ABSTRACT
South Korea’s ‘rags-to-riches’ development, cited as a ‘man-made’ miracle, is miraculous in the sense that in a single generation the country achieved the kind of structural transformation (from a subsistence agrarian economy to a modern industrial power) that today’s industrialized countries took almost a century to achieve. Well into the 1960s South Korea’s economy continued to centre on subsistence agriculture. The infrastructural base built during Japanese colonial rule was mostly destroyed during the Korean War of 1950-1953. Its per capita income of $87 in 1962 was lower than that of Haiti, Ethiopia and Yemen and about 40 per cent below India’s. The population growth of nearly 3 per cent a year in an already densely populated country meant that it had to depend on foreign aid for sheer survival. If ever there was an economic basket case, South Korea in the 1950s was it. Capitalism during the 1950s had done little for South Korea.
