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South Korea The Emergence of a Modern Society
In 1894 a program of social reforms, known as the Kabo
Reforms, was initiated by pro-Japanese Korean officials.
Yangban and commoners were made equal before the law, the
old Confucian civil service examinations were abolished, and
slavery and ch'ommin status was ended. Modern forms of
government and administration, largely borrowed from Japan, were
adopted. In the years before annexation, a self-strengthening
movement and government reforms attempted to regain Korean
control of the pace and direction of change. However, it was only
following the Japanese annexation in 1910 that the rapid social
transformation of Korea began.
Rural society was radically transformed. Traditionally, all
land belonged to the king and was granted by him to his subjects.
Although specific parcels of land tended to remain within the
same family from generation to generation (including communal
land owned by clans and lineages), land occupancy, use, and
ownership patterns often were legally ambiguous and widely
divergent from one part of the country to another. There was no
institution of private property during the Choson Dynasty. The
Japanese, however, conducted a comprehensive land survey between
1910 and 1920 in order to place landownership on a modern legal
footing. Farmers whose families had tilled the same soil for
generations but could not prove ownership in a way satisfactory
to the colonial authorities had their land confiscated. Such land
came into the hands of the colonial government, to be sold to
Japanese land companies, such as the Oriental Development
Company, or to Japanese immigrants. As research by Edward
Graegert has shown, however, the survey also helped to confirm,
or in some cases even to improve, the position of some members of
the existing Korean landlord class. Many were former
yangban who cooperated with the Japanese. Those
yangban who remained aloof from their country's new
overlord often fell into poverty. The farmers themselves either
became tenants or were forced to leave the land. During the
depression of the 1930s, thousands emigrated to the cities or
overseas. Many others fled to the hills to become "fire-field"
(slash-and-burn) farmers, living under extremely harsh and
primitive conditions. By 1936 this last group numbered more than
1.5 million people.
The Japanese built railroads, highways, schools, and
hospitals and established a modern system of administration.
These changes were intended to link the colonial economy more
effectively to that of Japan. The new, modern sector required
technically trained experts. Although the top positions were
invariably occupied by Japanese, Koreans worked on the lower
levels as secondary technical and administrative personnel. Thus,
while the number of Korean high officials in the colonial
administration increased from only 354 to 442 people between 1915
and 1942, the number of junior officials increased from 15,543 to
29,998 in the same period. Japan's industrial development
policies during the 1930s and 1940s, though concentrated in the
northern half of the peninsula adjacent to Manchuria, created a
new class of workers and lower-level industrial managers that
played an important role in the industrial development of South
Korea after 1945.
The great majority of Koreans suffered under Japanese rule. A
large number of farmers were forced off their land after 1910;
industrial workers and miners working for Japanese-owned firms
were often treated little better than slaves. Under colonial
agricultural policies, rice cultivation was maximized, although
most rice was grown for consumption in Japan.
Nevertheless, development under Japanese colonial rule
provided some foundation, however unintentionally, for South
Korea's impressive post-1945 economic growth
(see Korea under Japanese Rule
, ch. 1). A small group of Korean entrepreneurs
emerged who fostered close ties with the colonial government, and
Japanese business interests established family-held firms that
were the precursors of South Korea's present-day chaebol,
or business conglomerates. It is a tribute to their acumen that
these entrepreneurs were able to survive and prosper in a
colonial economy dominated overwhelmingly by Japanese capital.
Three developments after 1945 were particularly important for
South Korea's social modernization. The first was the land reform
carried out by United States and South Korean authorities between
1945 and 1950. The institution of private property was retained,
but the American occupation authorities confiscated and
redistributed all land held by the Japanese colonial government,
Japanese companies, and individual Japanese colonists. The Korean
government carried out a reform whereby Koreans with large
landholdings were obliged to divest most of their land. A new
class of independent, family proprietors was created.
The second development was the great influx from North Korea
and other countries of repatriates and refugees. In the 1945-49
period, between 1.5 million and 2 million Koreans returned to
South Korea from Japan, the northeast provinces of China, and
other foreign countries. With the establishment of a communist
state in North Korea, a large number of refugees fled to South
Korea and were joined by many more during the Korean War. A
conservative estimate of the total number of refugees from the
north is 1.2 million. Most of the northerners settled in the
cities--new recruits for the country's industrial labor force.
The third development was a direct result of the Korean War.
Traditionally Koreans, like their Chinese and unlike their
Japanese neighbors, considered the military to be a low-status
occupation. Korea did not have its own armed forces during the
colonial period, although some Koreans served in the Japanese
military, especially after 1941, and a handful, such as former
President Park Chung Hee, received officer's training. The North
Korean invasion of June 1950 and the three years of fighting that
followed cast the South Korean military establishment into the
role of savior of the country. And since the coup d'état of May
1961 that established Park Chung Hee, the military establishment
has held considerable political power. Roh Tae Woo, elected
president in 1987, was a retired general with close connections
to the military elite.
Universal military conscription of men has played an
important role in South Korea's development, both in political
socialization and in integrating a society divided by strong
regional prejudices. It also has exposed the nation's young men
to technical training and to a disciplined way of life.
During the three decades after Park's 1961 coup d'état, the
goal of the military elite was to create a harmonious,
disciplined society that is both technically advanced and
economically efficient. Economic modernization, however, has
brought social changes--especially in education and urbanization-
-that have had a corrosive effect on the military's authoritarian
view of society and have promoted the emergence of a more
contentious, pluralistic society than many in the military have
found desirable.
Data as of June 1990
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