikes in media coverage.
In the 1970s, Qaddafi was constantly portrayed as a raving madman who posed a danger to most of
humanity, but more recently Libya has been lauded for mending its ways - despite official
acknowledgement in 2003 of state involvement in past terrorist acts.

The problem is less whether North Korea has nuclear weapons or not, but more one of threat perception.
Why is it that some countries are deemed "qualified" to have nuclear weapons and others are not?
Unlike North Korea, which was a signatory (at least in form) to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT) from 1985 to 2003, neither Pakistan nor India have ever been signatories to the NPT, and many
of their nuclear reactors have not been subject to IAEA inspections. Pakistan has a longer history of
nuclear weapons testing than North Korea (although its last test was in 1998), and a verified history of
exporting nuclear weapons technology. US sanctions against Pakistan dissipated, however, after
Pakistan became a strategically important "front-line" state in the "war on terrorism."

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Nuclear red herring

Since the 1990s, North Korea has had the technology to produce weapons-grade plutonium, as well as to
trigger tests. Thus, the test of a small plutonium weapon in October 2006 should not have come as a
major surprise, since it did not change the fundamental dynamics. The whole issue of North Korea's
nuclear weapons program, plutonium or uranium, is a bit of a red herring so long as the US, Japan,
and/or South Korea remain committed to a retaliatory attack after any North Korean first strike. If the
US makes it clear that any attacks on South Korea or Japan would trigger a retaliatory strike, the North
Korean leadership would risk being killed, and also losing access to its main sources of energy and
capital.

Thus, Kim Jong-II or the KPA need missiles and nuclear weapons for domestic political positioning, but
in international relations these are essentially the only negotiating cards it possesses. Actually to use
them would be to deal out of this game of high-stakes poker. Moreover, although Kim Jong-H's personal
bank account in Switzerland may be safe, these funds are unlikely to be allocated to the public economy;
thus, there are no domestic sources of capital that can help resurrect the economy and help Kim Jong-II
maintain power. Having nuclear weapons or being perceived as having them has in essence allowed
North Korea to demand more investments and aid from South Korea, the US, and Japan in exchange for
freezing its nuclear weapons programs.

In Kim Jong-Il's mind, weapons also served as deterrents to pre-emptive strikes by the US. In 1989, Kim
told his Japanese sushi chef, "If we don't have nuclear weapons, other countries will attack us." In
August 2000 Kim reportedly acknowledged to South Korean visitors that the missiles did not pose a
direct threat to the US, but having them allowed him to negotiate with Washington. For the North
Korean government, regime survival has far outweighed other objectives, including conventional
definitions of national security: thus, attacking their potential sources of funds and energy or risking
retaliation seems counter-productive. At the very least, the nuclear and the missile cards have been
somewhat effective in bringing the US to the negotiating table through the 1990s and the 2000s.

© Hyung Gu Lynn, Bipolar Orders (Zed Books, 2007), pp.143-144.

North Korean human rights

This section discusses the human rights of North Korea.

While the threat that North Korea poses to the outside world may be questioned, the people of
the North may be the most in danger. We know that serious human rights abuses have taken
place in North Korea against those elements of North Korean society who the state suspects to
be disloyal. The disturbing tales by North Korean defectors point to serious human rights abuses
in the North. In the following passage, Hyung Gu Lynn asks us to consider the threat that North
Korea poses to its own citizens. He also cautions us against overly inflated claims about North
Korean abuses and the politicization of the issue. Since regime change may be unlikely at this
point, we may need some alternative solutions to solving the North Korean human rights
problem rather than hoping for a North Korean collapse.

>What are your thoughts on the issue of human rights in the North?

In fact, North Korea poses a bigger threat to its own citizens in terms of its restrictions on freedom of
speech and its mistreatment of prisoners. While the US in the mid-2000s also has problems with
manipulations of information, with its judiciary system, and with mistreatment of prisoners, at least in
the US there are more avenues for expression and debate than in North Korea. Several prison camps
have been identified through independent, collaborating testimony by defectors who were confined to

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the same camps at different times; most of the camps appear to be located in the north-east border areas
far from prying eyes. The amount of food distributed to the prisoners tends to be minimal, and the
physical labour assigned to them arduous. The UN Committee on Human Rights has been pressuring
North Korea to improve its human rights situation since 2000.

Unfortunately, the protection of human rights of North Korean citizens have also been used to advance
the cause of coerced regime change by neo-conservatives in the US, South Korea, and Japan. We thus
end up with the irony of some organizations in Japan using human rights abuses in North Korea as the
basis for attacks against North Korea-affiliated Korean residents of Japan (Zainichi Chosenjin
Sorengokai - hereafter, Soren), or conservatives in South Korea using human rights to push for regime
change in North Korea. It is important to clarify that North Korean prison camps have harsh conditions,
and that the human rights standards in North Korea generally do not meet DECD standards. However,
most of the information comes from defectors who left North Korea after being released from their stints
in prison. In other words, although there have been public executions (several Videotaped by NGOs),
and prisoners' rights to food and shelter seem neglected or violated, these gulags were not necessarily
designed to exterminate prisoners.

Further complicating matters is the proliferation of fabricated or exaggerated allegations by some North
Korean defectors. For example, a group of defectors testified before the British Parliament in spring
2004 that North Korea conducted chemical and biological weapons experiments on political prisoners.
They brought with them a pamphlet allegedly documenting orders to conduct such tests. However, a
scholar highly critical of North Korea's human rights record looked at the pamphlet and concluded on
the basis of the quality of the paper, print, stamps, and characters, that this was a fake produced in China.

The plight of the North Korean "food refugees," who flee North Korea as a result of continuing food
shortages, is another area of genuine concern. An estimated 200,000 North Korean refugees live in
China: of these, some 90% live in the Yonbyon (in Chinese, Yanbian) region that borders north western
North Korea. Ethnic Koreans form some 40% of Yonbyon's total population, which helps explain why
the refugees are concentrated in this area. NGOs and ethnic Korean brokers help some of these North
Koreans reach South Korea (the brokers usually ask for most of any money the defector receives from
the South Korean government on arrival). South Korean activists, along with Japanese and North
American NGOs, also attempt to help the refugees move from China to any other country, as China's
policy has been to repatriate the refugees back to North Korea, claiming they are illegal migrants.
Moreover, many of the female refugees become victims of human trafficking, "sold" as picture brides in
China or South Korea. Some North Korean women end up working in bars and clubs that cater to South
Korean businessmen visiting Yonbyon.

If we return to the original question, is North Korea a threat, the answer would be yes, but first and
foremost against its own citizens. North Korea's nuclear weapons program seems to be a combination of
sincere and misguided belief and shrewd negotiating tactic, but is little immediate threat. The priority
should be placed on looking for ways to improve human rights conditions rather than assuming that
regime change is a necessary condition for reforming this area, especially given that there is little
indication of an imminent regime collapse from internal pressures.

© Hyung Gu Lynn, Bipolar Orders (Zed Books, 2007), pp.148-149.

North Korean refugee problem

One of the important consequences of the North Korean famine in the mid-1990s was the sudden
increase in the number of refugees.

One of the important consequences of the North Korean famine in the mid-1990s was the sudden
increase in the number of refugees who escaped across the border into China and eventually to South

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Korea. North Korea shares a long border with China and vast stretches are not guarded. Therefore,
North Koreans have always been able to cross the border into China. However, the consequences for
unauthorized travel abroad could be dire, and family left behind could be arbitrarily punished. Those
who are captured while escaping or forced to return to North Korea face imprisonment and sometimes
even executed. The draconian measures have not prevented an estimated 200,000 or more refugees to
flee to China and over 27,000 resided in South Korea by the end of 2014.

The exodus out of North Korea between 1945-1953 was considerable. Some estimate that approximately
740,000 went south between 1945-1950 and another 650,000 went south during the Korean War. Only
about an estimated 10,000 people moved North during this period. A high proportion of these early
refugees were Christians who faced persecution in the North. Many of the anti-communist conservative
figures in South Korea's modern history have their origins among these Northern refugees. The city of
Incheon in particular became a major centre where impoverished North Korean refugees gathered
because they had such difficulties in making a living in the South. The end of the Korean War in 1953
brought a sudden halt to the flow of people moving across the border. Between 1953-1989, only 607
individuals were listed as being North Korean refugees in the South and the annual arrivals were less
than ten.

Beginning in 1994, the numbers suddenly rise to 52 and quickly accelerate after 2000 when 310 arrived.
The highest number was recorded in 2009 when 2,914 entered South Korea. The numbers decline
considerably in 2012 once the Kim Jong-un regime tightened the border controls. However, the North
Korean refugees in South Korea are now form a sizeable minority and problems have emerged. Up until
2005, refugees received a cash dispersement of approximately $35,000 but afterwards the system
changed into more of an incentive-based system. The North Korean refugees receive citizenship, basic
housing and welfare support. A common experience among North Korean refugees is the sense of
betrayal at the ideological indoctrination that they received. They spent an entire lifetime believing in
the cult of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, only to discover that the prosperity of the capitalist South far
exceeded the North.

Yet many North Koreans have encountered problems adjusting to capitalist life in the South. Most have
adjusted to South Korean society and have no intention of returning to the North. However, a handful
have gone back because of the economic hardship and discrimination they have encountered. Life in the
South may be far better than their impoverished circumstances back in the North, but the adjustments
have proven to be an immense challenge for many refugees.

One may ask why so few North Korean refugees left between 1953-1994, We need to keep in mind that
North Korea had fared better economically than both South Korea and the surrounding areas across the
border in China for several decades. However, the Great Famine triggered a mass exodus of North
Koreans into China where they faced the fear of being deported back to the North. Consequently, North
Korean refugees have attempted the dangerous journey to South Korea, where they form a sizeable
population today.

The life of a North Korean refugee in China can be extremely difficult due to the current understanding
between the Chinese and North Korean governments. The Chinese considers North Koreans to be
economic refugees and therefore deport them back to the North if caught. A disproportionate number of
North Korean refugees are women who are often trafficked as brides for Chinese men in rural areas.
Some scholars speculate women participate more in the black market in North Korea, which allows
them to gain greater access to media from the outside. Their exposure to outside influences may push
them to abandon their lives in the North.

There have been dramatic scenes of North Koreans trying to get into the South Korean embassy in
Beijing because of their desire to seek asylum. However, most refugees must trek all the way down to
South East Asia or escape to Mongolia before they can be sent to South Korea. Refugees often tell

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harrowing stories of border crossings into Vietnam, Laos or Thailand. South Korean activist often
operate 'safe houses' in countries like Vietnam that assist in the transportation of refugees to South
Korea.

