The Japanese Lineage of Korea’s “Developmental State”

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Where Do High Growth Political Economies Come From?
The Japanese Lineage of Korea’s “Developmental State”
ATUL KOHLI*
Princeton University, New Jersey
Summary. -While many scholars have sought to analyze South Korea’s economic success, not enough attention has been paid to the impact of Japanese colonialism. Japanese colonial influence on Korea in 1905-45, while brutal and humiliating, was also decisive in shaping a political economy that later evolved into the high-growth South Korean path to development. More specifically, three state-society characteristics that we now readily associate as elements of the South Korean “model” originated during the colonial period: Korean state under the Japanese influence was transformed from a relatively corrupt and ineffective social institution into a highly authoritarian, penetrating organization, capable of simultaneously controlling and transforming Korean society; production-oriented alliances involving the state and dominant classes evolved, leading up to considerable expansion of manufacturing, including “exports;” and the lower classes in both the city and the countryside came to be systematically con-trolled by the state and dominant classes. While there were important discontinuities following WWII. when the dust settled, South Korea under Park Chung-Hee fell back into the grooves of colonial origins and traveled along them, well into the 1980s
Questions about the wide range of (economic) perfor-ment, the current debate bogs down over the interpre- mance of underdeveloped countries today . belong as tation of this role, i.e. over the extent to which state much to history as (they) do to economic analysis. intervention was “market conforming” versus “mar-Sir Arthur Lewis
ket distorting,” or to use a related set of concepts, the extent to which the state “led” rather than “followed”
[We] turn to history and only to history if what we are seeking are the actual causes, sources, and conditions of the market.’
overt changes of patterns and structures in society. Interesting and significant as this debate is, it is Robert Nisbet also incomplete. Much of it revolves around unravel-ing the economic role of the South Korean state and, in turn, tracing the impact of this role on economic out-

1, INTRODUCTION comes. The prior question of why the South Korean state was able to do what it did, and the related genetic

Three decades of sustained, high economic growth issue of the historical roots of the Korean political has made South Korea a “model of development.” economy thus tend to be underemphasized. Since Performance of other developing countries is now there is much to be learned about the Korean “model often judged against that of “East Asian newly indus-of development” by adopting a longer historical per-trializing countries (NICs),” including South Korea. Scholars and policy makers around the world have
become curious: “How did South Korea do it?; “Can *I would like to acknowledge the helpful comments of the others learn from the experience?” A large body of lit- anonymous reviewers and the following: Bruce Cumings. erature has developed -some of it of rather high Anthony D’Costa, Frank Dobbin, Cary Fraser, Stephan
quality -attempting to interpret the Korean political Haggard, Koichi Hamada, Chung-in Moon, James Palais,
Gustav Ranis, Benjamin Schneider, Robert Wade and John economy.’ A central debate in this literature concerns Waterbury. This paper was written during 1992-93, while I the relative roles of the state and of the market in was on sabbatical and, thanks to T. N. Srinivasan. a visitor at explaining South Korea’s economic success. While the Economic Growth Center, Yale University. Financial hardly any sensible observer continues to deny the support from Ford Foundation is also acknowledged. Final state’s extensive role in Korean economic develop-revision accepted: March 15, 1994.
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spective, especially tracing its origins back to its Japanese colonial lineage. this neglect is unfortunate.
For example, few “developmentalists,” if any, ascribe much significance to the continuities that link colonial and postcolonial Korea. This is certainly so among the more strictly economic analysts of South Korean growth experience;? however, somewhat sur-prisingly and unfortunately. this problem also charac- terizes the works of several institutionally sensitive scholars of South Korea. Among the latter, some dis-cuss the colonial period but quickly conclude that the impact was not of lasting significance (e.g., Jones and Sakong, 1980, pp. 22-37). others deny the contribu- tions of this past altogether? and yet others virtually ignore it, presumably because of a view that signifi-cant changes in South Korean economy began only after the adoption of an “export-led model of develop-ment” in the early 1960~.~ Korean scholarship on Korea has its own, albeit understandable, blind spots; the nationalist impulse often leads to a denial of any continuity between colonial and postcolonial periods, lest the contemporary achievements be viewed as a product of a much disliked colonial rule.” Only a handful of Korean specialists, especially those with a strong historical bent, have understood and empha-sized the Japanese colonial roots of the more recent. high-growth Korean political economy.’ Building on the insights of this last group of Korean specialists, I attempt in this essay to reinterpret some specific his-torical materials with the hope of derivjing general lessons of interest to scholars of comparative and international development.
The argument below is that Japanese colonial influence on Korea, in 1905-45, was decisive in shap- ing a political economy that later evolved into the high-growth South Korean path to development. Japanese colonialism differed in important respects from the colonialism of European powers. As late developers, the Japanese made extensive use of state power for their own economic development, and they used the same state power to pry open and transform Korea in a relatively short period. Japanese colonial impact was thus more intense, more brutal and deeply architectonic; it also left Korea with three and a half decades of economic growth (the average, annual growth rate in production was more than 3%) and a relatively advanced level of industrialization (nearly 35% of Korea’s “national production” in I940 origi- nated in mining and manufacturing).* While there were important discontinuities in the postcolonial period, the grooves that Japanese colonialism carved on the Korean social soil cut deep. The decade and a half following the departure of the Japanese was at least chaotic, and often tragic. When the dust settled, however, South Korea under Park Chung-Hee fell back into the grooves of an earlier origin and traversed along them, well into the 1980s. Of course, this was not inevitable: historical continuities seldom are.
Korea had competing historical legacies: e.g., there was the distant legacy of Chosen (i.e. of Korea under the rule of Yi dynasty) of corrupt court politics at the apex; then there were indigenous revolutionary ten-dencies that found expression in North Korea; and there was the possibility of considerable American influence. Moreover, completely new paths could have been charted. Subsequent decisions were thus critical in putting South Korea on a path that reestab- lished historical continuities. Nevertheless, it is diffi- cult to imagine South Korea adopting a growth path that it did without a deeply influential Japanese colo-nial past.
More specifically, I trace below the colonial ori-gins of three patterns that we now readily associate as elements of the South Korean “model.” First, I discuss how the Korean state under the Japanese influence was transformed from a relatively corrupt and ineffec- tive social institution into a highly authoritarian, penetrating organization, capable of simultaneously controlling and transforming the Korean society. This is followed by an analysis of a second pattern, namely, the new state’s production-oriented alliances with the dominant classes. an alliance that buttressed the state’s capacity to both control and transform. Relatedly, it is also important to take note of the struc- tural changes in the economy: not only did the colo- nial economy experience steady growth and industri- alization, but it also became rather heavily export-oriented, including exports of manufactured products. Finally, there was the third pattern of brutal repression and systematic control of the lower classes in both the cities and the countryside. The cumulative impact of these state-class configurations was to help create a framework for the evolution of a high-growth political economy. I also, toward the end of this dis- cussion, briefly suggest -though not develop, leav-ing that for another essay -how these patterns con-tinued into subsequent periods.
It is important to reiterate that the main task of this paper is not to set the historical record straight. That is for historians of Korea; they are already busy doing so and 1am only building on some of their work. Given the importance of the South Korean case in the con-temporary discourse on development, it is important that developmentalists understand what country spe-cialists already know; I thus hope to reinterpret and synthesize some specific materials with general impli-cations. Three sets of general ideas will be debated via the historical materials. First, there are Korea-related comparative questions. For example, how much choice does a developing country really have when adopting a specific development strategy: i.e. to what extent was South Korea a beneficiary of its historical inheritance. as distinct from creating anew a high-growth. export-oriented “model of development‘!” Closely related is the issue of transferability of the Korean “model” across national boundaries: if the roots of contemporary South Korean political econ-omy are indeed as deep as a relatively unique colonial experience, can others really emulate the experience? Second, at a higher level of generality, there are theo- retical issues revolving around the concept of “devel- opmental states”: what characterizes them and where do they come from? Finally, at the most general level, there is at least an implication in this essay that some of the variations we notice today among the more or less dynamic Third World political economies may have some of their roots in a variable colonial past. If so, a further investigation of this analytical claim would require reopening the issue of the colonial roots of the contemporary Third World that has unfortu-nately been lost in the postdependency scholarship on development.

2. THE CONSTRUCTION OF A COLONIAL STATE
(a) The old, “predatory” state
By the time the Japanese gained decisive influence over Korea-say around 1905, after the Japanese vic-tory in Russo-Japanese war of 1904 -the old state within Chosbn was already in an advanced state of disintegration. While it is not necessary to recall his-torical details, a brief understanding of the state-soci- ety links in late Chosen are essential to appreciate changes wrought by Japanese colonial power.‘The Yi dynasty had provided continuous and, for the most part, stable rule to Korea for nearly 500 years. The same intricate state and class alliances that were responsible for this stability, however, also became major constraints on successful adaptation to chang- ing external pressures, especially in the second half of the nineteenth century. For example, the clearest man-ifestation of the powerlessness of a centralized monar-chial state was the continued inability to collect taxes owed to the state on agrarian incomes, especially from the powerful Yangban elite, the landowning-official class of Korea (Palais, 1975). This recurring inability, in turn, came to be associated with several problem-atic political trends: First, the state resorted to squeez- ing the peasantry via “taxation” (e.g., corvee labor and military service), contributing to brigandage and a restive peasant population. Second, the state’s limited resources exacerbated the competition and tensions in what was already a personalized and factionalized elite at the apex of the political pyramid. Finally, financial limitations made it difficult to mobilize any serious military response to growing external pres-sures.
How does one explain powerlessness in a central- ized polity? The leading historian of late Yi Korea, James Palais, traces the roots of this conundrum back to the manner in which the monarchy and the Korean
“DEVELOPMENTAL STATE”
officials-cum-aristocrats, the Yangban, mutually checked each others powers. The power of the Yangban class rested in part on access to hereditary land wealth but also on a close identification with the centralized bureaucracy, which helped both secure socioeconomic privileges and was a further source of wealth and power. Royal authority, in turn, was sel-dom all that great. Being under Chinese suzerainty, Korean emperors did not enjoy the “mandate of heaven” that the Chinese emperors possessed. In addi- tion, the recruitment of the aristocracy to the bureau- cracy via the examination system enabled landed power to be deeply embedded all through the Korean state, checking the scope of Royal authority vis-d-vis the Yangban. I0 While this balance of power was a source of stability for several centuries, as external pressures grew, and along with it the state’s need for taxes and other socioeconomic resources, it also became a major constraint on monarchial power to initiate reforms: The monarchial state, according to Palais, “could not solve the problem of creating ade-quate political authority for the achievement of national goals.” Yi state was thus simultaneously
“centralized and weak.“”
In addition to the limiting balance of power between the monarchy and the Yangban, there were other factors at work that contributed to the Yi state’s ineffectiveness. First, it was not merely the presence of a powerful land-controlling strata in society that limited the state’s capacity. As I discuss below, the colonial state in Korea carved out a different type of ruling alliance with the same landowning class, but with a vastly more effective state. The key factor at work in Yi Korea was thus the direct control that landed groups exercised on state offices (Fairbank, Reischauer and Craig, 1978, p. 307). Second, the Korean monarchy remained to the end a highly per-sonalistic, patrimonial institution. In the words of Cumings (1981) the Korean monarchs were incap-able of acting along “the modern distinction between public and private realms” and thus incapable of designing state-led national goals of economic devel-opment (p. 10). Third, the ruling strata below the monarch was highly factionalized.r2 Such strife in the ruling strata made it difficult to design cohesive responses to growing challenges. Finally, it is impor- tant to note that the reach of the Yi state from the cen- ter to the periphery was rather limited. While provin-cial and county officials were directly appointed from Seoul, each county magistrate was responsible for governing nearly 40,000 people (there being some 330 magistrates for about 12 million Koreans).” Since these magistrates were rotated frequently, they often depended on the well-entrenched Yangban elite for local governance. Moreover, the lower level officials -below the magistrate -were not salaried employ-ees. They were rather a hereditary group who were allowed to collect and keep some local taxes as com- pensation for their service\. These petty functionaries operated virtually as local czars. not easily influenced from above and responsible for the “venality and exploitation of the peasant population” (Lee in Eckert er LII.. 1990. p. 1 I I).

