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South Korea AGRICULTURE
Unavailable
Figure 10. Employment by Sector, 1980 and 1988
Source: Based on information from Republic of Korea, Ministry
of Culture and Information, Korean Overseas Information Service,
A Handbook of Korea, Seoul, 1982, 489; Byung-Nak Song, The Rise
of the Korean Economy, Hong Kong, 1990, 109; and Europa World
Yearbook, 1990, 2, London, 1990, 1556.
At the start of the economic boom in 1963, the majority of
South Koreans were farmers. Sixty-three percent of the population
lived in rural areas. In the next twenty-five years, South Korea
grew from a predominantly rural, agricultural nation into an
urban, newly industrialized country and the agricultural
workforce shrunk to only 21 percent in 1989
(see
fig. 10).
Government officials expected that urbanization and
industrialization would further reduce the number of agricultural
workers to well under 20 percent by 2000.
South Korea's agriculture had many inherent problems. South
Korea is a mountainous country with only 22 percent arable land
and less rainfall than most other neighboring rice-growing
countries
(see
Land Area and Borders;
Climate
, ch. 2). A major
land reform in the late 1940s and early 1950s spread ownership of
land to the rural peasantry. Individual holdings, however, were
too small (averaging one hectare, which made cultivation
inefficient and discouraged mechanization) or too spread out to
provide families with much chance to produce a significant
quantity of food. The enormous growth of urban areas led to a
rapid decrease of available farmland, while at the same time
population increases and bigger incomes meant that the demand for
food greatly outstripped supply. The result of these developments
was that by the late 1980s roughly half of South Korea's needs,
mainly wheat and animal feed corn, was imported.
Compared with the industrial and service sectors, agriculture
remained the most sluggish sector of the economy. In 1988 the
contribution of agriculture to overall GDP was only about 10.8
percent, down from approximately 12.3 percent the previous year.
Most economists agreed that the country's rural areas had gained
more than they had contributed in the course of
industrialization. Still, the growth of agricultural output,
which averaged 3.4 percent per year between 1945 and 1974, 6.8
percent annually during the 1974-79 period, and 5.6 percent
between 1980 and 1986, was credible. The gains were even more
impressive because they added to a traditionally high level of
productivity. On the other hand, the overall growth of the
agriculture, forestry, and fishing sector was only 0.6 percent in
1987 as compared with the manufacturing sector, which grew 16
percent during 1986 and 1987. During the first half of 1989, the
agriculture, forestry, and fisheries sector grew 5.9 percent, as
opposed to manufacturing's 2.9 percent.
Data as of June 1990
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