The North Korea refugee problem is truly a transnational issue that affects not only Chinese-ROK
relations but also several nations that border China. The recent crackdowns in North Korea have made it
far more difficult for North Korean refugees to escape and the punishments have become more severe.
Yet, those that do successfully make it out of North Korea then face the problem that they become
stateless individuals in the host nations that they reside in. What are your thoughts on possible solutions
to this North Korean refugee problem?

© Michael Kim

Discussion
Is the North Korean threat real?

Media coverage of North Korea tends to portray the nation as an irrational 'rogue state' that is
unpredictable and dangerous to the world community. The history of North Korea certainly records
numerous incidents of state-sponsored terrorism and threatening provocations. However, there have also
been periods when North Korea had attempted to find its place within the socialist world order and the
non-aligned movement of Third World nations.

The collapse of the Soviet Union had left China as the only solid ally of the North, but the relations have
become strained due to the repeated nuclear testing that has destabilised the region. Experts still debate
the true threat level that the North generates, but all would agree that the majority of the North Korean
people who are not in the privileged status groups are currently suffering under economic hardships and
political repression. Public executions and political prisons fill the landscape of North Korean society.
Yet the privileged North Koreans living in Pyongyang are far removed from the everyday realities of the
impoverished countryside that drives thousands to risk the perilous journey to South Korea.

Do you believe that North Korea today poses a major threat to the world community? Or do you think
that the North can be coaxed into more cooperative relations? Has a broader understanding of North
Korean history given you some insights into North Korea's seemingly perplexing behaviour?

© Michael Kim

The 2000 Summit and North-South

Cooperation
President Kim Dae Jung received the Nobel Peace Prize for his attempt to bring peace in inter-
Korea relationship. While ultimately the effort failed to unify the nation, many lasting legacies
from the event remain.

Prelude to the Summit: The Sunshine Policy

North South Summit of 2000

The inauguration of President Kim Dae Jung in 1998 would signal a major shift in North-South
relations. President Kim Dae Jung had long been an advocate of easing tensions with the North, even to

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the point of being accused of being a pro-communist by his political opposition. In his inaugural address,
he laid down three principles of 1) never tolerating armed provocations 2) no intention of absorbing the
north 3) Active reconciliation and cooperation between the North and South that would become known
as the Sunshine Policy.

President Kim Dae Jung's efforts to reconcile with the North had a rocky start when a dispute over crab-
fishing along the Western coastline escalated into a naval battle. Ever since the end of the Korean War,
fishermen from both sides had ventured across the invisible sea borders in search of the lucrative crab
harvests. In June 1999, fishermen from the North ventured across the southern border with an escort of
patrol boats. When the warnings failed to force them back across the border, a violent clash took place
where an exchange of fire took place. A North Korean torpedo boat with twenty sailors on board was
sunk, thus igniting the first deadly naval conflict since the Korean War.

The North may have been 'testing the waters' in an effort to gain a better bargaining position and may
have attempted a show of force to determine the ROK's resolve. Regardless of the intent, the sea
incident had a decisive impact on North-South relations. The superior fire-power of the Southern navy
proved to be highly embarrassing to the North. Rather than a military reaction, the North refused to
cooperate any further with the South for over six months regarding the discussion over reunion meetings
of divided families and economic assistance from the South. Instead, the North tried to engage its
neighbouring countries like Russia and Japan. The North even made overtures to the United States in
1999, which were rebuffed.

The groundwork for the 2000 Summit in many ways had a key player involved from outside Korean
politics. The founder of the Hyundai Corporation, Chung Ju-yung had visited North Korea in 1989 and
began to work out an agreement to develop the Kumgangsan Mountain region into a major tourist area.
The agreement stalled until talks began again in February 1998 in Beijing. That June, Chung Ju-yung
famously drove a caravan of 500 cows across the 38th parallel into the North. He later repeated the trip
in the fall with 501 cows. A number of tales have arisen concerning why there were 1001 cows and not
1000 cows. Chung Ju-yung claimed that he left his family by selling his father's cow and he wanted to
pay back his debt. He also claimed that he added one more cow to indicate that the support would
continue in the future.

Considering the North's dire economic condition at the time, the economic aid from the South was most
welcome and some kind of settlement seemed inevitable. By November 1999, the North began to
indicate a willingness to open a dialogue with the South, which eventually led to the negotiations behind
the North-South Summit in June 2000. The Sunshine policy eventually produced a series of major
breakthroughs in inter-Korea such as the Kaesong Industrial Complex and the Kumgansan Resort
development.

Kim Dae Jung's successor President Roh Mu Hyun would continue the Sunshine policy, but increasing
criticism emerged. The inter-Korea projects encountered numerous problems and the food aid provided
by South allowed the North to circumvent the controls imposed by international aid agencies. The
Sunshine Policy would come to an end with the nuclear and missile tests conducted in October 2006.
South Korea began to suspend aid shipments and raise its military alert status. The proponents of
cooperation with the North became discredited within South Korean politics.

Historians have yet to judge the full significance of the Sunshine Policy's legacy. What are your
thoughts on this effort to reconcile with the North?

© Michael Kim

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The 2000 North South Summit and its legacies
Kim Dae Jung's Visit to Pyongyang and the 2000 North South Summit

On 20 January 2000, President Kim Dae Jung took the bold step of proposing a summit with
Kim Jong Il to discuss mutual cooperation and peaceful coexistence. The call came despite the
escalation of inter-Korea tensions the year before. The initiative would eventually lead to the June 2000
Summit in P'yongyang that led to President Kim Dae Jung receiving the Nobel Peace Prize that year.

Kim Jong Il responded to the request for a summit in March 2000 by proposing a secret meeting
between negotiators in Shanghai. High-ranking ministers from both sides met and worked out the details.
An agreement was announced in April 2000 which led to the June 2000 Summit. When President Kim
Dae Jung arrived in P'yongyang, he was greeted by a Kim Jong Il who was quite different from the
international media portrayals. Rather than an erratic and eccentric madman, Kim Jong Il gave the
impression of a pragmatist with a sense of humour. President Kim Dae Jung's visit sparked hope that a
new era of inter-Korea relations would open.

During the Summit, the two sides discussed a wide variety of issue and arrived at some significant
understandings. The joint declaration at the end established understandings regarding the release of
political prisoners and economic cooperation. They both agreed that reunification would take place on a
joint initiative rather than one side imposing it on another. The immediate concrete results were the
resumption of talks to reunite 100 families who had been separated by the Korean War. The highlight of
the post-summit cooperation may be the joint entry of the Northern and Southern teams at the 2000
Sydney Summer Olympics.

The economic talks would lead to major economic investments by South Korean companies, in
particular the Hyundai Corporation. The founder of Hyungdai, Chung Ju-yung (1915-2001), was from
the northern part of Kangwon Province in North Korea. The success of Hyundai allowed him to play a
key role during the North-South Summit of 2000. Chung Ju-yung had first visited North Korea back in
1989 and began the discussions over the Kumgangsan Resort that was not completed until 1998. The
economic cooperation proved difficult to maintain, but one of the most important outcomes of the June
2000 was the opening of the Kaesong Industrial Complex where South Korean companies still hire
workers from the North to manufacture their goods.

After the 2000 Summit, Chung Ju-yung secretly worked with the Kim Dae Jung government to provide
$100 million dollars for North Korean economic development, which they could not find a legal means
of sending to the North. The public scandal involving this transfer of funds would later lead to the
suicide of his son Chung Mong-hun (1948-2003) who led the Hyungdai Asan Corporation at the time.

The successful completion of the 2000 Summit greatly elevated the prestige of President Kim Dae Jung
and he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution towards a peaceful settlement with the
North. Kim Dae Jung is the only Korean to ever receive the medal, which had been a hope of the Korean
people for quite some time.

Despite the fanfare, the legacies of the 2000 Summit are today in doubt. The thaw in North-South
relations did not result in an abandonment of the North Korean nuclear program, which many had hoped
would be an outcome. The economic cooperation between the North and South have continued to be on
shaky grounds. The generous financial assistance from the South had failed to sway the North. Many
South Koreans would feel betrayed by the sense that the North was happy to take financial assistance
but did not feel obligated to moderate its stance.

Despite the mixed legacy of the North-South Summit of 2000, it is clear that the event represented a
major development. The repercussions of the historical event are still with us today, which invite a

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closer examination of the factors that both led to the Summit as well as the factors that limited its impact.
What are your thoughts on the significance of this event?
© Michael Kim

The Kaesong Complex

The city of Kaesong has a rich history that stretches back into the distant past. Once the capital
of the Koryo Dynasty (918-1392), the ancient city was the home of the Kaesong merchants who were
famous for their ginseng trade with China. The city became the focus of a major development that came
out of the 2000 Summit, which established a economic zone for North-South economic cooperation.

In August 2000, The North Korean government entered discussions with the Hyundai Asan Corporation
to build an industrial park that is located just across the border and only an hour drive from Seoul. The
location also provides easy access to the airport and port facilities at Incheon. The North provided a
lease of 70 years to encourage South Korean companies to open up factories. The ambitious plan was to
have 250 companies by 2007 and a total of 700,000 workers by 2012. Only half the number of
companies at around 120 have entered and the number of workers is currently less than 55,000. Wages
for North Koreans was initially set at approximately $75 a month. Several wage disputes have arisen as
the North has tried to unilaterally demand wage hikes despite the agreement that this be negotiated
between the governments.

Construction began in June 2003 and factory production started in 2006 with 10,000 North Korean
workers. By January 2007, the total value of goods produced in the Kaesong complex reached $100
million. The following year, the value reached to $400 million and climbed to $1 billion by 2010. A
total of 50,000 North Korean workers were employed by January 2012.

The industrial production reached as high as $2 billion in January 2013 when production halted in April
of that year. Tensions between the North and South had climbed rapidly as a result of the sinking of the
South Korean naval ship Cheonan in March 2010 by a North Korean submarine and a North Korean
artillery attack on Yeonpyeong Island in November 2010. Kim Jong Un's need to consolidate his rule
may have encouraged the North to take an aggressive stance in 2013 when it threatened war because of
the UN resolution that condemned the launch of a North Korean satellite in December 2012.

The production resumed again after a stalemate that lasted several months. Several South Korean firms
have abandoned their businesses because of the months of suspended operation. The companies in
Kaesong produce a diverse number of productions such as machine parts and textile products. None of
the major companies like Samsung or LG has entered the Kaesong Complex, as they prefer to
manufacture their products in overseas locations such as China and Vietnam. Instead, smaller and
medium sized companies have accepted South Korean government financing and incentive packages to
run factories in the complex and several have encountered severe difficulties in maintaining their
production at Kaesong.