In sum. the ineffectiveness of the Yi state was rooted in part in the pattern of state-class linkages and in part in the design of the state itself. Regarding the latter, a personalistic apex. a factionalized ruling strata, and a limited downward reach of central authorities. were all significant characteristics con-tributing to the state’s powerlessness. This state -weak from the inside and hemmed in by powerful social actors from the outside -contributed little. if any, to sustained economic progress? Worse, when faced with growing security challenges and related fiscal crises, the Yi state turned on its own society, becoming rapacious and predatory. The views of sev- eral historians and observers of the day converge on such a perspective on the precolonial Korean state: programs of the Yi government became “embezzle-ment facilities for a rapacious officialdom” (Lew in Eckert et crl., 1990. p. 179); “maladministration of the native Yi dynasty had affected adversely the whole of Korean public service” (Ireland. 1926. p, 92): “one of the strongest and most fixed impressions made (during my travels to Korea) WI\ that of the well-nigh hopeless corruption of Korean court:“‘i and the Korean govermnent “takes from the people directly and indirectly, everything that they earn ovel and above a bare subsistence. and gives them in return practically nothing.“l(>
Since corrupt and ineffecti\;e states arc indeed a common feature in parts of the contemporary Third World. one may genuinely wonder: how ~a\ Korea’s “predatory” state historically transformed into what some may describe as a “developmental” state?” The impact of Japanese colonial pow’er was decisive in altering both the nature of the Korean state and the relationship of this state to various social classes. The transformation of the state is discussed immediately below and the changing relationship of the state to social classes in subsequent sections,.
The Japanese military victory over the Russians in 1904 marked the emergence of Japan as the major regional power. a power that had been ri\ing ste&ly since the Meiji restoration in the 1860s. Subsequently. Japan. with the acquiescence of Wcstcrn powers. had a relatively free hand in dominating and molding Korea. Japanese motives in Korea. like the motives of all imperial powers. were mixed; they sought to con- trol it politically and to transform it economically lip their own advantage. Security concern\ were probably dominant insofar as Korea had been an ob.jcct of
regional power competition for quite some time (Conroy. 1960). Given the mercantilist nature of Japanese political economy. however, it does not make much sense to raise the old question on imperi-alism of whether security was more important than economic interests. More than in the case of most imperial powers. the Meiji oligarchs of Japan readily associated national power with national wealth and national wealth with overseas economic opportunities (Duus. 1984, pp. 132-133).

Certain unique aspects of Japanese imperialism are essential to note for a full understanding of the colo- nial impact on Korea (Peattie. 1984, pp. 3-60). First, the Japanese had themselves barely escaped being imperialized. As both late developers and late imperi- alists. Japan colonized neighboring states with whom they shared racial and cultural traits; it was as if England had colonized a few, across-the-channel con-tinental states. Proximity meant that many more Japanese ended up playing a direct role in colonial rule. including a much larger role of military and police. than was ever the case in European overseas colonies. The near geographical contiguity and shared cultural and racial traits also implied that the Japanese could realistically consider their rule to be permanent, leading eventually to a full integration of colonies into an expanded Japan. As will be discussed below. this possibility, in turn, influenced both the economic and political strategies of Japan in Korea. especially the
Japanese-initiated industrialization of Korea.
Furthermore. Japanese colonial strategy was
deeply informed by their own successful domestic

reform efforts following the Meiji restoration. Of all the colonizing nations. Japan stands out as nearly the only one with a successful record of deliberate. state-led political and economic transformation. By trial and error the Meiji oligarchs had designed a political economy that was well suited for the task of “catching up” with advanced Western powers. The essential ele-ments of this political economy are well known and can be briefly reiterated: the creation of an effective centralized state capable of both controlling and trans- forming Japanese society: deliberate state interven-tion aimed. first at agricultural development. and Tee- trnd at rapid industrial growth: and production of a disciplined. obedient and educated work force. It was this model of deliberate development. with its empha- si\ on state building and on the use of state power to facilitate socioeconomic change -in contrast say, to the British, who having created a private property regime. waited in vain for Bengali ~ctminclar.s in India to turn into a sheep farming gentry -that moved the Japanejc colonizers. IH In Peattie’s words, much of v, hat Japan undertook in its colonies “was based upon Meiji experience in domestic reform” (Peattie, 1984.
p. 2Y).
It is not surprising that the earliest Japanese efforts in Korea were focused on reforming the disintegrating Chosbn state; both political control and economic transformation depended on it. A fair number of polit- ical reforms had thus in fact been put into place during
1905-10, especially 1907-09, even prior to the formal annexation of Korea in 1910. Subsequently, the decade of 1910-20 was again critical, when, under very harsh authoritarian circumstances, a highly bureaucratized and a deeply penetrating state was con- structed.
A key architect of the early reforms in 1907-09, whose role helps us trace the origins of the design of the new Korean state, was the Meiji oligarch and the former Meiji era premier of Japan, Ito Hirubumi. Ito as a young man had been one of the handful of leaders who had led the Meiji “revolution” and who had sub- sequently participated in the reform efforts that fol-lowed the destruction of Tokugawa Shogunate. Ito had travelled extensively in Europe and had been fas-cinated with Prussian bureaucracy as a model for Japan: the Prussian “model” offered to him a route to Western rationality and modernity without “succumb-ing” to Anglo-American liberalism (Halliday, 1975,
p. 37). Within Japan, Ito in 1878 had “led the cam-paign to make the bureaucracy the absolutely unas-sailable base and center of political power in the state system.” Subsequently, Ito helped reorganize Tokyo University in 1881 as a “school for government bureaucrats” and by 1887, “a basic civil service and entrance apprenticeship based on the Prussian model was installed.“19 With this experience behind him, when Ito was appointed in the early 1900s to run the Korean protectorate, and where his powers as Resident-General were near absolute -“The uncrowned King of Korea” -he was quite self-con-scious of his task: “Korea can hardly be called an organized state in the modem sense; I am trying to make it such” (Ladd, 1908, pp. 435 and 174).

Ito and his successors set out to deliberately con-struct a new Japanese-controlled Korean state. The first task was to gain central control. With superior military power behind them, the Japanese in 1907 dis- mantled the Korean army, repressed those who “mutinied,” incorporated other army officers into a Japanese-controlled gendarmery, and forced the Korean monarch to abdicate. Having captured the heart of the state, the colonial rulers sought to system- atically create a depersonalized “public arena,” to spread their power both wide and deep, and to coopt and/or repress native Korean political forces. For example, the patrimonial elements of the monarchial state were destroyed rather early, and replaced by a cabinet-style government run by Japanese bureau-crats.20 Since the appointments of these and other lower level bureaucrats were governed by “elaborate rules and regulations which, in the main follow(ed) the lines of the Imperial Japanese services,” the new Korean state quickly acquired a “rational” character (Ireland, 1926, p. 104; and H.I.J.M.‘s Residency
“DEVELOPMENTAL STATE”

General, 1909, p. 45); scholarly observers have in retrospect characterized the Japanese colonial civil service as “outstanding,” composed of “hard working and trusted cadres,” who deserve “high marks as a group” (Peattie, 1984, p. 26). Elements of the highly developed, Japanese style of bureaucratic government were thus transferred directly to Korea.
(i) The new civil service
While other colonial powers in other parts of the world also created a competent civil service (e.g., the British in India), the Japanese colonial project was qualitatively distinct; both the extent and the intensity of bureaucratic penetration was unique. There were some 10,000 officials in the Japanese-Korean govem-ment in 1910; by 1937. this number was up to 87,552. More than half of these government officials in 1937, 52,270 to be exact, were Japanese. Contrast this with the French in Vietnam (where, by the way, the pres- ence of the French was already more significant than, say, that of the British in Africa), who ruled a nearly similar sized colony with some 3,000 French; in other words, there were nearly 15 Japanese officials in Korea for every French administrator in Vietnam (Robinson, in Eckert et al., 1990, p. 257). The pres- ence of Korean bureaucrats, trained and employed by the Japanese, was also sizable: nearly 40,000 Koreans qualified as government officials just before WWII. While most of the Koreans did not occupy senior posi-tions in the colonial government, there can be little doubt that, over the four decades of colonial rule, they became an integral part of a highly bureaucratic form of government. Moreover, during WWII, as the demand for Japanese officials grew elsewhere, many Koreans moved higher up in the bureaucratic hierar-chy. I will return below to the issue of continuity: this sizable cadre of Japanese-trained Korean bureaucrats virtually took over the day-to-day running of a trun- cated South Korea, first under US military government and eventually when a sovereign state was formed.
One further characteristic of the colonial govem-ment that needs to be underlined is the successful links that the Japanese created between a highly concen-trated power center in Seoul, and a densely bureaucra-tized periphery. All bureaucracies face the problem of how to ensure that central commands are faithfully implemented by the officials at the bottom rung. This, in turn, requires ensuring that lower level officials respond mainly to those above them in the bureau-cratic hierarchy, rather than to personal interests, or to the interests of societal actors with whom they inter-act. The Japanese in Korea were quite self-conscious of this problem and repeatedly experimented till they arrived at arrangements deemed satisfactory.
Of course, certain circumstances were helpful in establishing authority links between the center and the periphery: ruling arrangements in Seoul were highly authoritarian -the power of the Japanese Governor Generals in both policy making and implementation was absolute and nearly all of them were senior mili-tary men -and Korea was not a very large country (again, for example, note the contrast with the role of the British in India). The Japanese, however, took additional actions.” For example, when confronted with corrupt regional or local officials, the central authorities experimented -in line with “new” insti-tutional economics -with paying these officials higher salaries, especially “entertainment-allow-ance,” with the hope that, if more satisfied, they may perform public tasks better. When this did not work, or at least not fully, the colonial authorities further centralized, leading up to even less discretion, and more rule-governed behavior for lower level officials. These officials in the early colonial period were even required to wear crisp uniforms, replete with swords, so as to distinguish them sharply from an average citi-zen -thus creating a state-society, or a public-pri- vate, distinction through the use of symbolic politics
-as well as to convey the will of the state in the far reaches of the society. When such efforts also failed to secure full compliance, Korean officials would be replaced by the more socialized and complying Japanese officials, at least until more suitable Koreans, who were likely to comply, could be found for the job.
(ii) The poiicr jbrce
In addition to the civil bureaucracy, the other essential arm of the new Korean state that the Japanese helped develop was a well-organized police force. Once again, there is nothing unique about colo- nial powers developing a police force; what is note- worthy here are both the extensive and the intensive nature of police supervision in colonial Korea. The colonial police force was designed on the lines of the Meiji police force insofar as it was highly centralized, well disciplined and played an extensive role in social and economic reforms.-?2 The police force in colonial Korea grew rapidly: from some 6,222 gendarmes and police in I9 IO to 20,777 in 1922 and again to over 60,000 in 1941 (Robinson in Eckert et al., 1990, p. 259). One scholar suggests that at the height of the colonial rule, there were enough police so that the lowest level policeman knew “every man in the vil-lage” (Chen, 1984, p. 225). While senior police offi-cers were normally Japanese, over half the police force was made up of Koreans, often lower class Koreans. These Koreans were trained by the Japanese in police academies, especially established within Korea for the purpose. Records indicate that for every Korean police position there were 30-20 applicants (Chen, 1984, p. 236), suggesting a level of coopera- tion between Koreans and Japanese that probably pains the modern Korean nationalist sentiments. Beyond formal training, the Japanese maintained very close supervision over their police force; for example, during 19 15-20, about 2,000 policemen -or nearly one out of every 10 available policemen -were sternly disciplined every year for transgression of police rules (Chen, 1984, pp. 236-239).
This extensive and closely supervised police force, that penetrated every Korean village, performed numerous functions other than “normal” police duties of law and order maintenance. Powers granted to police included control over “politics, education, reli-gion, morals, health and public welfare, and tax col- lection” (Robinson in Eckert et cd., 1990, p. 259). The police, who presented themselves in military uni-forms, again replete with swords, also had summary powers to judge and punish minor offenders, includ-ing the punishment of whipping. Even in production, local police were known to have “compelled villages to switch from existing food crops” to cash crops and to adopt “new techniques” in rice production so as to facilitate exports to Japan. Moreover, during land sur-veys (conducted during 1910&l 8; more on this below), as a result of which tenancy and conflicts over land increased, local police “always intervened in favor of landlords.“” It is thus not surprising that even a Japanese observer was led to conclude that Terauchi (the first Japanese Governor General of Korea, fol-lowing Ito and formal annexation) and his successors had transformed the “entire Korean peninsula into a military camp.“‘”
One final aspect of the police role concerns the links between the police and local society via local elites. The police successfully utilized the proverbial carrot and stick to incorporate “village elders” and others into a ruling “alliance.” The police thus but-tressed their already extensive powers by working with, rather than against, indigenous authority struc-tures. So armed, the police used the knowledge and influence of the local elites to mold the behavior of average citizens in such diverse matters as, “birth con-trol. types of crops grown, count and movement of people, prevention of spread of diseases, mobilization of forced labor and to report on transgressions” (Chen. 1984, p. 226). The police and many local elites thus came to be viewed and despised by Koreans at large as “collaborationists”; unfortunately for Koreans, while many of the landed elite were indeed eventually elim-inated as a political force (i.e. via land reforms follow-ing the Korean War), much of the colonial police force was incorporated directly into the new state structure of South Korea.

