The Synergy of Korean Efforts

At the end of the Korean war (1950–3), and throughout the regime of president Syngman Rhee, the Republic of Korea (hereinafter called Korea, for the sake of brevity) was an achingly backward and abjectly poor nation.1 The industrial facilities were destroyed and the infrastructure was battered by the War. Most of East Asia was, and continues to be, a region of dense population and poor natural resources. As recently as 1960 Korea was a typical low-income developing country with an abundance of unskilled and underemployed labour and inadequate industrial capital stock. The economy was stagnant and its structure had a strong agrarian penchant. Savings and investment were at a low level and the economy grew at an annual average rate of 4.1 per cent (1953–61), a little more than the population growth rate. The macroeconomic policy structure was as confusing and inimical as that of many South Asian or Latin American developing countries, and exports were negligible. The result was that development dynamics were conspicuously missing. Although in terms of per capita income Korea was near the top of the poverty league, the saving grace was that a composite sociological index placed it at a much better off position than majority of the less developed countries (LDCs) of the contemporary period.2