Despite the numerous problems, the Kaesong Industrial Complex represents a key area of North-South
cooperation that was perhaps the most important legacy of the 2000 Summit. Much of the fortunes of
the Hyundai Asan Corporation has become entwined with the success of the Kaesong and Kumgangsan
Resort area that have become the targets of considerable inter-Korea disputes. As such, these two
locations have become the bellwethers of inter-Korea relations and observers are keen to see if rising
tensions result in a suspension of operations at Kaesong or if thawing relations can restart the
Kumgansan Resort.

>What are your thoughts on the significance of the Kaesong Industrial Complex? Do you believe that
economic cooperation between the two Koreans can continue to expand in the future?
© Michael Kim

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The Kumgangsan Resort
Korea is a land of mountains and some most of the spectacular mountain views are found in North
Korea. The Koreans have a saying that 'Even Kumgangsan must be viewed after a meal' which means
that one must always eat first before viewing the most beautiful sights. This scenic site became a major
symbol of reunification when the Hyundae Corporation first agreed with the North Korean government
to jointly develop the resort area in 1989.

The traditional Korean yangban elites used to enjoy excursions to the mountains in premodern times.
The Kumgangsan region was first developed into a resort area during the colonial period, when the
Japanese built a rail line that passed by the mountain area in 1914. The number of visitors expanded
greatly in the 1930s when additional rail lines were added. The colonial railroad administration
developed the region into an expansive tourist destination that eventually had more Korean than
Japanese visitors.

The final agreement to develop the Kumgansan Resort was completed in June 1998 after repeated
attempts since 1989 by the founder of Hyundai Corporation, Chung Ju-yung. Initially, a cruise ship
ferried visitors to the mountain and South Korean citizens did not stay on land. The first voyage took
place in November 1998. The successful conclusion of the 2000 Summit led to further agreements over
the construction of a resort area and a land route across the border. A road opened in February 2003 and
the resort area was open for visitors in November 2003. The Hyundai Asan Corporation announced in
June 2005 that over a million visitors had travelled to Kumgangsan by that time.

The operation of the resort area continued to be disrupted by incidents such as the death of Chung
Mong-hun as a result of the scandal surrounding his suicide. Visitors were sometimes stranded for days
when instabilities in North-South relations temporarily suspended travel to the resort area. However,
during the Roh Mu-hyun presidency, the North and South continued to attempt various cooperative
ventures. The decision was made to use the Kumgangsan Resort to host reunions of separated families.
The first of these efforts took place in December 2007.

The promising developments in the tourism to the area came to a sudden halt with the shooting death of
a female South Korean visitor in July 2008. A women who went on a morning hike through the resort
area had ventured accidentally across into a restricted area and was shot to death. The controversy then
led to the closing of the resort area. Over seven years have passed and the resort still remains closed to
South Korean visitors.

The Kumgansan Resort area involves both the governments of the North and South, but it also
represents a special relationship that the founder of the Hyundai Corporation had established with Kim
Jong Il's regime. The amount of economic support that Hyundai provided to the North was the subject of
considerable debate and controversy. The North's openness to cooperation with Hyundai may suggest a
more pragmatic regime that is willing to engage in cooperative projects. However, the repeated
suspension of travel to the resort and threats to seize the properties of Hyundai after the shooting death
in 2008 may suggest that the North often places politics before business interests.
© Michael Kim

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 Contemporary South Korean history
after 1989
South Korean society and politics after 1989
South Korea after its democratic transition in 1987 had to confront the legacies of rapid development
and authoritarian politics. The establishment of democracy revealed many new problems but also new
possibilities.
The price of development
The negative consequences of rapid developments

By mid-1990s, South Korea had achieved decades of rapid growth and the international media
routinely spoke of the 'Miracle on the Han'. Military governments gave way to a thriving democracy and
in many ways the Republic of Korea may have presented a successful model of development to the
world. However, beneath the successes lay troubling indications that there was a price to be paid for
such rapid growth. Lack of regulations, poor emergency response systems and loose oversight of
construction projects led to spectacular urban disasters in the 1990s that caused immense loss of life.
The resulting investigations and controversies surrounding the human error and unconscionable cost-
saving measures led to serious questions concerning the relentless push for economic growth.

Construction accidents had plagued Korean development ever since the Park Chung Hee era. The most
famous example from the 1970s was the Wow Public Apartment Complex where a building that took
only six months to build had collapsed only three months after its completion. The disaster resulted from
faulty construction and claimed 33 lives. The accident gave birth to the term 'Wow-style Modernization'
to describe the reckless pace of economic development. The rapid expansion of the urban housing
infrastructure had taken place without the proper regulations and knowledge of safe construction
techniques.

During the morning rush hour of October 1994 a major section of the Songsu Bridge that crossed over
the Han River suddenly collapsed. Four cars, a mini truck and a passenger bus fell into the river below,
plummeting 32 people to their death and injured 17. Later investigations revealed faulty design and a
lack of regular inspections. The metal struts were supposed to be 10 mm in thickness but were in fact
only 8 mm thick as a cost-saving measure. The bridge was supposed to be inspected four times a year,
but inspectors simply had stamped the paperwork rather than conduct a careful examination. The bridge
also routinely had to bear far more weight than intended because of the rapidly increasing traffic.
105,000 cars a day crossed over the bridge by the time of the accident, because it was located at a key
crossing of the Han River. A close examination of all the bridges that spanned the Han River indicated
that several were in critical condition at the time.

The company that built the Songsu Bridge was soon embroiled in a major controversy as investigations
suggested that the bridge had been built poorly and the company itself became involved in numerous
scandals concerning secret slush funds and 'rebates'. The Donga Construction company had been
founded in 1945 and became a major business concern when it participated in construction projects in
Libya and the Middle East. The CEO at the time Choi Won-sok was a flamboyant figure who took over
his father's company at the age of 40 and built it into one of the top ten construction firms in Korea. The
collapse of the Songsu Bridge had placed a spotlight on the company, which led to the revelation of
numerous questionable business practices until it was finally broken up during the IMF Crisis in 1998.

Just six months later, a tremendous gas explosion took place at a construction site in a subway line in
the city of Daegu. The construction workers did not follow procedures that required them to contact the
company that buried the gas lines in the area. The construction workers accidentally broke a gas pipe but
they did not report the incident until 30 minutes later. The gas authorities took an additional 30 minutes

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to arrive, which allowed dangerous gases to fill the entire construction site. The resulting explosion and
fire killed 102 people and left 117 injured. Four hundred meters of the construction site, 80 buildings
and 150 cars were damaged as a result of the blast. The tragedy led to major reforms in the emergency
response procedures of South Korean rescuers.

Less than a year after the Songsu Bridge incident and two months after the Daegu gas explosion, in June
1995, Korean society was again thrown into turmoil with the collapse of the Sampoong Department
Store that killed 502, injured 937 and left 6 missing. The investigation into the disaster revealed that the
building collapsed due to faulty construction and reckless cost-saving measures that impacted its
structural integrity. The building was designed to be a smaller shopping centre, but the owner modified
the original plans to add a fifth floor. The additional weight of the fifth floor and three large air-
conditioning units was more than the building could bear. The heavy vibration from the air-conditioning
had greatly weakened the structural integrity of the roof. Further modifications included the removal of
structural supports to increase the amount of floor space and other dangerous decisions that in retrospect
made the disaster entirely man-made.

The investigation into the Sampoong Department Store disaster also revealed that major cracks had
appeared in the fifth floor two months before. Inspectors had examined the building but did not halt
business operations. The roof partially collapsed on the day of the accident but an order to abandon the
building had not been issued. When the cracks became too severe a warning was finally given a few
minutes before the collapse, but it was not enough time for the victims to escape as the building took
just 20 seconds to crumble. One of the dramatic moments of the Sampoong disaster was when a woman
who had been buried for several days was pulled from the rubble. However, no such miracle would
happen for over 500 victims killed in the accident.
The string of major accidents brought major changes to South Korea's construction regulations and
accident response protocols. The web of corruption involving the construction companies and
unscrupulous business practices sent shock waves throughout the media. The negligence of government
inspectors and poor accident response also infuriated the public. In many ways, Koreans may have spent
far too much effort on rapid development without considering the safeguards that must be in place.
Perhaps only the loss of human lives could slow down the Korean economy long enough to consider the
down sides of rapid development.

© Michael Kim

The trial of two former presidents

Trial of Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo

The election of President Kim Young Sam (1927-) was clouded with controversy from the start
because the life-long democracy advocate had joined the ruling party of Roh Tae Woo and Chun Doo
Hwan. Even though his inauguration as president in 1993 was hailed as the launch of a civilian
government (munmin chongbu), his critics charged that he had struck a deal with the military
government to win the presidency. Yet during Kim Young Sam's rule, both Roh Tae Woo and Chun
Doo Hwan were put on trial for corruption and their role in the Kwangju Massacre. The events that led
up to this historically unprecedented event reveal many important insights about Korean society.

In May 1993, President Kim Young Sam specifically stated that the 12-12 Incident was a coup d'etat
and called for a need to evaluate properly the Kwangju Massacre. However, he also stated that history
will have to judge former President Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo. Ironically, the circumstances
that led to the most spectacular trial in modern Korean history would be initiated by a seemingly
unrelated law that passed in August 1993 that aimed to outlaw anonymous bank accounts. Previous to
the passage of the Real Name Financial Transaction Act, Koreans could hold multiple accounts in
different names. After the passage of the law, banks had to report all of the accounts that could not be

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attached to the identification of a real person. It was at this point that rumours began to spread that
W400 billion belonging to former President Roh had been discovered.

Roh Tae Woo vehemently denied the allegations until concrete evidence emerged in October 1995 that
W110 billion hidden in one account belonged to him. Roh had hidden a massive slush fund in several
different accounts scattered in several different banks. He was eventually fined W262.9 billion. The
controversy surrounding his slush fund scandal turned public sentiment against him at a critical moment
when the findings of a special report on the 12-12 Incident and the Kwangju Massacre had been released
in July 1995. The government had launched an investigation because of charges filed in July 1993 by
former Army Chief of Staff Chang Tae-wan and 22 other military officers who had been relieved of
command during the 12-12 Incident. The courts had initially resisted going further with these charges
but the public outcry surrounding the revelation of Roh's slush fund proved too strong to resist.

The trial of the two former presidents opened in January 1996. Both were found guilty of treason for the
12-12 Incident and for instigating the Kwangju Massacre. They were also found guilty of amassing
illegal slush funds. Chun Doo Hwan was sentenced to life while Roh Tae Woo received a 17 year
sentence. President Kim Young Sam pardoned both former presidents and they were released from jail.
The fines related to their illegal slush funds still had to be paid back. Roh Tae Woo has repaid nearly all
of his W262 billion in fines, but Chun Doo Hwan claimed to be penniless and refused to repay most of
his W220 billion fine.