In sum, the personalized and factionalized Yi state with a limited reach in society came to be replaced by a colonial state with considerable capacity to penetrate and control the society; this state was simultaneously oppressive and efficacious. A highly centralised apex with near absolute powers of legislation and execution
-and thus of setting and implementing “national” goals -and a pervasive, disciplined civil and police bureaucracies constituted the cores of the new state.
(iii) The politics ofthe new state
The politics practiced by the new rulers added to the state’s capacity to convey its will to the society. Except for a somewhat liberal interlude in the 1920s for the most part, the political practices of the Japanese colonial state in Korea were brutally author-itarian. For example, Korean newspapers were either suspended or heavily censored, political protest was met with swift retribution, and political organizations and public gatherings were generally banned. Those professing Korean nationalist sentiments were thus either exiled or remained fragmented; while there was latent and scattered sympathy for nationalists and for communists all through the colonial period, a coherent nationalist movement was never allowed to develop.25 The Japanese used “thought police” to detect and eliminate political dissidence, and also developed a “spy system” to buttress the civil and police bureau-cracy that was “probably better developed in Korea than anywhere in the world” (Grajdanzev, 1944, p. 55).
The colonial authorities were quite self-conscious about their use of repression as a means to instill fear in the minds of Koreans and thus to minimize dissi-dence and reinforce bureaucratic control: in order to avoid “restlessness” in the “popular mind,” note gov-ernment reports of the period, it was “essential” to “maintain unshakable the dignity of the government” and “to impress the people with the weight of the new regime” (Government-General of Chosen, 1914, pp. 2-3). When Koreans still resisted, Governor General Terauchi Masatake supposedly responded, “I will whip you with scorpions” (quoted in Peattie, 1984, p. 18), and when eventually the Koreans succumbed, the gloating satisfaction is also obvious in official docu-ments: “they have gradually yielded their obstinate prejudices and their disdainful attitude” (Government-General of Chosen, 1935, p. 8 1).
In spite of the awesome state that the Japanese cre-ated, it would be a mistake to believe that a thorough bureaucratic penetration and politics of fear were the only ruling instruments in the hands of the colonial- ists. There is no doubt that bureaucratic growth enabled the new state to undertake many more eco-nomic activities that contributed to economic growth (more on this below), and that repression enabled the establishment of order, freeing the state elite to focus on other “developmental” matters. Nevertheless, bureaucratic and repressive power are seldom enough to elicit a measure of cooperation -from, at least, some groups in society -that is essential for gener- ating economic dynamism. We must thus also take note of some other, nonrepressive ruling instruments that the new colonial state put to use.
First, a segment of the Korean political elite in the precolonial period was quite favourably inclined toward Japan.26 These Koreans from the political class were both officially and unofficially incorpo-
“DEVELOPMENTAL STATE”
rated into the new system of colonial rule. Second, and relatedly, the colonial state forged numerous implicit and explicit “alliances” with Korean propertied classes. The nature of these turned out to be of critical long-term significance. While I return to a detailed discussion of this issue below, it should be noted here that, on the whole, Korean monied groups -in both the city and the countryside-did not oppose colonial rule. Most of them benefited from this rule and gener- ally went along -some even with enthusiasm-with the colonial project. Third, the Japanese undertook considerable expansion of education, facilitating propaganda and political resocialization. Whereas in
1910 nearly 10,000 students attended some sort of school, by 1941 this number was up to 1.7 million and the rate of literacy by 1945 was nearly 50%. The focus was on primary education and the curricula was designed with the “object” of raising “practical men able to meet the requirements of the state.” 27
To conclude this subsection, the Japanese colo-nialists in Korea replaced the decrepit Yi state with a centralized and powerful state. This was no liberal state; it was more statist vis-&vis the Korean society, and considerably more repressive, than even the statist and illiberal Japanese political economy of the period. Central decision making was highly concentrated in the office of the Governor General. The Governor General’s will, reflecting the imperial design and goals, was translated into implemented policies via the use of an extensive, well-designed and disciplined bureaucracy. The new state also achieved consider-able downward penetration: both the civil and police bureaucracies reached into the nooks and crannies of the society, while continuing to respond to central directives: Korean elites in the localities were incor-porated into the ruling “alliance”; and, when all else failed in the Japanese efforts to control and transform Korea, there existed a well-functioning intelligence service to buttress the state’s supervisory role. While a fuller understanding of how power was generated in this system, and the uses to which it was put, will emerge in due course, it should already be evident as to how the precolonial, ineffective state was trans-formed into a state that -for better or for worse -could get things done.
3. THE COLONIAL STATE, PROPERTIED CLASSES AND ECONOMIC CHANGE
The colonial state in Korea was a busy state. While pursuing the imperial interests of Japan, it evolved a full policy agenda, including the goal of economic transformation of Korea. The broad strategy of trans- formation was two pronged: the state utilized its bureaucratic capacities to directly undertake quite a few economic tasks; and, more important, the state involved propertied groups -both in the countryside and in the cities, and both Japanese and Koreans -in production-oriented alliances leading up to sustained economic change. The results measured by the criteria of growth and industrialization (though not by such other criteria as human rights, national self-determi-nation and fair economic distribution) were a consid- erable success. Since successes generally begets emu-lation and continuity, it is important to analyze the colonial economic strategy.

Two general observations ought to be noted at the outset. First, while the Governor-General in Korea possessed near absolute powers, he was nevertheless an agent of the Japanese imperial government. The colonial state in Korea thus pursued, not Korean, but Japanese needs and interests that changed over time.?” In broad brush strokes, during the early phase, say, the first decade of the colonial rule, Japan treated Korea mainly as a strategic gain that could also be exploited in a fairly classic fashion: exchange of agricultural products for manufactured goods. Subsequently, as Japanese demand for food outpaced its own supply, the colonial state aggressively undertook measures to increase food production in Korea. Manufacturing was discouraged in this early phase, again in a fairly classic fashion, to protect Japanese exports to Korea. Following WWI, however, with swollen company profits, Japan sought opportunities for export of capi- tal and thus relaxed restrictions against production of manufactured products in Korea. At the same time, following the need to coopt nationalistic pressures within Korea, the colonial state also involved selected and prominent Korean businessmen in the growth of manufacturing. Aggressive industrialization of Korea occurred only in the 1930s. This was in part a result of Japan’s strategy to cope with the depression -i.e. to create a protected, high-growth economy on an empire-wide scale -and in part a result of Japan’s aggressive industrialization, again on an empire-wide scale, that reflected national power considerations.‘” Japan was able to switch its imperial policies in Korea frequently and decisively; this, in turn, underlined the highly centralized nature of authority within the Japanese controlled Korean state.
The second related observation concerns the pressures on the Governor-General in Korea to simul- taneously pursue imperial interests and run a cost-effective government. Reading through historical documents of the time, especially the annual reports of the Governor-General in Korea, it becomes clear that, among their various achievements, the colonial authorities in Korea wanted to emphasize their repeated efforts to enhance revenues and to minimize expenditures, especially by rationalizing the bureaucracy.30 Since any shortfall between rev-enues and expenditures within Korea had to be financed by the Japanese Imperial government -and typically, there was a net revenue inflow from Japan to Korea-one presumes that constant and firm pressure was maintained on respective Governor-Generals to boost the cost-efficiency of public ser-vices. Unlike many other governments. the colonial state in Korea did not operate with a “soft budget con-straint.” On the contrary, there was consistent pressure to economize, “hardening” the budget constraint, with significant. positive “trickle-down” effect on the effi- ciency of the bureaucracy, including the economic bureaucracy.
(a) Incrensed state capnci9
The increased capacity of the new colonial state in Korea to directly undertake economic tasks is evident fairly early in the historical record. For example, there was the issue of state capacity to collect taxes. The old Yi state, one may recollect, proved quite incapable of extracting taxes from society, especially revenues from landowners. The contrasting performance of the colonial state is notable. Land revenue in 1905. the year the Japanese influence in Korea started to grow. was some 4.9 million yen; by 1908, this had jumped to
6.5 million yen, or a real increase of some 30% in three years.” Subsequently, numerous other sources of revenue were added to that obtained from land -e.g., railways, post office and customs; and receipts from the ginseng monopoly and from such public undertakings as salt manufacture, coal mines. timber work and printing bureaus -and the jump in revenue intake was phenomenal. Whereas the total revenue in 1905 (land and other revenues) was 7.3 million yen, by 191 1 one year after formal annexation, the total revenue intake was 24 million yen. or an increase of more than 300%.3’ The factors that help explain this increased state capacity were two-fold. First, the colo- nial state. backed by superior coercive power, snapped the stranglehold landowning groups had on the Yi state, pensioning off the Yangban elite, and replacing them by Japanese career bureaucrats: I will return to this issue below. Second. the colonial elite utilized the newly created civil and police bureaucracy to collect taxes. More specifically. as early as 1906, 36 revenue collection officers, again replete with uniforms and swords. were posted all over Korea to identify culti-vated land, owners of the land, and the revenue due from the land (H.I.J.M.‘s Residency General, 1908. Chapter V). While the rate oftaxation on land was not increased, it was regularized. In addition. uniformed revenue officers worked in conjunction with local police officers in the process of tax collection, lest any one forget this newly established separation of state and society, or the willful presence of the new state in society.
The successful land survey that the Japanese con-ducted in Korea during I9 IO-I8 similarly highlighted the efficacy of the new state. The Yi state had repeat- edly discussed such a comprehensive land survey but never carried it out; the bureaucratic capacity was absent, as was the power to confront land controlling groups who wanted to hide the extent of their taxable lands. By contrast. the colonial state made an exhaus- tive land survey a priority. Over a period of eight years the Japanese invested some 30 million yen in the pro- ject (compared, say, to the total revenue intake of the Government-General in 1911 of 24 million yen). The survey “mapped all plots of land, classified it accord- ing to type, graded its productivity and established ownership.“?? While Japanese civil servants super-vised the entire project, Korean landowners cooper-ated and eventually benefited; local land investigation committees, for example, who were responsible for investigating the “ownership, location, boundaries and class of land” were composed of “land-owners themselves” (Government-General of Chosen, 1912,

