ABSTRACT
South Korea belongs to the category of temperate climate Asian rice producers, like the northern provinces of Japan and China in and north of the Yangtze River valley. In 1937, towards the end of Korea's period as a Japanese colony, only about a fifth of farm households owned all the land they worked, and over half were pure tenants, leasing in land from relatively large landowners. Chemical fertiliser use has increased rapidly since the 1950s to levels which are now exceptionally high by international standards. The Japanese colonial government developed Korea, like Taiwan, as a supplier of rice for the Japanese population. The post-Independence governments, especially that of President Park Chung-hee, were actively and pervasively interventionist in agriculture as in industry, as had been the Japanese. The South Korean polity and political culture emphasises authority, hierarchy, bureaucratic order, and experience of popular representation is almost wholly lacking.