Even though the two former presidents had been pardoned, just the sight of them arrested and put on
trial was considered to be a major victory for Korea's democratization process. Military figures who led
successful coups had been deposed in many other parts of the world, but none had been put to trial until
the case of former presidents Chun and Roh. The legal process had been stalled by the unwillingness of
the Kim Young Sam government to press charges, but public sentiments proved too strong to ignore.
The transparency and credibility of the financial system that identified Roh Tae Woo's anonymous bank
accounts became established.

One might say that the incident showed both the dark side of Korean politics as well as the potential for
reform. What are your thoughts on this historically unprecedented event?

© Michael Kim

The tragic tale of President Roh Mu-hyun

The Roh Moo-hyun presidency

The sixteenth president of the Republic of Korea, Roh Moo-hyun (1946-2009) had rather
humble origins. Born in Kimhae in South Kyongsang Province, a degree from a high school in Busan
was the highest level of education he received, Yet he managed to pass the bar and become a lawyer at
the age of 30 in 1975. After establishing a reputation has a human rights lawyer during the democracy
movement of the 1980s, he became a National Assemblyman in 1988 and inaugurated as president in
2003.

The 2002 campaign that elected Roh Moo-hyun president is today considered to be Korea's first election
where the internet played a key role. Roh Moo-hyun's progressive views were popular among a young
generation of voters who utilized social media and cyber-campaigns to mobilize voters. Korea's
significant investment in internet infrastructure had contributed to political change. Despite facing long
odds, he narrowly defeated the conservative candidate Lee Hoi-chang (1935-) by 2%. The success of the
online campaign then led to accusations in 2012 that a secret team of National Intelligence Service
members had added negative responses to numerous message boards that had supported the opposition
party candidates. The secret internet operation is widely believed to have been an attempt counter the
tendency of young voters to take their activism online. There is a generational gap in Korean politics,

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where the older voters tend to be more conservative while the internet-savy younger voters tend to be
more progressive.

Roh Moo-hyun had a rocky start to his presidency, when he made statements in support of his newly-
founded party's National Assembly candidates in February 2004. Roh was accused of violating election
laws that forbid the president from making political statements of support during the election period.
Roh's opponents seized upon the opportunity to bring down his presidency and launched an effort to
impeach him. The battle to impeach Roh resulted in violent scuffles on the floor of the National
Assembly. The measure passed with 193 in support and 2 opposing votes. Roh's supporters did not
participate in the vote, but the numbers were enough to impeach him. For nearly two months, Roh was
suspended from the presidency and the Prime Minster had to rule in his place.

The impeachment of Roh brought out an overwhelming degree of support for him in the April Elections
that year, and Roh's party gained a majority in the National Assembly. When the constitutional court
reinstated Roh back into the presidency, he was in a better position than ever before to carry on his
political agenda. The historical assessment of his term in office cannot be made at this time, but it is
clear that he pursued a populist agenda that often clashed with those who opposed his brand of politics.
One of his priorities was historical in nature. President Roh passed measures such as the Anti-Japanese
Collaborator laws in 2004 that opened up past historical issues that traced back to the colonial era. He
also launched investigations into numerous human rights abuses that had taken place during the
democracy movement. Perhaps his most controversial measure was his attempt a move the capital to
Sejong City that resulted in many government ministries and agencies to be relocated there.

Roh's economic agenda proved to be more moderate than his opponents had feared, for he made little
attempt to break up the chaebol corporations like Samsung. However, he did introduce a number of
measures intended to reduce business-government corruption and enabled class action law suits against
the major companies. The economy grew at a faster rate during Roh's presidency than the two
conservative presidents that followed him. He also pushed forth an FTA with the United States in 2007,
which was contrary to what those on the 'left' had traditionally supported in South Korean politics.
However, it is widely believed that the FTA effort was linked to the Kaesong Industrial Complex, for
the government wanted to provide a larger market for products manufactured there.

Roh Moo-hyun became the second South Korean president to visit North Korea in October 2007. He
was greeted with great fanfare in the North and this moment perhaps represents another high point in
inter-Korea relations. Roo Mu-hyun visited at a time when the Kaesong Complex and the Kumgangsan
Resort areas appeared to open a new chapter. While relations between the Two Koreas reached new
heights, Roo Mu-hyun was criticized for bringing ROK-US relations down to their lowest level since
the 1970s. President Roh's visit in 2007 took place after North Korea's nuclear test in 2006 and the
possibilities of further progress in North-South relations were in actuality quite dim.

After Roh Moo-hyun stepped down from office in 2008, he retired to his home town where he planned
to live a quiet lifestyle. However, he was bombarded with charges of corruption that involved his
immediate family members and some of his closest political allies. Roh Moo-hyun had attempted to
limit corruption among his close associations and had maintained a reputation as a clean politician
during his political career. As the charges mounted, he committed suicide by jumping off of a rocky cliff
near his home town.

Today, Roh Moo-hyun represents both a controversial and tragic figure who was president during a key
transitional period in modern Korean history. The historical assessments will have to await, but there is
little doubt that the legacies from his presidency will be examined in detail by future historians.

© Michael Kim

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 The Korean Wave
The Korean Wave is a result of many factors that have shaped modern Korean history, including
globalization, technological advances, and government policy.
Korean popular culture
One of the clear signs of the increasing prominence of Korea today is Hallyu, or the Korean
Wave, as often translated into English. The popularity of Korean dramas, movies, and music is
translating into a surge of interest in learning the Korean language and travel to Korea throughout the
world. But today, I'd like to provide historical context for understanding this recent spread of Korean
popular culture throughout East Asia and consider its importance from a more historical perspective.

Now Hallyu had always been controversial since the beginning. Some pessimistic views argue that the
Korean Wave reflects Koreans mimicking Western cultures, and its overly commercialised aspect is
merely spreading a distorted form of Korean popular culture throughout the world. However, others
point out that the Korean Wave, in many ways, may provide an alternative vision of globalisation that is
led by diversity of cultural centres scattered throughout the world, rather than a globalisation dominated
only by a small number of countries. Indeed, the success of Korean popular culture may signify the
viability of cultures from areas that have previously been considered to be on the periphery of the
world's cultural production.

While the significance of Hallyu may be interpreted in a number of different ways, the phenomenon, in
its most simplest form, may be described as the global circulation of Korean cultural products. Cultural
products, of course, can be books, films, albums, or any form of media that can be purchased and
consumed. As such, the Korean Wave represents the flow of Korean cultural products beyond the
borders of the Korean peninsula at an unprecedented rate of movement.

Currently, the major impact of the Korean Wave is still limited to Asia. But the increasing impact is
reaching many parts of the globe. Now finding Korean cultural products gaining popularity in distant
parts of the globe might be somewhat surprising, yet in principle, there should be little surprise in the
circulation of Korean popular culture throughout the rest of East Asia. Considering the geographical
proximity and cultural affinity of the region, it seems to be the most natural of occurrences. Yet the fact
that there's a celebrated cultural exchange within East Asia is taking place now and not 20 years ago or
50 years ago may suggest that there are far more important historical issues involved with the Korean
Wave.

Viewed from the historical perspective, Korea had long been an importer, as well as an exporter, of
culture within the traditional East Asian order. Indeed, there's a long history of cultural exchange among
the nations of East Asia, which allowed them to imagine that they're part of a similar East Asian cultural
sphere. However, in the modern age, cultural flows have mostly stopped between the East Asian
countries. Only in the past decade or so has there been a major take off of Korean cultural products
outside of Korea.

So perhaps one of the most interesting questions to consider is why it took so many years, and why it
took so long, for Korean cultural products to have popularity outside of Korea. Some further
considerations of this issue may suggest that there actually are some important constraints that have
prevented Korean cultural products from being successful in the past. The most obvious limitation is
that the Korean culture industry, in the past, was far too under-capitalized to produce high-quality
cultural products. During much of the post-liberation period, the Korean culture industry had to compete
with foreign cultural products, which had a much higher popularity in Korea.

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The Korean Wave
The popularity of Korean popular culture abroad has made celebrities out of many
Korean entertainers in Asian countries. The Korean Wave is not limited to only to
the Asian region, but it is in the neighbouring Asian countries that we can see the
full impact of Korean pop culture.

Korean TV broadcasts, films and music began to be exported abroad in the early
1990s, but they would not gain significant popularity until the late 1990s. For
example, the first Korean TV dramas entered the mainland Chinese market in 1993.
Yet it would not be until the TV drama “What is Love” captured a 4.2 rating on
CCTV in 1997 that a Korean TV show received a much higher rating than a typical
Chinese broadcast

At first, Korean TV shows in China were aired mostly late at night, but they soon
became regular features of prime time Chinese TV. By 2004, the import of Korean
TV dramas in mainland China reached 104 shows for the year, which comprised
16.5% of all imported TV dramas. In 2005, the TV drama Daejanggum or “Jewel in
the Palace” was the highest rated show in 12 of the largest cities in China, and it is
estimated that approximately 300 million people watched the broadcasts during the
height of its popularity.

Daejanggum was also extremely popular in Hong Kong, for it broke all existing TV
broadcast records when it was aired in 2004. The Korean Wave came rather late to
Hong Kong, for it was not until 2002 and 2003 that major stations aired a large
number of Korean TV broadcasts, but at the height of Daejanggum’s popularity the
show averaged a 47 point rating, which represents 3,290,000 million out of Hong
Kong’s 7,000,000 TV viewers

In Japan, the popularity of hallyu is best expressed in the phenomenal success of

Winter Sonata in 2003. Approximately 12 million Japanese tuned in to watch the
final episode despite the fact that it aired at 3 o’clock in the morning. Since 2003,
Winter Sonata has been broadcast several times in Japan during more regular hours,
and each time it has generated large Japanese audiences.

The success of Winter Sonata has made the male lead, Bae Yong-jun, into one of
the most popular actors in Japan, and he is called often called Yon-sama by his
Japanese fans, which is a highly respectful form of address. Bae Yong-jun was able
to extend his popularity in Japan through several hit movies, and he has a
particularly large audience among middle-aged Japanese women. Some of Bae
Yong-jun’s Japanese fans have spent prodigious amounts of money to purchase his
CDs and other merchandise bearing his name. The popularity of Bae Yong-jun
merchandise has led to a popular expression in Japan called ‘Yonbin’. This word is
a combination of Yonsama and binbo, which means poor. The word is used to
describe those people who have spent so much money on Bae Yong-jun
merchandise that they have become poor.