p. 13). As a result of the survey, the colonial state secured a revenue base and, less obviously, enhanced its control over the Korean agrarian sector by involv- ing the landowning classes as ruling partners. What the Korean landlords lost in terms of autonomy from, and influence over, the traditional Yi state, they made up by, first, securing new, Western-style, legal private property rights and later (as discussed below), by enhanced profits from land (Robinson in Eckert er al., 1990, pp. 266-267).
Over time, the colonial state in Korea undertook numerous other projects of economic value. This is no place for a comprehensive discussion; I simply wish to flag some of the main areas.34 First, the Govem-ment-General invested heavily in infrastructure, so much so that Korea’s roads and railways were among the finest that a developing country inherited from their colonial past. Second, as mentioned above, the Japanese made significant investments in Korea in primary education. Given the long gestation period, however, the returns on this investment were probably reaped, less by colonial Korea, but more by the two sovereign Koreas who inherited a relatively literate labor force. Third, the colonial government ran a num- ber of economic enterprises directly: e.g., railways, communications, opium, salt and tobacco. Judged by the regular financial contribution that these public undertakings made to public revenues, they were run relatively efficiently. Finally, the Government-General played an important role in the overall process of capital accumulation. While I will return to this issue again below, and the direct role of the new colonial state in extracting taxes has already been noted, a few other points also deserve attention. The currency and banking reforms that the new colonial state undertook rather early led to a significant jump in private, institutional savings: e.g., deposits in the Bank of Chosen (Korea) doubled from some 18 mil- lion yen in 1911 to 37 million yen in 1913 and the number of depositors in the postal savings bank went up from about 20,000 in 1909 to 420,000 in 19 13 (the
“DEVELOPMENTAL STATE”
corresponding sums of deposits being 120,000 yen in 1909 and 98 1,000 yen in 19 13) (Government-General of Chosen, 19 14, p. 19). Later during the colonial rule, the Government-General required Koreans to buy government bonds that helped finance the industrial- ization drive of the 1930s. While capital inflows from Japan remained the dominant source, local capital accumulation also increased considerably. The colo- nial state in Korea, even more than the Japanese Meiji state on which it was modeled, became heavily and directly involved in economic tasks, and judged strictly by economic criteria, performed these tasks rather effectively.
More significant than the state’s direct economic role was the indirect role that led up to the involve- ment of wealthy groups in productive activities. The mechanics of how these state-private sector alliances were created are important because similar arrange-ments were later central to South Korea’s phenomenal economic success. The dynamics of change in both the agrarian and industrial sectors thus deserve our attention.
(b) The state and the agrarian sector
The colonial state restructured its relationship with the Korean landed classes. The highest Yangban elite who held offices in the Yi state were pensioned off (Government-General of Chosen, 1911, pp. 18-19). As career bureaucrats took over official functions, the direct control of landed classes on the state weakened. The successful land survey further confirmed the supremacy of the new state because, as a result of it, the capacity of the landed classes to evade the reach of the state had shrunk. In return, however, the state offered the landowners plenty, so as to not only not alienate them, but to make them active partners in exe- cuting the state’s goals. For example, the Japanese introduced a new legal code -based on the Meiji legal code -that created Western-style legal private property, thus securing the control of Korean landed groups over land in perpetuity. While the Japanese in the process ended up owning significant amount of agricultural land in Korea, most Koreans who con-trolled land prior to the arrival of the Japanese main-tained, nay, even expanded their land ownership.35 Moreover, as mentioned above, many among the landed elite were incorporated into local governance, cooperating with and helping local agents of the state maintain control over villages. While students of colo- nialism often distinguish direct and indirect colonial rule, the Japanese political arrangement in Korea uti-lized both forms: direct bureaucratic penetration was buttressed by the authority of local influentials. This arrangement also suggests that, contrary to some recent arguments, the presence of a landowning class does not necessarily inhibit the formation of a power- ful “developmental” state; much depends on the spe- cific relationship of the state and landowners.‘h

The Japanese colonial government periodically made significant efforts to boost agricultural produc-tion, especially Korea’s main product, rice. The underlying motivation was changing Japanese eco-nomic needs: e.g., prior to 1919, the efforts to boost production were minimal. Following a rice shortage and related riots in Japan in 1918, a major plan to expand rice production in Korea was implemented. The success on this front contributed to “over produc- tion” and following a glut and pressures from Japanese rice producers, all plans to increase rice pro- duction were cancelled in 1933. Again, however, the war with China in 1938-39 created food shortages in Japan and Korea was “resuscitated as a granary of the Empire.“37
During the early phase the Japanese focused their efforts on land improvement, especially on irrigation, drainage and reclamation of arable land. The resulting increase in production was not huge and resulted both from extensive and intensive efforts; e.g., increase in rice production during 1910-24 averaged around
1.5% per annum and land productivity in the same period improved at about 0.8% per annum (Suh, 1978,
p. 73, Table 33). Subsequently, when rapid increase in rice production became a goal, Korea’s Japanese rulers utilized the knowledge acquired during the Meiji transformation and concentrated their efforts on spreading the use of improved seeds, fertilizer and irrigation. The gains were significant: the percentage of paddy land using improved seed doubled during 19 15a0, reaching 85%; fertilizer input expanded 10 times during the same period (Suh, 1978, p. 77, Table 34); and during 1919-38 land under irrigation increased annually by nearly 10% (Suh, 1978, p. 73, Table 33; and Ishikawa, 1967, pp. 84-109). As a result, rice production during 1920-35 grew at nearly 3% per annum and nearly two-thirds of this growth resulted from improvements in land productivity.‘x The overall rate of increase in rice production per unit of land for the colonial period (1910-40) averaged a respectable 2% per annum (compare this, for example, with India’s post-Green Revolution -say, 1970 to present-rates of productivity increase in cereal pro-duction; they have been only a little higher than 2% per annum). While some of these improvements may have been a “spontaneous” response to food shortages and higher prices in Japan, it is nevertheless difficult to imagine a relatively quick increase in supply with-out significant public efforts, especially in providing new seeds and in facilitating the spread of fertilizer.
It is a sad fact that increases in production in Korea did not lead to improvement in food consumption. Bulk of the increased production ended up in the export market and imported goods did not become consumption items for the vast majority. As a well documented study concludes, “per capita use of food grains as a whole declined substantially after the early years of the colonial period.” The same author points out that this disjuncture between production and con-sumption was a result of several causes, but mainly due to a combination of population growth and few nonagricultural opportunities that increased the bur- den on tenants and on small farmers (Sub, 1978, pp. 86-87). If there was steady growth in production but the consumption for the majority of the population declined, given the considerable inequality in land ownership, it is likely that the incomes of landowning groups mushroomed. Other available evidence is con- sistent with this proposition: the rates of return on agricultural investment were very high for most of the period; income inequalities widened; and, as noted above, there was rapid growth of small depositors in saving institutions. The general point is that Korean landowning groups did rather well under colonial gov-ernment; they became part of an implicit but comfort- able ruling alliance.
Three other characteristics of the changing agrar-ian sector are noteworthy. First, Japanese corporations and entrepreneurs ended up owning large tracts of Korean agricultural land -anywhere from one-quar- ter to one-third of all the arable land. This was a result of a conscious government policy that began with the hope of attracting Japanese immigrants to Korea, but when that goal met with only limited success. Japanese corporations became heavily involved. Especially significant as a landowner was the infa-mous Oriental Development Company (e.g., see Moskowitz, 1974), which, like most other Japanese landowners, leased lands to tenants, collected rents in kind, most often rice, and sold the rice in the export market back to Japan. The rate of return on such activ- ities was high, higher than in Japan, and many a for- tunes were made (Suh, 1978, p. 85, Table 39). From our standpoint, the direct involvement of the Japanese in Korean agriculture helps explicate two points: the mechanics of how the more advanced techniques of agricultural production may have been transferred from Japan to Korea: and the mechanics underlying “forced exports,” whereby Japanese landowners sold rice grown in Korea back to Japan directly.
A second characteristic of the changing agrarian sector was its heavy export orientation. For example, while total Korean rice production during the colonial period nearly doubled, rice exports to Japan during the same period increased six times (Suh, 1978, p. 92, Table 43). In addition. while the overall economy of the Japanese empire was protected, trading within the empire was relatively free of tariffs and other restric-tions. Rapid growth of exports to the metropole with a more advanced agricultural sector thus points to an additional source -the quintessential source of com- petition -that must have also contributed to sus-tained improvements in agricultural productivity. Finally, the geography of the changing agrarian scene is worthy of attention. Rice production and Japanese ownership of Korean land were both more concen-trated in the southern half of Korea. Bulk of rice exports also originated in the South. The southern half of Korea thus developed a relatively productive agri-culture during the colonial period.

