Abstract
The understanding of Korean development in recent decades has suffered from oversimplification in several respects. The assessment of distribution or equality is a case in point. The South Korean experience is widely characterised by the simple formulation of ‘growth with equity’.1 Aside from its analytical weaknesses,2 this argument is sharply contradicted by the intensifying conflicts over the distribution of income and wealth in Korean society. These conflicts arise partly from the Korean people’s strong historical aspirations for equality,3 but they are also grounded in the reality of the highly unequal distribution of economic power which has accompanied Korea’s rapid aggregate economic growth.
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Notes
Irma Adelman, Redistribution with Growth: The Case of Korea Mimeo. (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1973);
Hak Chung, Choo, ‘Economic Growth and Income Distribution in Korea’ in KDI Working Paper 7810 (Seoul: Korea Development Institute, 1978).
For details, see Moon-Ki Bai, ‘An Examination of Adelman’s “Equal Distribution of Income in Korea” with reference to her Thesis Reflected in her World Bank Report’ in Korean Journal of Economics 15 (December 1976) (in Korean);
S. Bhalla (1979) The Distribution of Income in Korea: A Critique and a Reassessment. Mimeo (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1979); and
Dae Hwan Kim, Rapid Economic Growth and National Economic Integration in Korea 1963-78. Unpublished D.Phi. Thesis (Oxford: University of Oxford, 1985) pp. 225–36.
Jae Hyun Choi, Korean Society and Citizens’Power (Seoul: Nanam, 1992) (in Korean) p. 216.
Dae Hwan Kim, ‘Inequality: the Adverse Effect of “Growth Policy”’ in Shin Dong-A 336 (September 1987) pp. 520–32. (in Korean).
Dae Hwan Kim, ‘A Study of Uneven Industrialisation in Korea’ in The Peace Studies 1 (1990a) (in Korean).
John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy (London: Parker, first pub. 1852).
Moon-Ki Bai, ‘The Turning Point of the Korean Economy’ in The Developing Economies 20 (June 1982).
Dae Hwan Kim, ‘The Path of Korea’s Labour Movement: An Examination and a Search’ in Quarterly Thought 3 (Fall 1990b) (in Korean).
FKTU, Report on the Survey of Workers’ Consciousness (Seoul: FKTU, 1990) (in Korean).
Economic Planning Board (EPB), Report on the Survey of Employment Structure (1966)
and National Statistic Office (NSO), Report on the Survey of Employment Structure (1994).
The average wage of college graduates in 1993 is 1.5 times of high school graduates and 1.7 times of middle school graduates. See Ministry of Labour (MOL), Report On the Survey of Wage by Occupation (1994).
Dae Hwan Kim, ‘Uneven Industrialisation and Regional Disparities’ in H. Y. Byun et al., The Road to Economic Democratisation in Korea (Seoul: Beebong, 1992) (in Korean) p. 283.
See Leroy Jones, ‘Chaebol and the Concentration of Economic Power in Korean Development’ in KDI Consultant Paper 12 (Seoul: KDI, 1980);
Walden Bello and Stephanie Rosenfeld, Dragons in Distress: Asia’s Miracle Economies in Crisis (San Francisco: The Institute for Food and Development Policy, 1990) Ch. 3.
Jong-Chul Lim, ‘The Basic Nature and Achievements of Korean Foreign Trade’ in Korean Economic Journal 21 (December 1982) (in Korean).
Yung-Chul Park, South Korea’s Experience with Industrial Adjustment in the 1970s. Mimeo (Bangkok: ILO/ARTEP, 1983) p. 45.
II Sakong, ‘Economic Growth and the Concentration of Economic Power’ in Korea Development Review 2 (March 1980) (in Korean).
Kyu-Uck Lee and Jae-Hyung Lee, The Business Group and the Concentration of Economic Power (Seoul: KDI, 1990) (in Korean).
The figures are based on Kyu-Uck Lee and Sung-Soon Lee, The Business Combination and the Concentration of Economic Power (Seoul: KDI, 1985) (in Korean); and
The Daily Newspaper Company, Korean Company Yearbook (Seoul: 1990).
Chung H. Lee, ‘The Government, Financial Systems, and Large Private Enterprises in Economic Development’ in World Development 20 (1992) pp. 187–97.
According to these data, cited in Chul-Kyu Kang et al., The Chaebol (Seoul: Beebong Publishing Co., 1991) (in Korean) pp. 35, 156, the top 30 held more than 438 million square meters of land and building with a book-value of 13,139 billion won (about 18 billion U.S. dollars) in 1989.
Hereafter, all figures on the contribution and distribution of the political fund, are from Korean Politics Study Group, The Korean Politics (Seoul: Baeksan, 1989) (in Korean) pp. 91–3 and
Byong-Seog Park, ‘An Institutional Approach to the Raising of Political Funds’ in Nam-Young Lee (ed.), The Election in Korea (Seoul: Nanam, 1993) (in Korean), based on the Central Election Management Committee data.
Fredric C. Deyo, ‘Economic Policy and the Popular Sector’ in Gary Gereffi and Donald Wyman (eds), Manufacturing Miracles: Paths of Industrialisation in Latin America and East Asia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) p. 186.
Chul-Kyu Kang, ‘The Pro-Chaebol Policies of the Present Government’. A paper presented at a policy discussion of the Citizens’ Coalition for Economic Justice (Seoul: 2 May 1994) (in Korean).
Byong-Hyu Bae, The Hidden Story of the Business World (Seoul: Dongkwang-sa, 1983) (in Korean) p. 294.
Chung-Ja Kong, A Study on Marriage Networks among Big Businessmen’s Families in Korea Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis (Seoul: Ewha Women’s University, 1989) (in Korean).
for the details, see Ho-Chul Sohn, Korean Politics in Transition (Seoul: Changbee, 1993) (in Korean);
Gil-Hyun Yang, ‘Liberalisation and the Political Participation of the Chaebol in Korea’ in Korea and International Politics 8 (Fall-Winter 1992) (in Korean) pp. 186–90 and
Chang-Hee Nam, ‘Industrial Clientage in Democratic Reform: A New Model for State — Big Business Relations in South Korea’ in Pacific Focus 9 (Spring 1994) pp. 156–7.
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Kim, D.H. (1997). Economic Concentration and Disparities: The Political Economy of Class, Region and the Chaebol. In: Kim, D.H., Kong, T.Y. (eds) The Korean Peninsula in Transition. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25141-4_3
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