While early hallyu 1.0 was largely limited to TV dramas, the next wave of Hallyu
2.0 involved Korean music and films that found great popularity abroad. These days,
Korean pop music stars consistently top the music charts throughout Asia. One of
the earliest successes was the singer “Rain” who began his career in 2002, but he
quickly became one of the most widely recognized singers in Asia through both his
acting and singing talents. Rain’s concert in Beijing in October 2005 drew more
than 40,000 fans. In February 2006, his popularity reached across the Pacific when
he became the first Korean pop star to perform in Madison Square Garden and sold
out two shows. Time magazine has voted Rain as one of the 100 most influential
people in the world, and he was often presented in the media as the face of the
Korean Wave.

Korean movies have also enjoyed considerable success in overseas markets ever
since the popularity of the Korean film Shiri in 1999. Shiri captured 50% of the
domestic market, but what made the film stand out was its unprecedented success in
neighbouring Asian countries. The success of Shiri was followed by My Sassy Girl
in 2001, which became the most exportable film in Korean film history. The success
of My Sassy Girl has led to the actress Jun Ji-hyun to become an iconic figure who
is recognized from the streets of Beijing China to Saigon in Vietnam. Jun Ji-hyun’s
style is emulated by young women throughout Asia, and she is in many ways a
typical example of how Korean media stars have established Korean fashions as a
new standard throughout the region.

Many stores in various parts of Asia now sell clothing, cosmetics, and DVDs that
cater to fans of Korean pop culture. The hairstyles of Korean stars and their music
have encouraged widespread imitation and their success has led to a halo effect that
has encouraged the sales of Korean products like cellular phones and flat-screen
TVs. The market impact of the Korean Wave has been the focus of many economic
studies, and they all agree that Korean “soft power” has translated into a major
boost for the Korean economy. For example, in 2002, the export of Korean TV
programs exceeded imports by $2,702,000 for the first time in history. This figure
quickly grew to $14,073,000 in 2003 and $40,365,000 in 2004. All total, the film
and television program exports along with the merchandise and tourism earned
Korea $1.87 billion dollars in 2004 according to the government figures. By 2012,
the Hyundai Research Institute estimates that the total value of the Korean Wave to
be $2.3 billion dollars in just the media and entertainment category.
Today, the economic impact of the Korean Wave remains difficult to calculate.
Experts now speak about Hallyu 3.0 which involves a far greater variety of Korean
products ranging from tourism to fashions, to food, to Korean medicine, and
technology. The higher prominence of Korean culture may also be leading to major
Foreign Direction Investment (FDI). One of the greatest area has been in tourism.
For example, 14.2 million tourists visited Korea in 2014, whereas 6 million visitors
had arrived in 2005.

Without question, Korea has established itself as a major centre of cultural

production and a favourite tourist destination in the Asian region. The expansion of
Korean culture into the international realm was one of the unanticipated
consequences of Korea’s successful development.

You can follow the optional links below if you want to learn more about the Korean
Wave.

© Michael Kim

Defining the Korean Wave

The Korean Wave is one of the most prominent signs of Korea's increasing influence in
the world.

In the following passage, Hyung Gu Lynn raises a number of issues to consider when
defining the Korean Wave. Media hyperbole about the Korean Wave tends to cloud our
understanding of what the phenomenon represents. Part of the challenge of sustaining
the Korean Wave has been to broaden its reach beyond a specific range of media
products. Today, FDI and tourism is turning out to be the major economic impact, which
suggests we need to take a closer look at the specific areas where the Korean Wave seem
to be the strongest.

Several points must be kept in mind when defining the Korean Wave. First, it is
important to remember that the Korean Wave does not spring from one
undifferentiated fountain of cool, but is composed of a myriad of formats, genres,
agendas, and artistic visions. The term "Korean Wave" itself may not be
particularly meaningful considering that within South Korea's film output alone
there are art house films, commercial blockbusters, comedies, and melodramas.

Simply to stuff them all under the rubric of "Korean" is as meaningful as assuming
that such disparate films as Legally Blonde and Mulholland Drive (both released in
2001) can somehow be meaningfully captured under the rubric "American films"
simply because they were produced in the US and directed by Americans. The
films Christmas in August and Shiri happen to have the same male lead actor,
Han Suk-Kyu (Han Sok-Kyu)
Suk-Kyu (Han Sok-Kyu), but could not be more different in mood and pacing. The former is an art
house film, while the latter is a full-blown action thriller.

Within music, some popular South Korean music stars are known as hip-hop artists, and others are
better known for their pop ballads. All this diversity means that the fan bases within the so called
Korean Wave can often be discrete and unrelated. For example, there is little overlap between the
demographics of Japanese fans of BoA, the Korean pop singer who has had a record tally of number-one
albums in Japan, and Japanese fans of South Korean melodramas.

Second, in many of the markets, it took many years for Korean TV shows or films to develop a
following. For example, although Taiwan liberalized its TV market in 1993, a flood of well-produced
Japanese shows initially dominated the market. The first South Korean dramas shown in Taiwan in 1997
generated little in the way of sustained interest: it was not until 1999 that the viewing ratings improved
enough to generate a steady stream of imports.

The first Korean drama to be broadcast on Japanese TV was the drama Jealousy, shown in 1993 by a
station in Fukuoka (the largest city on the island of Kyushu). Some Korean films, such as the art house
minimalist drama Christmas in August (1998), drew praise from critics and fans alike in Japan, but it
was not until the action/romance blockbuster Shiri (1999) that some Korean films became large-scale
commercial successes in Japan. Further, the build up to the 2002 World Cup involved several joint
productions between Japanese and South Korean television stations. These developments culminated in
the monumental success of the TV melodrama Winter Sonata (2002) when it was broadcast first on
Japanese satellite TV in 2003 and on regular TV in 2004. Japanese media coverage gravitated around
the fan culture that developed around the series among its ardent viewers, further fueling the diffusion of
South Korean popular culture.

A third qualifier in defining the Korean Wave is that not all Korean cultural commodities do well in
terms of box office receipts in overseas markets, even those with significant numbers of fans of South
Korean popular culture. The suspense/drama film lSA (2000) was a hit in South Korea, breaking the box
office records that had been set by Shiri. In Japan, however, it generated around half the box office
receipts of Shiri. The gangster film set in Pusan, Friend (2001), was a huge domestic hit, breaking the
records that had been set by lSA, but it failed to draw audiences in Taiwan, and closed after three days.
Some blockbusters that were hits in South Korea, such as Silmido (2003) and The Host (2006), were
severe disappointments in Japan, generating around one-third or less of the revenues of Shiri.

Fourth, the Korean Wave is restricted to specific forms of media. So far, it has been made up largely of
TV dramas, films, and popular music. Other fields of entertainment such as feature-length animation,
animation programs, and console video game software are still dominated by Japanese companies.
Subcontracting or in between animation work has long been the staple of the South Korean animation
industry, but animation feature films written, directed, and produced by Korean production companies
have failed to make an impact on domestic or overseas markets.

While consoles and console video games are still dominated by Japanese firms and Microsoft's X-Box,
South Korean firms have been the leading providers for on-line or broadband computer games. The
video gaming culture in South Korea is abuzz with activity, with several specialized TV channels that
show on-line games played by professionals, an estimated 26,000 Internet cafes called "PC Rooms"
dotting the country, and professional game leagues with the top players earning annual incomes
estimated to be around US$200,000. However, on-line games are often overlooked in discussions of the
Korean Wave, although this field may prove to have the biggest economic impact among the popular
culture products that comprise the Korean Wave, especially given the rapid expansion of the
video/computer gaming market in China.

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Fifth, the Korean Wave has not obliterated the competition from Hollywood or imported films.
Generally, it is estimated that Hollywood accounts for some 85% of the global film market, and the
South Korean market has continued to import the standard Hollywood blockbusters and less commercial
films. For example, in 2004 Troy and Shrek 2 placed second and third respectively for annual box office
receipts in South Korea. Some Japanese films have done well in South Korea also, especially the films
of the famed animator Miyazaki Hayao. In terms of numbers, imported films continue to outnumber
domestic releases: in 2005, for example, 83 domestic films and 213 imported films were screened.

© Hyung Gu Lynn, Bipolar Orders (Zed 2007), pp.73-75.

Reactions to the Korean Wave

This section discusses the reactions to the Korean Wave.
The Korean Wave has not generated only positive sentiments towards Korea. The success of the
Korean Wave has also raised a number of questions about its limits as well as its negative
implications. In the following passage, Hyung Gu Lynn explains the many different reactions to
the Korean Wave.
> What are your thoughts on how the world has responded to the Korean Wave?

Aside from fan or viewer enthusiasm, what have been some of the reactions to the Korean Wave? The
discourse has been diverse, but it is possible to divide it into nationalist, regionalist, dismissive, and
protectionist views. As noted above, enamoured to a large extent with the possibilities of "soft power"
(the ability of a country to influence the perceptions or behaviors of another through cultural or
ideological means), many South Korean officials and journalists have actively promoted the Korean
Wave. Nationalist perspectives focus on either the Wave's power to generate positive effects in image
politics, or the effects on the balance of payments, or its potential for drawing foreigners in towards
more "traditional" arts. Tourism has increased, as has enrolment in Korean language classes in Taiwan,
Japan, and other countries; Hallyu stars serve as spokes models for various products such as auto-
mobiles and cell phones.

The problem, however, with the concept of "soft power" is that it seems to assume that audiences have
little autonomy or diversity. While audiences can be influenced in their views of other countries via
cultural commodities, at the same time audience segmentation and variation cannot be entirely
discounted either. South Korea may be the first to attempt to become a "dream society of icons and
aesthetic experience," but such rhetoric conveniently elides the language barriers, and the often
conflicting meanings generated by governments, producers, and consumers out of the same movie or TV
series.

South Korean artists have for the most part displayed their Korean origins proudly on their sleeves.
However, several scholars argue that it is the "Asian" context that is more important than anything
innately Korean about the cultural commodities. The Korean Wave, according to this view, allows
Asian middle classes to discover and reinforce their values as they expand in numbers and income. The
"Asian" settings and context help viewers make sense of modernity in its multiple manifestations, or
guide dreams and aspirations through the spectacles of dazzling material luxury of the "modernized
Korea" that is portrayed in the shows. Some observers also suggest that the Korean Wave should be
used to help create and reinforce an "Asian bloc" or a common "Asian identity" that would compete
with other regional blocs forming around the world.