To conclude this discussion on the changes in the agrarian sector, two developments of long-term con-sequence need to be underlined. The nearly obvious point is that a productive agriculture was a necessary component of rapid economic growth, first during colonial Korea, and later, even more prominently, in sovereign South Korea. While many developing countries, such as in Africa, are still attempting their agricultural revolution, and others, such as India and the Philippines, hailed the Green Revolution from the mid- 1960s onward, Korea was already undergoing a biological revolution in agriculture in the first half of this century. Just before WWII, rice yields in Korea were approaching Japanese yields, which were then among the highest in the world (e.g., if the US yields in 1938 were 100, Japan’s were 154 and Korea’s 111) (Grajdanzev, 1944, p. 87; and Ishikawa, 1967, p. 95, Charts 2-5). Rapid increase in agriculture production, in turn, provided both food and inputs to sustain an industrial drive on the one hand, and on the other hand, yielded high incomes and savings that found their way back into a growing economy. A decade hence, after land reforms were implemented in South Korea, the productive agricultural base and related incomes also contributed to the emergence of a domestic market for manufactured goods.
The other less obvious legacy concerns the “model of development” that undergirded the agrarian trans-formation. As in Meiji Japan, but even more so, the colonial state in Korea established its superiority as the key actor that would direct economic change. The state then employed various carrots and sticks to incorporate the propertied groups in a production-ori- ented alliance. A key focus of the state’s efforts was improving the technology of production, namely, bet-ter seeds, fertilizer and irrigation. Even after decolo-nization, these efforts left behind a bureaucratic infra-structure that was adept at facilitating technology-intensive agricultural development. Moreover, public subsidies from the colonial state helped improve the profitability of private producers, as well as produc-tivity and production. This pattern of state and proper- tied class alliance for production, centered around technology and other public subsidies, would of course repeat itself in subsequent periods, and in numerous other economic activities, especially in industry, to which I now turn.
(c) The .state and industrialization
The extent of Korea’s industrialization during the colonial phase was both considerable and nearly
“DEVELOPMENTAL STATE” I279
unique in the comparative history of colonialism: the average, annual rate of growth in industry (including mining and manufacturing) during 1910-40 was nearly 10%; and by 1940, nearly 35% of the total com- modity production originated in the industrial sector (Suh, 1978, p. 48, Table 11; and p. 46, Tables 17 and 18). While analyzing the why and how of this experi- ence below, as well as its long-term significance, the main point is not that South Korea somehow inherited a relatively industrialized economy. It did not! A fair amount of the heavy industry was located in the north and significant industrial concentrations were destroyed during the Korean war. Nevertheless, a war- destroyed economy, with an experience of rapid industrialization behind it, is quite different than a tra- dition-bound, nearly stagnant, agrarian economy.3y I will return below to the issue of the creation of a trained and disciplined working class. At the apex of the social pyramid, and from the standpoint of the colonial legacy, several issues of long-term signifi-cance deserve our attention here: the style of develop- ment, especially a state-dominated, state-private sec-tor alliance for production and profit that emerged under Japanese rule; the emergence of a significant entrepreneurial strata among Koreans; and a growing economy whose structure was already heavily export oriented.
The Japanese approach to Korea’s industrializa-tion went through three more or less distinct phases. During the first decade of the colonial rule, Japan sought to protect Korean market as an outlet for Japanese manufactured goods. Rules and regulations were thus created to inhibit the start up of new facto-ries in Korea by both Japanese and Korean entrepre-neurs. The fact that annual growth rates in the manu-facturing sector during this decade still averaged a respectable 7%, reflected the very low starting base. This growth had several components. First, there were the new public sector investments in power, railways and other infrastructure. The private sector growth originated mainly in food processing industries -especially rice mills-that were initiated by Japanese migrants with the hope of selling rice back to Japan. Exchanging Japanese manufactured goods for Korean rice and other primary products was, of course, the ini- tial colonial policy. The Government-General thus helped Japanese entrepreneurs start up these mills by providing both financial and infrastructural support. Finally, some of this early growth also involved the participation of Koreans. Small-scale manufacturing did not require the permission of the Govemment-General. Moreover, incomes of landowning Koreans had started to rise and not all of their demand could be met by Japanese imports. Emulating the Japanese migrants, Koreans set up small industries (often called household industries in Japanese colonial documents; they employed l&20 workers) in such areas as metals, dyeing, paper making, ceramics, rubber shoes, knitted cotton socks and sake and soy sauce. The num- ber of small factories thus increased from 15 1 in 19 10 to 1.900 in 1,919; 971 of these 1900 factories were owned by Koreans (Park, 1985, pp. 16-18).

WWI transformed Japan from a debtor to a credi- tor country. With swollen company profits, the
Japanese imperial government sought opportunities
for Japanese capital overseas, including in Korea.
Restrictions on manufacturing in Korea were abol-

ished and thus began a second phase in Korean indus-trialization. Japanese investors did not rush in. The competitive pressure from Japanese manufactured goods was considerable and the Government-General wanted to encourage complementarities rather than competition between Japanese exporters to and Japanese investors in Korea. The colonial state sup-ported a select few Japanese investors by helping them chose areas of investment, providing cheap land, raising capital for investment, guaranteeing initial profits via subsidies and by moving workers to out-of- the-way locations. As a result, major business groups such as Mitsui and Mitsubishi moved into Korea; oth-ers followed. The average, annual rate of growth in industry during the 1920s was over 8%. A significant component of this was Japanese private investment in textiles, some in processing of raw materials and some rather large scale investments in mining, iron, steel, hydroelectric power, and even shipbuilding. The num- ber of factories employing more than 50 workers went up from 89 in 1922 to 230 in 1930 (Park, 1985. p. 42).
Korean participation in this second phase, while a distant second to the role of Japanese capital was not insignificant, Relatively small-scale. Korean “house-hold industries” continued to mushroom. Their growth reflected several underlying trends: rising demand resulting from growing incomes of wealthy Koreans and Japanese in Korea, as well as economic growth in Japan; the role of Japanese factories as “Schumpeterian innovators” that were followed by a “cluster” of Korean imitators; and forward and back- ward linkages created by Japanese investments (Chung, 1973, p. 93). Moreover, after the Korean nationalist outburst in 1919, the colonial government liberalized its ruling strategy for several years and sought to coopt some wealthy Korean businessmen. Enterprising Koreans with initial capital -often with roots in land wealth -were thus allowed to enter medium to large-scale trade and manufacturing. Those willing to cooperate with the Government-General were also provided credit, subsidies, and other public supports. Of the 230 factories that employed more than SO workers in 1930,49 thus came to be Korean owned (Park, 1985, p. 42). South Korean nationalist historiography often underestimates the level of cooperation between Japanese colonial state and native Korean capital. Revisionist historians. however, have now documented the extensive nature of such cooperation (Eckert, 199 1: and McNamara.
1990). In the words of Eckert, “Korean capitalism
came to enjoy its first flowering under Japanese rule and with official Japanese blessing” (Eckert, 1991, p. 6). Major Korean chaebols, such as Kyungbang -the most prominent Korean group dur- ing the colonial period, that began in textiles -Kongsin Hosiery. Paeksan Trading Company, Hwasin Department Store and Mokpo Rubber Company thus got started during this period.?”
During the 1930s and well into WWII, Korea underwent very rapid industrialization. The rate of industrialization hastened and the process acquired considerable depth during this phase. The annual, average rate of growth of industry was nearly 15% and a significant component of new growth originated in heavy industries, especially chemical industry. The moving force behind these developments was, once again, government policies. As the Western world went into a depression, and protected economies sprouted, Japan aggressively sought growth by creat- ing an import-substituting economy of sorts on an empire-wide scale (Schumpeter, 1940, Chs. XXI. 3 and XXII. 8). After annexing Manchuria in 193 1, moreover, Korea became an advanced military supply base for the Japanese war efforts in China. The Korean economy was thus developed by the colonial govem-ment as part and parcel of an empire-wide strategy to promote rapid growth, with a potential war always in mind.
The development of hydroelectric power in north- ern Korea during the 1920s and early 1930s had brought down costs of electricity and thus barriers to starting new factories. Raw materials such as coal and iron ore were also concentrated in the same part of Korea, reducing transportation costs. With wages for workers nearly half of that in Japan, and absolutely no labor protection laws (more on this below), “market conditions” for investment in Korea, especially in northern Korea, were far from adverse during the 1930s. There was also a “push” factor at work: the Japanese imperial government had tightened control on Japanese industry within Japan, while giving business a freer hand elsewhere in the Empire. Nevertheless, direct role of the Government-General in encouraging business into Korea was essential. The colonial state periodically laid out its industrial policy, indicating the preferred direction of economic change, especially given war planning, where the government expected demand to grow. Moreover, government and business cooperated to an extent that contours of cor- porate policy were ‘*indirectly fixed’ by the govern-ment’s economc plans (Eckert, 199 1, p. 73). Another analyst notes that “adaptability to state economic pri-orities was a prerequisite for successful large-scale enterprise” in colonial Korea (McNamara, 1990, p. 9).
The Government-General utilized several eco-nomic and nonecomonic instruments to ensure com-pliance with its preferred economic direction. First.

the colonial state kept a “tight control on the colony’s financial structure” (Eckert, 199 I, p. 73). The Chosen Industrial Bank, which helped finance new invest-ments, and which had controlling interests in a num- ber of diverse industries, was controlled by the Government-General. This was a critical issue for Korean investors who had no other independent source of credit. Even for Japanese zaibatsu, who could raise some of their finances from corporate sources in Japan, cooperation with the state was important; for example, the Government-General floated compulsory savings bonds within Korea as a way of helping Japanese companies finance some of the gigantic investment projects (hydroelectric power and fertilizer plants) in northern Korea. Second, there were the perennial subsidies; one analyst estimates that these were of the order of 1%of “GNP” per year (Chung, 1973, p. 91). These were used selectively to promote government’s priorities. For example, the highest subsidy for a time was provided to Mitsubishi to encourage gold mining; the Japanese imperial gov-ernment needed the gold to pay for such strategic imports from the United States as scrap iron, copper and zinc4’ The next largest subsidy was provided to producers of zinc and magnesium, products necessary for manufacturing aeroplanes. And so on (Grajdanzev, 1944, pp. 138-140). Tax exemptions were similarly used discriminately to both encourage and direct economic activity.
While it is difficult to assess the significance of noneconomic factors in this state-directed, state-busi-ness alliance, they are nevertheless worth noting. The Governor-General would periodically exhort busi-nessmen to eschew narrow “capitalistic profits and commercial self-interest” and to consider the eco-nomic “mission” of Korea from the standpoint of the “national economy.” The direction of influence between the state and business is also nicely captured by the fact that both Japanese and Korean business-men referred to the Governor-General as j[fii (a loving father), highlighting the benevolent upper hand of the state. Again, in the words of Eckert, businessmen were intricately incorporated into the policy making process and what they lost in “autonomy,” they made up for “magnificently” by way of “corporate profits.“42
A few specific examples of government-business cooperation will further help flush out the nature of this mutually convenient alliance. The example of government subsidies for Mitsubishi to encourage gold mining has already been noted. Mitsui was similarly granted the ginseng monopoly by the Government-General in exchange for a healthy share of the sprawling profits as taxes on the monopoly. The case of the smaller Onoda cement factory has been studied in detail and is interesting (Park. 1985, pp. 83-99). The Government-General discovered large limestone deposits in Korea during its surveys. This
“DEVELOPMENTAL STATE”
information was provided to cement manufacturers in Japan. The Government-General also indicated its needs for cement within Korea. thus encouraging Onoda to invest in Korea. Most important. the Government-General laid the ground work for Onoda’s expansion by ordering provincial governors to buy cement from Onoda factories for all govern- ment construction projects during the agricultural expansion phase in the 1920s and regularly set aside nearly 10% of the annual budget intended for agricul- tural production projects for purchase of this cement.
The level of cooperation between the Government- General and colonial Korea’s largest Japanese busi-ness group, Nihon Chiss6, was so intricate that it is difficult to tell where the public efforts ended and pri- vate efforts began. For example, the preliminary work for the construction of hydroelectric power plants -such as the necessary surveys, choice of location, soil tests -was conducted by the Government General. Private energies of Nihon Chisso were then tapped but, again. the Government-General played a critical role in capital accumulation by putting at the com-pany’s disposal the service of government controlled Industrial Bank, and by floating savings bonds. The government further helped move workers from the south to the labor-scarce northern region, where power generators were to be located. and subse-quently remained deeply involved in the pricing and distribution of electrical power. What the government got out of all this collaboration was a ready supply of cheap electricity in Korea which, in turn, became the basis for rapid industrialization. From Nihon Chisso’s point of view, hydroelectric power was only one of numerous projects that the company undertook in Korea. What it did buy in the process was enormous goodwill of the Government-General that subse-quently was translated into opportunities for expan-sion in a number of other lucrative fields, such as nitrogen and fertilizer production.
Several of the larger Korean Business groups also benefited from a close cooperation with the Government-General. For example, new research has documented how the largest Korean business group, Kyongbang, financed its investments with the help of the Government-General (Eckert, 1991). The subsi-dies provided by the government during 1924-35 added up to nearly “one fourth of the company’s paid-up capital in 1935” (p, 84). Furthermore, the main source of finance was loans from the government-con- trolled Chosen Industrial Bank. Personal relationships of key actors helped secure the bonds between Kyongbang, the Industrial Bank and the Government- General. The terms of the loans were very favorable, indicating a comfortable and close relationship between the colonial state and a Korean business group. Another research similarly documents the close cooperation between the colonial state and the Min brothers in the field of banking and Pak Hung-sik in commerce; these ventures eventually matured into such major Korean chaebols as the Hwasin Department Store (McNamara, 1990).

Within the framework of a war economy, the planned government-business cooperation became the basis of very rapid industrialization of Korea dur-ing 1930-45. During some years the rates of growth wre especially breathtaking: for example, during 1936-39, industrial production more than doubled. By the early 1940s agricultural and industrial production were nearly at par (both providing some 40% of the national production); and by 1943, heavy industry provided nearly half of the total industrial production (Park, 1985, p. 51, Tables I I and 12). Some specific patterns within this overall economic transformation also deserve our attention, especially because they proved to be of long-term significance.
First, the colonial state preferred to work with large business groups. Following the Meiji model, but with a vengeance in Korea, the Government-General utilized various means to encourage the formation of large-scale business enterprises: larger groups enjoyed preferred interest rates on credit, lower charges on electricity, direct price supports, and indi- rect subsidies such as lower transportation costs on government-controlled railways. Nearly two-thirds of the total production in the late 1930s was thus pro-duced by ony a handful of Japanese zaibatsu in Korea. Since the Korean, family-centered, but gigantic enter-prises also came into their own under this regime, herein may lie the origin of chaebols.43
It is important to underline a second pattern, namely, that a significant strata of Korean entrepre-neurs emerged under the colonial auspices. Many of these would go on to establish such major chaebols of modem South Korea as Samsung, Hyundai and Lucky. If judged mainly by the proportion of total private capita1 or of large enterprises that Koreans owned, the Korean presence in comparison to that of the Japanese appears minuscule.““ As has been pointed out by others, however, this approach is mis- leading. A significant minority of firms (nearly 30%) were owned jointly by Koreans and Japanese. More important from the standpoint of the emergence of an entrepreneurial class was the scale of Korean partici-pation by 1937: “there were 2,300 Korean run facto-ries throughout the industrial spectrum, and about I60 of these establishments employed over 50 workers” (Eckert, 1991, p. 55). Since these figures are for all of Korea, and since it is fair to assume that most of these must have concentrated in the South after the commu- nists took over the northern half, one may observe with some confidence that colonialism left behind a considerable density of entrepreneurship in South Korea.
A third pattern concerns the geographical distribu-tion of industry. Those wishing to deny continuities with the colonial period again point to the fact that much of the industry was located in the north and was thus not inherited by South Korea. This is partly true, insofar as the largest chemical and other heavy indus-tries were indeed located in the northern provinces. A number of qualifications, however, are also needed. The chemical, metal and electricity-generating indus-tries. that were concentrated in the North, constituted
30.8 and 2.2% respectively of the total industrial pro-duction in I 938.Js That adds up to some 40%. leaving a good chunk for the South. More than half of the total industry was probably located in the South. The nature of southern industries was also distinct; they tended to be in such fields as food processing, textiles, machine and tools and tobacco related industries. By contrast, the industries in the north were highly capital inten-sive, high-cost production units that were not well integrated with the local economy. Northern indus-tries were much more likely to evolve into “white ele-phants,” requiring continuous protection, rather than into nimble, labor-intensive exporters of consumer products.
The last pattern that needs to be noted concerns the deep ties that came to link colonial Korean and Japanese economies. This pattern is, of course, not unique to Japan and Korea; it tends to characterize many metropoles and their colonies. What is unique, however, is the degree to which Korea was already an exporting economy, and the degree to which it was already exporting manufactured products to Japan during the colonial phase. If the average “foreign trade ratio” for a country of the size of Korea in 1938-39 was 0.24, Suh (1978) estimates that Korea’s foreign trade ratio in those years was around 0.54, suggesting that Korea was exporting &vice as much as any other comparable economy. Moreover, 43% of these exports were manufactured goods (Suh, 1978, pp. 120-121, Table 58). How many other developing countries in the world emerged from colonialism with this type of an economic profile? Critical to note here is not only the structure of the economy that was inherited by South Korea, but also the psychological legacy: whereas most developing countries emerged from WWII with a distrust of open economies -because they either associated openness with stagna-tion (as in India), or import substitution with success-ful industrial growth (as in Brazil) -many South Korean elites came to associate, rather early, an export orientation with a high-growth economy.
To sum up this section, the highly authoritarian and bureaucratic state that the Japanese helped con-struct in colonial Korea turned out to be a rather effi-cacious economic actor. The state utilized its bureau- cratic capacities to directly undertake numerous economic tasks: anywhere from collectiong more taxes, to building infrastructure, to undertaking pro-duction directly. More important, the state incorpo-rated property-owning classes in-production-oriented alliances. The colonial state was highly purposive: it put increasing production near the top of its priorities. Propertied classes were offered various rewards -especially, handsome profits -for cooperating with the state in fulfilling this economic agenda. The state, in turn, utilized numerous means -including promo-tion of technology, control over credit, subsidies, cap-ital accumulation, and even noneconomic exhorta-tions -to ensure compliance from both Korean and Japanese landlords and businessmen. As a result of this state-business alliance, the economy was success-ful in exporting manufactured goods. Moreover, as documented by revisionist historians, a substantial strata of Korean entrepreneurs developed, who either flourished while cooperating with the state, or who wished for larger government support so they could also flourish. In either case, a “model” of development

-
inspired by Meiji Japan, but also transformed in a colonial setting -was in the making that would situate a state-directed economy with state-business alliance at the heart of the strategy of transformation.
4. THE COLONIAL STATE AND THE LOWER
CLASSES

The colonial authorities sought to transform Korea in accordance with Japanese imperial needs. Controlled involvement of the lower classes -peas-ants and workers -was essential for the success of this project; and both the colonial state and the proper- tied classes collaborated to ensure their compliance. While historical studies of lower classes in colonial Korea are meager-and as they become available, we may well be led to change our minds -the scattered evidence that is available suggests that both peasants and workers lived highly constrained lives, deriving few benefits from Korea’s rapid economic transfor-mation. These outcomes, moreover, were part of a deliberate plan that served important political and eco- nomic interests. From a political standpoint, the highly repressive and penetrating colonial state suc-ceeded in imposing order on Korean society; this freed the state to focus its political energies in the pur- suit of a narrow, production-oriented agenda. On the economic front, incomes and wages generally lagged behind productivity gains, facilitating higher prof-itability, savings and investments. Moreover, since much of the growth was export oriented, lagging incomes and the limited mass demand did not become a constraint on growth.
Since repression and exclusion of the lower classes was integral to the colonial political economy, and since critical components of this “model,” especially the harsh political control of the working class, con-tinued well into the future, it is important to analyze the structure and the dynamics of the labor-repressive strategy. As far as trends in the colonial countryside were concerned, recall that precolonial, Yi Korea was
“DEVELOPMENTAL STATE”
hardly a haven for the lowly tenants, peasants or oth- ers at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Yi Korea was a slave society, at least until 1800,and even though the practice of slavery declined sharply through the 19th century, it was the Japanese who abolished slavery in Korea. The recurring fiscal crises of the Yi state had also led Korean rulers to squeeze the peasantry, espe-cially via indirect taxation, thus contributing to mis- ery, rebellion and brigandage. What the Japanese did in this situation was rationalize the strategies of both extraction and control.
While well-organized gendarmes subdued pockets of openly rebellious peasants, and continued to do so for quite some time, bulk of the peasantry was system-atically brought under state’s domination. First, the legalization of private property in the hands of land- lords, and a regularization of land rents, created a legitimate basis for tenancy as the modal relationship adjoining the tiller and the landowner. While tenancy had existed in Korea for a long time, given steady pop- ulation growth, tenancy increased throughout the colonial period; toward the end of the period, nearly 70% of farming households worked under tenancy arrangement of one type or another (Robinson in Eckert ef al., 1990, p. 307). And as most students of agrarian socieites understand, tenancy as the main mode of production makes tenants dependent on landowners, and dependencies tend to be especially severe where tenants are not legally protected, where attempts to forge tenant organizations are met with swift retribution, and where the weight of the state is mainly behind the landowners.
The Japanese strategy for controlling the peasant population was twofold: direct and effective down-ward penetration of the state; and incorporation of landowning or other influential local groups as ruling allies. Both of these themes have been discussed above. To the best of my knowledge, there are no detailed studies available (at least not in English lan-guage) as to how this system worked in practice. espe-cially from the viewpoint of the peasant. As far as one can make out, while sporadic peasant rebellion never died out, the ruling strategy was effective at establish- ing a repressive order.46 In addition to severe eco-nomic dependencies, which sap the rebellious energy of any social group, the effectiveness of control rested on a combination of direct and indirect rule. The tra- ditional system of influence within villages, as well as of information flows, was buttressed by a well-orga- nized bureaucracy: local police with uniforms and telephones; tax collectors, also replete with uniforms; and an intelligence service that periodically prepared reports for the provincial and central governments on a wide variety of issues.
The Korean working class originated under Japanese rule. While Korea was still largely an agrar- ian country in the 1940s (more than 70% of the popu- lation still derived its livelihood from agriculture), a considerable working class had also come into being by then. For example, if there were less than 10,000 industrial workers in 1910, the population of indus- trial workers had reached 1.3 million in 1943 (Park, 1985. Part I). Assuming a minimum family size of four, a good 207~ of the population must have thus depended on industrial work for their livelihood. Moreover, another 15% of Koreans lived outside of Korea in the Japanese empire, a significant minority working as unskilled urban labor in Japan and some in Manchuria. Since many of the workers within Korea had been moved from the populated south to factories in the north. and since most of the Koreans working in the Empire returned to Korea when the Empire disin-tegrated, a significant minority of the population in colonial Korea found itself moved around and uprooted from its traditional society niche.47