It may also be true that South Korean dramas and films have succeeded in Asian markets precisely
because they are similar to Hollywood films, not because of anything uniquely "Korean" about them
other than their site of production. Many of the TV shows present an image of a "Westernised" Asia
rather than of the current realities of South Korea itself. Nonetheless, considering that some Korean

,3 
dramas and films have had moderate levels of success in Mexico, Egypt, and Russia, looking for reasons
beyond cultural proximity to explain the emergence of the Korean Wave and coeval Asian modernities
seems necessary. Such an effort would require considerably more detailed audience studies and wariness
against exaggerating the effects of Korean cultural commodities on perceptions of South Korea in those
countries.

In an era where the tocsin against the Hollywood domination of the collective imagination has become a
familiar sound, South Korea's emergence as a vibrant film producer has been embraced by some
elements of the international media as a refreshing alternative. However, another reaction has been one
of disappointment, especially from several North American film critics. These critics lament that the
Korean blockbusters are too similar to the standard Hollywood film. Certainly, there are familiar
lighting and camera techniques: for example, the overall visual atmosphere of director Chang Yun-
Hyon's Tell Me Something (1999) is reminiscent of David Fincher's Seven (1995). The problem is that
many film critics never define what constitutes originality; nor do they seem able to grapple with their
sometimes Orientalist expectations of what constitutes an "authentic" Korean film.

Meanwhile, many foreign governments have expressed concerns about the impact of the proliferation of
South Korean dramas on domestic production in their own countries. Whether it is the repeated calls by
Japanese bureaucrats for a new industrial policy to promote cultural industries, Vietnamese officials
complaining about the hedonistic capitalist lifestyles depicted in South Korean TV dramas, or China
limiting the broadcast of "foreign" animation and shows during prime time, attempts by governments
and other public organizations to regulate and control the production, dissemination, and reception of
cultural commodities abound. In Japan, a comic book (a widely used medium of expression for all ages
in Japan) called Hate the Korean Wave (Ken-Kanryll) was published in 2005. This became the best-
selling book in Japan for that year and spawned considerable controversy, eliciting criticism from both
the political left and the political right in Japan for various inaccuracies contained within it.

Popular culture and "real life," or text and context, are certainly not divorced from each other. The
impact of popular culture cannot be calibrated merely on the basis of revenues or film festival awards, or
the number of members in a fan club; but since 1999 popular culture has become one of South Korea's
highest profile exports. The domestic market has become one of the most vibrant in the world, and new
box office records are set virtually every year. The Korean Wave has affected South Korea's image
overseas, especially in Asia, and has drawn tourists to various sites associated with TV dramas.
Marriage brokers promising to introduce Japanese women to South Korean men have sprung up as a
result of the popularity of Winter Sonata.

If popular culture is in some senses the private life of the nation state, then South Korea has been using
the medium of popular culture to attempt to digest issues of mimicry/hybridity, history, and socio-
economic change. South Korean blockbusters have often adapted the tropes and techniques familiarized
by Hollywood to compete successfully against American films in domestic markets. Some films, such
as Memories of Murder (2003), have grappled with unresolved issues related to everyday forms of
violence during the period of authoritarian rule. Other more recent films and TV dramas such as You
Are My Sunshine (2005) and The Bride from Hanoi (2005) have depicted the growing trend of older
bachelors in the rural areas seeking brides from abroad.

© Hyung Gu Lynn, Bipolar Orders (Zed 2007), pp.79-80.

Discussion
The Korean Wave and the future of global cultural exchange
The Korean Wave may be understood within the context of the constellation of forces that are
relentlessly pushing the world towards globalization. The compression of the world through a global
interconnectivity, the unprecedented circulation of capital, ideas, and people, and the intensification of

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global cultural flows across national boundaries are all signs of a process that has been centuries in the
making but is now accelerating through the proliferation of the internet and New Media. The forces of
globalization may tend to standardize and homogenize the world. Yet any region of the world that
produces a cultural commodity with high consumption value can now distribute it with ease. The end
result is that the cultures of many different countries are increasingly able to reach global audiences
wherever there is demand. Korean pop culture, along with movies from India and the Latin American
novel are all benefiting from this increased global exchange.

Thus, finding elements of a culture that has a worldwide appeal may not be such a difficult task. Rather
than attempt to interpret the Korean Wave to be a unique aspect of Korea, it may be far more useful to
consider it to be a sign of the future as we see an intensification of global cultural exchange. The ability
to share knowledge about a globally popular film or novel can help build bridges of understanding that
are necessary for further mutual cooperation.

Of course the circulation of cultural products does not always leave a positive image, especially when
the exchange is highly asymmetrical. Indeed, the predominance of American popular culture may have
reached a point where there is considerable anxiety that globalization equals Americanization. Yet the
emergence of movements like the Korean Wave might suggest that more balance cultural flows are
possible. The fact that Koreans seem to be approaching the export of culture in a similar way as the
export of electronic goods is certainly one of the more interesting aspects of the Korean Wave.

>What are your thoughts on the Korean Wave? Do you see the potential of other nations around the
world to become the centre of global cultural production? Or are there inherent limits to just how far a
culture can spread in today's world? Is there only room for a small number of countries to participate
in this global cultural exchange?

© Michael Kim

South Korea's transition to a global economic power

The IMF crisis 1997 IMF Crisis
South Korean citizens formed long lines throughout the nation in January 1998 for an
extraordinary public campaign. Gold rings, buttons, and ceremonial turtles figures that had been in the
family for generations were donated to save the country during the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997.
Decades of high speed growth had come to a crashing halt with the humiliation of a massive $57 billion
International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout package. Despite the economic turmoil, the rapid economic
recovery that then followed would propel the Korean economy into the ranks of one of the largest
economies in the world.

The gold drive was reminiscent of a previous effort ninety years before in 1907, when Koreans donated
gold items to pay off a large debt owed to the Japanese government. The gold campaign failed to
prevent the Japanese colonial occupation, but the memory of that extraordinary effort had remained in
the popular consciousness. The 1997 gold drive began with a local association affiliated with the
Saemaul Movement and then went nation-wide. Initially, the campaign started in November and
accepted donations but changed to a gold buying campaign in January 1998. All in total, approximately
227 tons of gold was collected, which had a value of approximately $3 billion dollars at the time. When
the crisis broke out, The Bank of Korea only held 13.4 tons of gold. The gold was exported to raise
foreign currency, and the public campaign helped to establish confidence in the Korean financial system
at a critical juncture during the Asian Financial Crisis.

,3 
The origins of the IMF Crisis may be traced back to the practice of guaranteeing corporate loans through
state banks. During the Park Chung Hee era conglomerates were given preferential access to foreign
loans by cooperating with government economic policy. The state support allowed some favoured
corporations to highly leverage their companies to pursue aggressive expansion. President Chun Doo
Hwan decided to demonstrate the importance of government favor in 1985 by dissolving the Kukje
Group for not 'donating' enough funds and assisting his party's political campaigns.

The rapid economic development had allowed Korea to become the second Asian country to join the
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 1996. However, the foundations
for this growth were not on stable ground. Before the IMF Crisis many corporations relied on
government support to amass debt to equity ratios that exceeded 300 to 400 percent. In fact, by mid-
1997, eight out of the top 30 conglomerate companies such as Hanbo Steel and Kia Motors had already
declared bankruptcy from excessive borrowing before the rapid currency depreciation in late 1997.

When the Asian Financial Crisis hit in 1997, much of Korea's foreign debt was short term, which had to
be paid back quickly. By October of 1997, six major currencies in Asia had depreciated by an average
of 40% after the collapse of the Thai Bhat. The Korean won held its value the longest, but could not
withstand the collapse of currencies that impacted the entire region. When the won depreciated to over
2000 per dollar by the end of 1997, Korea was plunged into a major foreign debt crisis.

In late November 1997, a team of IMF economists arrived in Seoul to negotiate a major bail-out
package. The controversial IMF reforms that were implemented increased the flexibility of the
exchange rate as well as making it much easier for foreign capital to participate in the domestic Korean
market. The IMF demanded major structure adjustments to the Korean economy, but did not eliminate
the system that protected the conglomerates. The ease of which foreign capital could enter and exit then
created a volatile stock market and numerous controversies with 'buyout funds' that purchased distressed
financial assets for a fraction of their pre-IMF crisis value.

Millions of Koreans were out of work during the crisis and bankrupt companies littered the economic
landscape. However, The Korean economy managed to bounce back quickly. Gross domestic product
had been $345.4 billion in 1998 but rose to $1.162 trillion by 2012. The rapid recovery suggested that
the underlying drivers of growth were strong enough to push the country forward once confidence had
been restored. Today scholars disagree on the impact of the IMF crisis and the austerity plan that
transformed the Korean economy. Future historians will have to carefully explore the many complex
economic interactions that emerged during this period. Yet, what is clear is that the crisis was a major
step in Korea's path to becoming one of the largest economies in the world.

Extra resources
IMF Stand-By Arrangement (A summary of the IMF economic program issued on December 5, 1997)
http://www.imf.org/external/np/oth/korea.htm

Here you can access many IMF publications related to Korea that go back several decades, including the
IMF Crisis in 1997.
http://www.imf.org/external/country/kor/index.htm?pn=0
© Michael Kim

Free trade and mad cows

Protest movements over the FTA and Mad Cow Disease

In April 2008, the Korean TV channel MBC broadcast an episode of 'PD Notebook' that
presented an expose on bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease. The program
asked the question if American beef was safe from BSE and broadcast misleading images that suggested

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a public heath crisis was imminent. Tens of thousands of people came out to protest in the
Kwanghwamun areas in down town Seoul and created massive traffic disruptions. The episode of 'PD
Notebook' was later discovered to have manipulated the facts, but the outrage that it trigger led to
massive protests. While the protest itself was sparked by a heavily biased and distorted picture of the
BSE threat, the underlying factors tell an interesting tale of the social and economic dynamics that
emerged in South Korea after 1989.

At the root of the 2008 Mad Cow Protests were lingering resentments triggered by decades of US
military presence in South Korea. The US recognition of Chun Doo Hwan's regime after the Kwangju
Massacre of 1980 had generated anti-US sentiments in an entire generation of younger Koreans who
viewed the United States with great suspicion. The strong anti-Americanism of the younger generation
clashed with the older Koreans who still remain grateful for the critical role of the US during the Korean
War and the generous US Aid during the years of extreme poverty. Surveys show a split among the
views of the younger generation, but the older generation remains heavily pro-American.

The tensions eventually flared out in a massive candlelight vigil after the accidental death of two Korean
school girls in June 2002 who were hit by an American military vehicle on a narrow road. The Status of
Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the United States and the Republic of Korea allowed for US
soldiers to be placed under the jurisdiction of US authorities rather than the Korean courts. There had
been a long history of tensions between US soldiers and the local population. When the soldiers were
not charged with negligence and removed from Korean jurisdiction, massive candlelight vigils ignited
throughout the major cities. Approximately 100,000 protesters gathered in Seoul during the height of the
candlelight vigils in December 2002.