The colonial state collaborated with both Japanese and Korean capitalists to devise the structures of con- trol for this working class. The state provided the broad framework, which, in its essence, was brutally simple: attempts to create labor union were prohib-ited: trespasses were met with severe retribution; and few, if any, laws existed to regulate and protect work-ers (Grajdanzev, 1944, p. 182). While these restric-tions did not fully succeed in eliminating unionization attempts and even strikes (Park, 1985, pp. 60-68; Asagiri. 1929; and Chen, 1930) -especially in the somewhat more liberal 192Os, and again in the late 193Os, when with a war economy, labor demand and thus labor’s bargaining power increased -they do help underline the highly anti-labor stance of the colo- nial state.
Within this broad framework, individual compa-nies had a fairly free hand in setting down labor man-agement practices (at least until the war years, when the state actively got involved in the control and mobi- lization of labor). Not surprisingly, Japanese compa-nies. such as the Onoda cement factory -which, as already noted. has been studied in detail -adopted a Japanese labor management style.48 Japanese man-agers sought to create a skilled, disciplined, and hier- archically organized work force in exchange for decent wages -that were often higher than earnings in both Korean-owned factories and in agriculture. but lagged way behind the steady productivity gains -and job security. Young Koreans of peasant origins, with only little education, were hired at a rather early age (say I X-22). provided on-the-job training, occu-sionally sent to Japan for more specialized experience, punished severely for lack of punctuality or diligence. rewarded for loyalty and steady performance. and for those who survived the various tests and hurdles. given assurances of continuous service pension and retirement fund benefits. The carrots and sticks appear to have been quite successful: in this one specific case, at least, over a few decades. young Korean peasants were transformed into “Onoda men.” who, in spite of such social problems as being treated as inferior to Japanese workers, took pride in their skilled industrial work in a Japanese company.
Since there is very little research available that does not depend on company documents, one has to be wary of how “satisfied” and “loyal” Korean workers really were. There was very little real increase in wages throughout this period of high growth. Moreover, when economic opportunities increased during the hypergrowth of the 1930s. workers voted with their feet: e.g., the rate of turnover in the Onoda cement factory during the 1930s rose sharply as skilled workers took their skills elsewhere for higher wages (Park, 1985, p. 142). Most important, workers were totally prohibited from forming any organiza-tions of their own. Any efforts were met with dis-missal, arrest and a permanent police record. Industrial relations in colonial Korea were thus “absolutely one sided,” favoring the management (Park, 1985. p. 142). Workers were closely super-vised. The factories themselves were “very closed. isolated, and protected place(s).” The work place was “closed to outsiders by a wire fence, the constant patrol of its guards and the availability of police pro-tection in case of an incident.” Finally, closing the state and company cooperation loop. the Japanese management “kept radical elements out by tight inspection and in doing this they were fully supported by government policy and a strong police posture” (Park, 1985, p. 184).
Worker’s conditions in Korean-owned factories were certainly no better, and may have been worse. One case study of the largest Korean business house that is readily available would certainly support this view.49 For example, 80% of the workers at Kyongbong’s textile mill were unmarried peasant girls in their late teens, some even recruited from ten-ant families who worked the lands owned by the mill owners. The factories operated round-the-clock, each girl working a grueling 12.hour shift, with one 40. minute rest time. Since labor control was deemed essential, work was under “intense labor supervision.” Discipline inside the factory was “severe” and extended to personal lives. All the girls lived in dor- mitories within a factory compound and needed per-mission to both leave the compound and to receive visitors. The system resembled “a low-security prison.” Whenever labor conditions in this and other plants became turbulent. “strikes were repressed with the same energy as was used to repress communism.” State “intimidation and force” were thus central to this relatively Gmplc and “crude approach to social con-trol.”
During the war years social controls on workers tightened as the state got directly involved in labor management. A .sclrn,~, system was established. whereby, “industrial patriotism clubs.” involving employers and employees, were created. aimed at increasing production. Workers’ representatives -paid full-time salaries by employers -and employers formed associations that designed programs of “edu-cating the workers, making the production process more efficient and preventing disputes among work-ers.050

In sum, a bureaucratic and penetrating authoritar-ian state collaborated with property-owning groups in colonial Korea to carve out a rather repressive and exclusionary strategy to control the laboring classes. This strategy of control, moreover, was necessary for rapid economic transformation. With majority of the lower classes subdued, the colonial state was free to concentrate its architectonic energies on devising and pursuing a strategy of economic transformation. Moreover, the political capacity to hold wages behind productivity gains facilitated high rates of profitability and thus continued investment and growth.
5. GENERAL INFERENCES
If Korea at the turn of the 20th century was a mini- China, by mid-century, Japanese colonialism had transformed it into a mini-Japan. While this statement both oversimplifies and distorts, the grain of truth in it is essential for understanding the subsequent high growth political economy of South Korea. Moreover, if this claim is acceptable, a number of general infer-ences follow. In order to draw these out, I address three themes below: the implications of the historical materials discussed above for a comparative under-standing of Korea; the insights that can be derived from these historical materials for the study of the nature and origins of “developmental states”; and finally, some general thoughts on the importance of reopening the issue of the variable colonial pasts of
developing countries, so as to fully appreciate the
roots of the divergent paths that these countries are
now traversing.

(a) Korea in a comparative perspective
It is clear that Japanese colonialism in Korea helped establish some basic state-society patterns that many now readily associate as integral to the later South Korean “model” of a high-growth political economy. These patterns include a highly bureaucra-tized, penetrating and architectonic state, a state-dom- inated alliance of state and property owners for pro- duction and profits. and repressive social control of the working classes. Demonstrating parallels between historical and contemporary situations, however, is clearly not enough to sustain an argument for histori- cal continuity; one also needs to point out the mecha- nisms whereby continuity was maintained.
It would take a separate essay to fully demonstrate exactly how and why there was a fair amount of insti- tutional continuity between colonial Korea and subse- quent South Korea, especially under Park Chung-Hee.51 In any case, elements of such an argument already exist in the literature (Cumings, 1984b; Eckert, 1991; and McNamara, 1990) and, for our pre- sent purposes, a brief outline will suffice. There was more than a 15year interlude, a traumatic interlude one may add, between the Japanese leaving Korea and when a truncated South Korea settled on a high-growth path under Park Chung-Hee. This interlude was marked by a US occupation, a civil war, a division of the country into communist and anti-communist halves, establishment of a government with some nationalist and democratic credentials in the South, and then a degeneration of this government under diverse pressures, leading up to a military coup. In
spite of all of this social drama, when diverse histori-cal legacies were simultaneously unleashed and when the future was anything but certain, how did South
Korea under Park Chung-Hee end up resembling colo-nial Korea in its basic state-society outlines?
The answer revolves in part around the structures that were simply never altered in any fundamental way, and in part around conscious choices made by leaders of South Korea. For example, Cumings has demonstrated with great care how and why the US occupying forces in Korea left the colonial state more or less intact; the alternative would have been to unleash a popular revolution of nationalist and radical forces. As a result, the bureaucracy, the police and the military that sovereign South Korea inherited were essentially colonial creations. In Cumings’s words, in spite of a prolonged American involvement in Korean affairs, “it was Japan’s impact that lasted,” and “whether it was in the military, the bureaucracy or the polity, Americans during the occupation found them-selves playing midwife to a Japanese gestation, rather than bringing forth their own Korean progeny.“5’
Not only were state structures kept intact but the state’s capacity and willingness to direct economic change, as well as the economic instruments used by the state -e.g., control over credit-continued from colonial to postcolonial periods.53 There is little evi-dence, moreover, that Korean businessmen in South Korea objected much to these arrangements. On the contrary, there was also a fair amount of continuity in the state-dependent nature of Korean capitalism. For example, Eckert ( 199 I, p. 254) has found that “60 per- cent of the founders of South Korea’s top fifty chae-bol” had participated directly in business under colo-nial auspices. Since these businessmen had either flourished with the help of the colonial state, or com- plained and periodically petitioned the colonial state for more support, it is likely that their political prefer-ences strengthened the state-directed, state-business alliance for production and profit. Finally, the corpo- ratist patterns of worker control were also colonial in

origin: the employer-employee “clubs” for promoting
“patriotism” and production, in the words of a labor
analyst. became “one of Japan’s permanent contribu-
tions to Korea’s industrial relations system” (Ogle.
1990, p. 6).

None of these continuities were inevitable. North Korea, a product of the same historical legacy, clearly went on a very different path. In South Korea, the chaos of the Rhee period could have continued indefi-nitely; or, alternatively, a new leadership could have undertaken basic changes and put South Korea on a totally different path. The postcoup leadership, how-ever, chose continuity with colonial patterns. While complex motivations of national security and of pro- tecting sectional social interests were at work, it was the nature of the leadership which finally undergirded the choice of continuity. Park Chung-Hee was a prod- uct of Japanese colonial Korean army, trained in Japanese military academy in Manchuria. Chong-Sik Lee, one of the leading Korea scholars in the United States, describes him as a “Japanophile,” fascinated by the “Meiji model,” and bent on steering Korea along the Japanese path to modernity (Lee. 1985. pp. 62-63). South Korean leaders often covered such pro- clivities with an anti-Japanese rhetoric here and a nationalist flourish there. Desirous mainly of high economic growth, however, leaders such as Park Chung-Hee knew well that the key elements of the “model” left behind by the Japanese were still intact in the early 1960s: a highly pervasive and penetrating state that could be turned authoritarian, purged of cor- ruption and made to refocus attention on matters eco-nomic; a state-dependent business strata that under-stood the benefits of cooperating with a purposive state: and a highly controlled working class. Since this “model” had worked in the past, until proven to the contrary, or unless it had to be abandoned. there was no reason why it ought not also work for sovereign South Korea. Moreover, the extent to which postwar Japan remained a “reference society” for South Korea was itself, in part. a production of considerable colo-nial contacts that had created links of language. eco-nomic structures and a shared understanding of how to construct high growth policital economies.
If the case for considerable continuity is thus per- suasive -and this does not necessitate denying either some important changes in the subsequent political economy, or the credit due to Koreans for their eco-nomic achievements, for they could have easily derailed the whole process -it follows that the roots of the high-growth Korean political economy lie deep in a unique colonial experience. Two further implica-tions follow. First, quite a few development scholars compare South Korea’s economic performance to that of other slower growing developing countries. The underlying assumption often is that, all of these coun-tries began from more or less the same starting point of very low per capita incomes in the 1950s. but some- how South Korea, and a few other newly industrializ-ing countries (NICs) rushed ahead. The question then becomes, “Why South Korea?” In light of the discus- sion above, this manner of posing the question appears inappropriate. The starting point for comparison has to be deeper in history, especially in the formative colonial phase. Even if South Korea’s low per capita income in the 1950s was similar to that of an India, Brazil or a Nigeria, South Korea’s starting point was very different: it had a much more dynamic economy in the half a century preceding the 1950s and, by the 1950s. its deeper state-society configurations were relatively unique.
Second, some development scholars pose the puz- zle of South Korea’s phenomenal economic success in the following terms: Why was South Korea able to switch to an “export-oriented policy” in the early 1960s whereas many other developing countries continued on the “import substitution” path (e.g., Haggard. 1991). Again, this manner of framing the comparative question is somewhat misconceived. South Korea indeed made some important policy changes under Park Chung-Hee. but their significance can easily be exaggerated; moreover, the state-society configuration that enabled these policies to succeed had deeper historical roots. In this sense, South Korea under Park Chung-Hee did not so much “switch,” as it fell back into the grooves of colonial origins, or, more precisely, chose one of the two or three main alterna- tives that were available to it from its complex histor-ical legacy. Revolutionary communism, a corrupt and wasteful autocracy of the Rhee type and a more US-style open democracy were all realistic possible paths along which South Korea could have traveled. The key elements, however, of the eventual path it adopted -a Japanese-style, state-driven export economy -were deeply etched into the social fabric. More specif- ically. Korean economy, especially southern Korean economy, was already export-oriented. its entrepre- neurs had considerable experience in selling abroad, and the state within this economy had learned from its own history that strong support for business and exports, and tight control over labor. was a route to high economic growth.