The anti-American sentiments became further inflamed when President Roh Moo-hyun decided to
pursue a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the US which was concluded in April 2007. The Roh
government saw the FTA with the US as a crucial piece of its plans to develop the Kaesong Complex
and improve inter-Korean relations. While most Koreans supported the FTA, protests by labour and
farmer groups found a sympathetic public audience. The 2008 Mad Cow Protests were the culmination
of numerous forces in contemporary Korean history that found their expression through mass protests.
Simply reading the events as a protest against American beef may obscure some of the broader issues
that the movement represents.

The inauguration of the Lee Myung Bak (1941-) presidency in February 2008 meant that the
conservative politician was now responsible for implementing the terms of the FTA with the US. Lee
Myung Bak had been the former CEO of Hyundai Engineering and a controversial figure who
represented the conservative generation that had achieved Korea's rapid economic development. When
the new president attempted to reverse a ban on the import of U.S. beef that had been in place since
2003 a new controversy erupted. The concessions on beef were considered necessary for the smooth
implementation of the FTA, but the negotiations inflamed those Koreans who believed that Korea was
bending to US demands and causing a public health crisis. Conservatives emphasized the importance of
the US markets to Korea's export-oriented economy, but protests expressed concerns about inadequate
safeguards on US beef and pointed to stricter import restrictions in other countries like Japan.

During the height of the protests, shipping containers that had been used to export Korean products
around the world were stacked high to create an improvised fortress in the middle of Seoul in the
Kwanghwamun area. The police constructed the barricade to prevent the mass demonstrations from
reaching the Blue House Presidential Residence. The imagery of state power being deployed to block
the people's access to the centre of political power recalled both the complex history of democracy
protests in Korea as well as the generational divide that split Korean society.

Ultimately, American beef resumed their import to Korea in 2008 and no cases of BSE were discovered.
Today, the US is Korea's third largest trade partner and Korea is the US's seventh largest. The total

,3 
volume of trade in 2014 reached $114 billion. The economic relationships between Korea and the US
remains stronger than ever, but the symbolic impact of the 2008 protests resonated throughout Korean
society and served as a reminder of the many political cleavages that exists today in modern Korean
society.

Extra resources
Asia Matters for America * Trade between South Korea and the United States has grown significantly.
This site presents the trade statistics of the two countries between 2002-2012.
http://www.asiamattersforamerica.org/southkorea/data/trade/importexport
US- Korea Connect * This site presents the trade data between 2012-2014 since the passage of the
Korea-US FTA in 2012.
http://www.uskoreaconnect.org/facts-figures/issues-answers/korus-trade-figures.html

© Michael Kim

Korea's Chinese economic connection

The opening of relations with China in August 1992 would begin a new phase of economic cooperation
between the two countries. After the democracy movement of 1987, South Korea entered a decade of
labour strife and protests as militant labour unions demanded higher wages. In a sense, decades of
economic growth was possible, because the highly-skilled Korean workers were willing to accept lower
pay. The labour movement of the 1990s was determined to receive their share of the fruits of economic
development and the labour protests often escalated into violence. However, the demands for higher
wages came at a time when manufacturing jobs were about to depart Korea as part of a broader regional
economic reconfiguration centred around China.

The rapid rise of labour costs in Korea led many Korean companies to seek alternative locations to
manufacture their products. In many ways, a similar movement of manufacturing jobs had taken place in
the 1960s and 1970s from Japan to Korea. Manufacturing subcomponents were sourced from Japanese
companies, but the assembly took place in Korea and Taiwan. Eventually, Korean and Taiwanese
companies began to produce their own subcomponents and shipped them to China for final assembly.
The finally assembly all takes place in China, but the actual product contains components from the East
Asian supply chain that is primarily based in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. By 1995, half of the content of
Chinese export goods were sourced from these three countries.

Korean businessmen today represent the largest group of foreigners in China. A major centre of Korean
production is located in Qingdao across the Yellow Sea from Incheon. By 2007, over 85,000 Koreans
had settled in Qingdao, and it is possible for Koreans to reside there without speaking any Chinese.
Korean conglomerates like Samsung, assemble many of their products in China, but recently they have
faced fierce competition from Chinese manufacturers located in Shenzhen in Guangzhou Province near
Hong Kong. The Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn, which makes the Apple iPhone, along with newly
emerging Chinese electronic brands like Xiaomi now poses great challenges to the dominance of Korean
electronic giants.

However, the Koreans today still play a major role in China and have made far more progress in
entering the Chinese market than Japanese businessmen for a variety of factors, but we may need to
consider the importance of historical issues. The general perception that the Japanese have not fully
accounted for their past has led to some violent protests against Japanese products in China. Koreans on
the other hand do not have similar historical issues and are seen in a friendlier light (frictions do exist
however for example over historical issues in Northeast China). Korea’s integration into both the
Japanese and Chinese markets allows it to play a key intermediary role between its large economic
neighbours.

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The prominence of the Korean Wave has led to a great growth in the popularity of Korean products in
China and to tourism in Korea. The volume of total trade between the countries have grown to $235
billion in 2014 and led to a newly signed FTA between Korea and China in June 2015. The rapid growth
of this trade volume has been a sign of the close cooperation that has developed between the two
countries. In many ways, the Chinese government now prefers to deal with South Korea far more than
the North because of the strength of the economic ties. The importance of the mainland Chinese in this
relationship may have been best demonstrated by the abrupt ending of diplomatic ties with Taiwan in
1992. Informal diplomatic ties were quickly re-established in 1993, but for many years there were no
direct flights between Korean and Taiwanese carriers. Direct flights between Seoul and Taipei were not
resumed again until 2004.

Korea's China connection is now the biggest source of exports but militarily the South is still tied firmly
to the US and Japan. The tripartite security relationship remains strong despite the shifting international
terrain. This complex geopolitical situation has not been greatly impacted by the growing economic ties
between China and Korea. The need to carefully balance the growing economic relationship with the
Chinese along with the strong strategic relationship with the US is a major challenges for South Korea
today.

© Michael Kim

Discussion
Korea's global economic reach
In the previous chapters we have considered different aspects of Korean economic development. Some
experts argue that if the economies of the South and North were combined, it would become one of the
top ten largest economies in the world. Some of the basic steps towards inter-Korean economic
cooperation were established in the 2000s, but they currently remain stalled.

We has seen how both the economies of the North and South had been well integrated into their
respective camps during the Cold War. The economic collapse of the North was certainly influenced by
the collapse of the entire Soviet Block.

Today, it remains true that South Korea is a major economic actor on the world stage, despite the rapid
rise of other regions. South Korea's economic activities in China are stronger than any other nation and
its ties to Japan remain prosperous despite the historical controversies. We also need to consider how the
South Korean economy is firmly linked to the Middle East, South East Asia, the European Union and of
course the United States.

Since signing its first Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Chile in 2004, South Korea had concluded its
15th FTA negotiations with Vietnam by the end of 2014. Most recently, South Korea concluded the
final draft of an FTA with China in June 2015 and it is now awaiting legislative approval of both
agreements. Another important challenge that awaits South Korea is the ASEAN Economic Community
(AEC) that is officially slated to launch on December 31, 2015.

>There seems no question that despite the slowdown of South Korean growth recently, that the
Korean peninsula will continue to play a major economic role on the world stage. After taking the
course, what are your thoughts on South Korea's economic influence in the past, present and future?

© Michael Kim

,3 
 Demographic change and post-industrial society in
Korea
Demographic change and ageing society
Demographic change in Korea has been decades in the making. The South Korean population has been
gradually ageing and becoming more multi-ethnic as the post-war economic boom progressed. The
fundamental changes in the average age of the population, labour shortages, sex ratio imbalances and
increasing multi-ethnicity are rapidly transforming Korean society today.

Throughout the decades of high-speed growth, Korea had one of the youngest populations among the
OECD nations, but Korean society is ageing at a rapid rate. Eventually, most of the industrialized
societies around the world have already reached or will soon become what experts call 'Aged' society
which means the elderly population of 65 or older had reached about 14%. There is another category of
the 'Super-aged society' when 20% of the population reaches 65. The problem of Korea is not that it is
unique in the world in terms of its ageing population, but the speed with which it will reach that state.
Korea will reaches these measures in just two or three decades whereas many European nations took
seven or eight decades.

The Korean population is also transforming itself into a post-industrial society where services and
knowledge becomes the primary source of economic activity. However, factors such as the gender gap
impact the effectiveness of Korea's knowledge and service economy. The proportion of male and female
university graduates are almost the same. However, There is a 39% wage gap between male and female
workers in Korea and only 10% in managerial positions according to OECD reports. Factors such as
hierarchical work culture, long work hours and the need to socialise after work all impact female
employment.

The increasing urbanisation and high cost of education in Korea has led to a rapid decline in the birth
rates. Korea's birth rate in 2014 was 8.6 per 1000 and the total of births was only 435,300. These are
astonishing numbers considering that many of the older generations had 800,000 or more births a year.
The average South Korean woman is expected to give birth to 1.187 babies in 2014 and only Hong
Kong, Singapore, and Macau have a lower rate. One child per family has become the norm in South
Korean society, which has contributed to the emergence of a rapid demographic shift of historic
proportions. The implications for the education, health, and welfare system of Korea are indeed
profound. Many universities in Korea may have to close their doors in a few years because there will not
be enough high school graduates to stay open.

The demographic change among Koreans is also impacted by changes in the male-female ratio among
the Korean population. For a long period about 100-115 boys were born for every 100 girls in Korean
society, which reflected the preference for males. The numbers also reflected that fact that advances in
medical technology allowed for selective abortions in favour of male offspring. In the past, a female
born to the family may mean that another attempt to give birth to a male child would result. Yet,
recently the preference for male offspring has largely disappeared. Couples with just one female child
may no longer attempt to have another, which has contributed to the population decline.

A consequence of the existing gender imbalance among the older population of Koreans has led to an
interesting attempt in the rural areas of Korea to import brides from other parts of Asia. Korea's rapid
urbanisation had encouraged many young Korean women to leave the countryside. As a result, the
countryside today is mostly filled with the elderly. Women from China (mostly ethnic Korean Chinese),
Vietnam, Filipino, and Thai women have arrived in Korea through 'international marriage agencies'.
Today, approximately 10% of marriages in Korea are termed 'international'.

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The emergence of 'marriage migration' has taken place alongside the growing demand for migrant
labour. Many Koreans today refuse to work jobs in industrial or service jobs that are considered
unsuitable for a highly educated person. This phenomenon has led to the arrival of temporary workers
from China, South Asia and South East Asia to take care of jobs that Koreans tend not to perform.
Numerous ethnic enclaves have emerged in the city of Seoul as workers from countries such as
Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and the Philippines have established restaurants and services that cater to
these groups. The number of foreigners in Korea reached over a million in 2007 but the number of
undocumented workers remains unknown.

>The demographic transition in Korea remains one of the most important trends to watch as South
Korea society continues its development in the 21st century. We can see many of the same elements
that are affecting societies around the world but the speed of changes is perhaps worthy of note. What
are your thoughts on Korea's demographic changes?
© Michael Kim

Multi-ethnicity in Korea
This section discusses the history of multi-ethnicity in Korea.

The most recent statistics published by the Korean government state that, as of Jan. 1, 2015,
there were 1,741,919 foreign residents of South Korea, which account for 3.4% of the population.
The number of foreign workers at 610,000, representing 35% of this total. There were
approximately 950,000 Chinese, which includes about 690,000 ethnic Koreans from China (who
form the largest subgroup). This trend towards a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural population in
South Korea may only be notable if one assumes that Koreans have been a completely
homogeneous society since the dawn of history. The actual history of multi-ethnicity in Korea is
far more complex and requires some background to understand some of its tensions.
Understanding the past problems may assist us in formulating solutions to the issues that have
arisen with the arrival of so many individuals from different parts of the world. In the following
passage, Hyung Gu Lynn helps trace the history of Korea's multi-ethnic past:

Leaving aside issues from pre-modern history such as the intermarriages between Mongols and Koryo
dynasty nobility, South Korea was a multi ethnic country at its inception in 1948. During the colonial
period, marriages between Koreans and Japanese were encouraged by the colonial state. The number of
officially registered inter-ethnic couples was around 400 in 1925, and 1,750 in 1937.

Some of the marriages may not have produced children, but given the number of inter-ethnic couples
married between 1910 and 1945, there must still have been at least a thousand children who might be
described as multi ethnic or multiracial during the immediate post-liberation period in South Korea.
Such families and children were never publicly acknowledged as multi ethnic, although their
descendants might know, for example, that one of their grandmothers was Japanese.

Japanese wives of Korean men who stayed in South Korea after liberation also form a small minority
community. Estimates of their current numbers are 1,000, although the estimates are affected by their
age and the fact that many hide their ancestry. As of 1991, around two-thirds had either South Korean
citizenship or dual citizenship, but many lived in relatively impoverished conditions, especially if their
spouses had died. There is a home that houses a handful of Japanese wives in Kyongju that has been run
by a Christian Korean foundation since its establishment in 1972, but this particular legacy from the
colonial period has not been addressed as a part of Korean multi ethnicity.

In addition, there has been a population of resident Chinese in Korea since the 1890s. In 1970, an
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,3 
The Park Chung-Hee government issued laws in the 1960s limiting land ownership by foreigners, and it
dispersed Chinese stores and restaurants in down-town Seoul during urban reforms of the early 1970s.
This forced many Chinese to migrate to the US, Australia, and Taiwan. In 1999, Kim Dae-Jung
removed restrictions on foreign ownership of land, but the population of Chinese in South Korea had
already declined to 21,000 by 1990.

Although some 90% of the Chinese were originally from Shandong province on the north-east coast of
mainland China, the majority were given Taiwanese passports in 1949 when the Chinese Communist
Party took control of China. Most retain their Taiwanese passports to this day, although a small number
have Chinese or South Korean passports. Historically, they have had difficulty finding employment,
with the result that the majority now operate or work in Chinese restaurants. Their conditions, however,
have generally improved from 2000 or so because of the boom in interest in China; the recently restored
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Multi ethnic heritage also stems from the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Among its many legacies,
the Korean War initially left some 40,000 "mixed-race" children or "GI babies." These children actually
constituted the majority of the Korean babies who were sent abroad for adoption between 1955 and
1965, especially as orphans were not granted South Korean citizenship under the family registry laws.

Between 1964 and 1975, some of the 400,000 Korean soldiers and civilians who were in Vietnam sired
children with local Vietnamese women. At the end of the war, the soldiers and the South Korean
government did little to support these children's lives. Estimates of their numbers range greatly, from as
low as 2,000 to as high as 30,000. The term Lai Daihan is used in South Korea and Vietnam to describe
these children who are now in their thirties and forties, but it is problematic due to the pejorative
nuances (Lai means "mixed-breed" and Daihan refers to Korea).

They live for the most part in Vietnam, and the extent of the discrimination against them has been
debated. In many accounts, they are portrayed as facing constant discrimination in Vietnam as "children
of the enemy", for their visually different appearance, and for being fatherless. According to this view
they have less access to education and receive fewer work opportunities. On the other hand, one South
Korean NGO that works with the Lui Daihan in Vietnam has asserted that some media outlets and
NGOs exaggerate their plight in an attempt to dramatize their stories. The ones that do find their way to
South Korea to live with their fathers face even more difficulties with language, culture, and
employment.

Out of South Korea's 2006 total population of around 49 million, only an estimated 5,000 are
Amerasians. However, many of them, especially those whose parents are not Caucasian, still face
pervasive discrimination in everyday life, have high drop-out rates from schools, have difficulties in
obtaining employment, and suffer from high suicide rates.

© Hyung Gu Lynn, Bipolar Orders (Zed Books 2007), pp.83-84.

Labour shortage
Since 1992, South Korea has maintained a government trainee program that had admitted about
57,000 trainees by 1996. As of April, 2015 approximately 270,000 workers were in Korea on a E-9
Visa for 'industrial training'. However, many have overstayed their 'trainee' period and the issue
of illegal migrant labour has been a controversial aspect of modern Korean society for some time.
The Korean government estimates that about 200,000 foreigners in 2015 are now in Korea
illegally. Amnesty International had repeatedly criticised the South Korean government for not
taking enough action to protect the rights of migrant workers in Korea. The majority of migrant

124 KR206
 workers actually come from China and are ethnic Korean Chinese. But a significant numbers have
arrived from South and South East Asia. For example, as of 2015 there are approximately 28,000
from Nepal. In the following excerpt Hyung Gu Lynn provides more details of the problem of
migrant labour in South Korea.

The labour shortage that emerged by the late 1980s, especially in the labour-intensive, unskilled sector,
also triggered changes in the human landscape. Previously, as mentioned above, migrants from the rural
areas had filled labour opportunities in the urban areas. In fact, South Korea had been an exporter of
labour, sending nurses to West Germany in the 1950s and construction workers to the Middle East in the
1970s and 1980s on term-limited contracts. The situation changed during the late 1980s, as foreign
migrant workers increasingly filled labour shortages in the so-called "3D" (dirty, difficult, dangerous)
jobs within smaller firms. Smaller firms in labour-intensive industries have been particularly reliant on
migrant labourers from China, the Philippines, Nepal, and other countries within Asia.

In December 1997, soon after the inauguration of Kim Dae-Jung as president, the government issued an
order for all illegal workers to leave South Korea by the end of March 1998, offering temporarily to
freeze its policy of fining those who had overstayed their visas or entered the country illegally if they
voluntarily left before the announced deadline. This measure reflected Kim Dae Jung's response to the
1997 crisis: to limit the number of people the state was responsible for and to promote an atmosphere of
economic nationalism. Small businesses, represented by the Korean Federation of Small Businesses
(KFSB), protested the move, as it would deprive them of a cheap labour supply. An estimated 370,000
foreign workers, most of them illegal, remained in South Korea as of February 1998 despite the order.
As of 2005, around 550,000 foreigners resided in South Korea, roughly 1 % of the total population.

Like many countries, South Korea needs foreign workers, but seems loath to accept them. By 2020,
according to the Bank of Korea, there will be a labour shortage to the tune of 4.7 workers per firm.
NGOs, such as the Joint Committee on Migrant Workers in Korea (JCMK) founded in July 1995, have
been active in lobbying the government for legislative reform and in campaigning for greater public
awareness of the need to improve the rights of foreign migrant workers.52 There have been some
improvements: foreigners who have had permanent resident status for more than three years, such as
Chinese residents of South Korea with Taiwanese nationality, were granted the right to vote in local
elections under an electoral law revision in June 2005. Yet foreign migrant workers continue to battle
prejudice in everyday contexts.

© Hyung Gu Lynn, Bipolar Orders (Zed Books 2007), pp.85-86.

Further Recommended readings

The pursuit of history can be a lifelong passion. No matter how much we learn about the past, there is
always more historical knowledge that we can gain. During the past six weeks, I have discussed with
you many different aspects of modern Korean history that I wanted to bring to your attention. There has
been some controversial topics, but by remaining open to different perspectives, a balance may be
achieved in our historical understandings. The lack of space and time constraints has only allowed me to
scratch the surface of the historical knowledge that is available. I hope that many of you will continue to
learn more about Korean history on your own and enhance your knowledge of this part of the world.

I(Michael Kim) pulled out excerpts from three textbooks throughout the course so that the learners can
see a diverse range of historical perspectives. I want to thank Kyung Moon Hwang, Hyung Gu Lynn,
and Michael Robinson for generously giving permission to use excerpts from their books for my course.
I selected them because these works by today's leading Korean historians are filled with key insights on
modern Korean history. There are many more interesting anecdotes and facts that you can learn about
from their works:

,3 
Kyung Moon Hwang, [A History of Korea](http://www.amazon.co.uk/History-Palgrave-Essential-
Histories-Series/dp/0230205461/?tag=futur-yon-21) (Palgrave 2010).

Hyung Gu Lynn, [Bipolar Orders: The Two Koreas Since 1989](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bipolar-

Orders-Koreas-History-Present/dp/1842777432/?tag=futur-yon-21) (Zed Books 2007).

Michael Robinson, [Korea's Twentieth-Century Odyssey: A Short

History](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Koreas-Twentieth-century-Odyssey-Short-
History/dp/0824831748/?tag=futur-yon-21) (University of Hawaii Press 2007).

The more diverse perspectives we gain, the more we can understand that history is as much
interpretation as it is a pursuit of the facts. In addition to the excellent textbooks mentioned above, I also
want to recommend the following from two of the pioneers of modern Korean historical studies in the
United States:

Bruce Cumings, [Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History

(Updated)](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Koreas-Place-Sun-History-
Cumings/dp/B00DJFK8Q4/?tag=futur-yon-21) (W. W. Norton 2005)

Carter J. Eckert et. al., [Korea Old and New: A History](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Korea-Old-New-

History-Paperback/dp/B00XDFTQYA/?tag=futur-yon-21) (Ilchokak Publishers 1991)

© Michael Kim

* The availability of this course content by Yonsei University and Future Learn

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