Among scholars who share the view that states have played both a positive and a negative role in eco- nomic development, a pressing subsequent question concerns the comparative analysis of “developmen-tal” and “predatory” states.54 More specifically, what distinguishes patterns of state intervention in the econ- omy, and why do some developing country states end up successfully transforming their economies. whereas others end up as “rent seekers,” preying on their own society’s scarce resources? While detailed comparative analyses are the best route to develop answers to this complex but important question, the single country materials presented above also speak to the issue, especially because the Korean case is central to any such analysis and because the Korean state was itself, at the turn of the century, transformed from a “predatory” to a “developmental” state.
Evans (1989) has described “developmental states” as exhibiting the characteristic of “embedded auton-omy”; “autonomy” of bureaucratized states from social entanglements gives them a capacity to direct social change, and social “embeddeness,” in turn, especially the links these states forge with business and industrial classes, enable state elites to incorporate these powerful groups in the state’s economic project. The historical materials analyzed above are not incon- sistent with this account of “developmental states.” Nevertheless, the Korean historical materials also sug- gest some qualifications and further specifications.
The first important qualification concerns the issue of where the policy goals of any state directed econ-omy come from. Arguments about “developmental states,” whether in Evans’s or in other versions, often focus more on explaining a state’s capacity to imple- ment goals and less on where these goals come from in the first place. The latter issue requires an explicit focus on the political process of a society. Policy goals of any society reflect complex processes involving how the highest authorities balance their own prefer-ences against national and international pressures. In the colonial Korean case discussed here, it was clear that the major shifts in policy goals -trade of raw materials for manufactured goods, followed by encour- agement of food production in the early phase; encour-agement of Japanese investments in manufacturing, along with some Korean participation during the mid- dle phase; and finally, in the last phase, a war economy with rapid industrialization -mainly reflected Japanese priorities, with an occasional concession to Korean pressures. In sovereign polities, this process of policy prioritization is often highly complex and would require a more detailed study than the colonial type of case discussed here. Nevertheless, the general point ought to be clear: since efficacious states can be used by their leaders to accomplish various goals, including nondevelopmental goals, the politics of how develop-mental goals emerge as a priority must be an important component of any study of “developmental states.”
The juxtaposition of the late Chosbn or Yi state against the colonial state also yields some further insights about “predatory” and “developmental” states. The late Chosbn state was personalistic and factionalized at the apex, and it had very little down-ward reach in the society; it was also deeply pene-trated by landowning classes. These characteristics bequeathed political incapacity. The result was that the Yi state was quite incapable of laying out and pur- suing an agenda of socioeconomic change. By con-
“DEVELOPMENTAL STATE”

trast, the colonial state turned out to be highly effica-cious. While this was no developmental state in the sense that it helped develop the whole society -on the contrary, it was a rather brutal, exclusionary state, not to mention that it was a colonial state -it never- theless could establish order and facilitate economic growth. How did it achieve this capacity? The changes introduced by the Japanese that helped increase state capacity can be best thought of as changes along three dimensions: changes in the state structures; creation of new economic instruments in the hands of the state; and new patterns of state-class relations. Since all of these have been discussed in some detail above, now they only require a brief reiteration.
First, the significant changes in the state structure were three: creation of centralized authority with a clear agenda of change; depersonalization of authority structures, so that public and private interests were first separated and only then reintegrated on a new basis, with public goals mainly in command; and downward penetration of the state’s authority in soci- ety via the creation of a disciplined bureaucracy.5s These changes enabled the new political authorities to formulate specific public goals and to implement them in the far reaches of the society.
Second, the state also created a number of eco-nomic instruments that did not exist before and that enhanced the state’s capacity to direct the economy: a rationalized currency system, banks and other credit institutions that the state controlled, long and short-term economic plans, production-oriented new tech-nology, and a variety of direct and indirect subsidies. Finally, the state and social classes established a new relationship. In both the countryside and the city, the state and property-owning classes entered an alliance that was set mainly on the state’s terms, but that was nevertheless mutually beneficial: the state desired and succeeded in securing steady increases in production, whereas the property-owning groups received enough political support to ensure healthy profits. The state and property owning classes also collaborated to con- trol peasants and workers in what amounted to a suc- cessful labor-repressive strategy.
This last point directs attention to another impor-
tant modification in Evans’s type of formulation of
“developmental states,” namely, the significance of
downward penetration of systematic political control.
Far too much analytical attention is being devoted in
contemporary attempts to understand “developmental
states” to the apex of the political economy. This is
unfortunate because the relationship of the state to
laboring classes, especially the modalities of partici-
pation and control in the process of production, is a
central part of the “story” of how and why some states
succeed in industrializing their economies. For exam-
ple, it is clear in the account above that the colonial
state and Japanese and Korean businessmen collabo-
rated, not only to strictly control any demand-making

or dissident actions of workers. but also to train them
at work. pay a living wage. transmit some pride in
their endeavors and provide job security. This combi-
nation of “carrots and sticks” generated considerable
control over the lives and behavior of workers. While
hardly conducive to the creation of a free and desir-
able society. this control. in turn, contributed to
both productivity gains and. more importantly,
enabled the state to single-mindcdly pursue economic
growth.
A bureaucratized and penetrating authoritarian state with clear growth-oriented goals. armed wjith a panoply of economic instruments. and allied with propertied but against laboring social classes, this is the stuff of which transformative power in the hands of the stale is made of. Or so. at least. emerges from the study of this one specific case. Neither the brutal. controlling nature. nor the colonial origins of this specific “developmental state” can be recommended to others on normative gounds. Yet, for those who believe that state\ have an important role to play in facilitating economic development. the question remains: how can power to develop be generated without outside forces remolding state structures, or without states that repress and con- trol large majorities of their own citizens? The study of other cases and imaginative rethinking may yield insights into how to approximate “developmental states.” without acquiring SOIIIC of their worst fea-tures.
Finally. I wish to conclude with some speculative thoughts concerning future research directions. Developmental success has always ignited intellectual inquiry: why did “they” succeed’! Why not the “others”? Marx and Webcr struggled over these ques-tions. trying to understand the early rise of capitalism in north-western Europe. Ever since. succrssful indus-trialircrs have attracted scholarly attention. It is hardly surprising that in our own times the successful NIC\ should attract similar attention. The puzzle i\ especially appealing when. in a group assumed to he more or less similar. sorbic ITIOVL‘ ahead. while others are left behind. Scholarly imagination then wants an explanation for both the \pecdy grower\ und the laggards.

A variety of answers have been proposed in recent years as to why some developing countries have better performing economics than others; these vary from sharply market-oriented answers. through more state-focused analyses. all the way to religion and culture a'r the real variahlcs. What many of' these efforts in the hands of “developmentalis~~” lack. unfortunately. is historical depth. Large-scale processes of historical 1ransformation often tend to display long historical continuities; when they do not, ruptures, new begin-nings and shifts in path are dramatic. Establishment of sovereignty or. at least, the post-WWII beginning, is often assumed by development scholars as the “new beginning” from where comparative analyses of devel- oping countries must begin. This trend is unfortunate. because it is likely that a significant component of the explanation for why countries traverse different devel-opmental paths lie in their colonial heritage.
An earlier generation of “dependency” scholars were well aware of historical continuities. However. that body of scholarship lost its intellectual sway for a variety of reasons, including the tendency to homoge- niLe the anti-developmental nature of all colonialism. A central question in the minds ofanew generation of scholars became. “why are developing countries tra-versing such different paths.” Any framework that mainly drew attention to a universal constraint (e.g., “world capitalism” or “neocolonialism”) was thus likey to loose appeal: satisfactory answers would rather have to explain why countries dealt differently with the same set of constraints. Unfortunately, how-ever, scholars in rightly discarding dependency propositions, also threw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater; they threw out the colonial pasts of the developing world. Instead of asking, could the roots of varying performances be located in a variety of colo- nial pasts, most developmentatists now focus on the nature of post-WWII states, social structures, and pol- icy choices as the primary explanations of divergent performances.
If the historical discussion in this essay is persua- sive, it suggests that the roots of economic dynamism in the critical case of South Korea are located, at least in part, in the state-society relations created under the auspices of Japanese colonialism: as a late developer, who had perfected a state-led model for catching-up in the world economy. Japan in its colonies constructed a political economy which also turned out to be well suited at catching-up. In other historical cases, differ-ent colonial powers, in different time periods, pursued a variety of colonial ruling strategies. They thus left behind a variety of political economies: distributive politics and a slow-growing economy in India; incom- plete state\ that readily turned into predatory states in much of Africa: semi-sovereign political economies that came to be dominated by foreign investors and agrarian oligarchies prior to the onset of deliberate, state-led developmental experiments in large parts of Latin America. Is it not possible that the legacy of colonialism. though varying from case to case, espe-cially region to region. was of long lasting signifi-cance in much of the developing world? If so. it bchoo\es scholars interested in understanding diver-gent path\ of contemporary developing countries 10 once again pay attention in their comparative analyses to the colonial pasts of these countries.

1.
The literature here is rather large; the bibliographies in any of the following sources (especially Amsden and Woo) offer a complete list of references. An incomplete list (listed alphabetically) of some of the major works with a political economy focus would include: Amsden (1989); Cumings (1984a); Deyo (1987);Haggard (199 I), especially the chap- ter on South Korea and some of his other work cited therein; Jones and Sakong (1980); Mason et al. (1980): Westphal (1990); and Woo (1991).

2.
The conceptual distinction between government’s leading or following the market is made in Wade (1990), especially p. 28 and chapter 10. The scholar who has prob- ably gone the farthest in suggesting that Korean government “distorted” prices to get growth up is Alice Amsden. See , Amsden (1989). especially chapter 6. For the argument that South Korean and other East Asian economic successes resulted from “free market” conditions, see Balassa’s essays in his own edited volume (1981); and Krueger (1980).

3.
See, for example, Frank, Kwang and Westphal(1975); Hasan (1976); and Krueger (1979). For an early exception, see Kuznets (1977).

4.
See, for example, Amsden (1989), when in five pages (pp. 31-35) the author quickly concludes that the “inheri-tance” left by the Japanese colonialists to Koreans was “use-less” for their future developmental struggles.

5.
Haggard, for example, has made valuable contribu-tions to unraveling the “why” and “how” of South Korean industrialization. Bulk of his analytical energy, however, is devoted to the onset of export-led model under Park Chung-Hee. See, for example, Haggard (1991), the chapter on South Korea, where only about two paragraphs are devoted to the colonial period.


6.
I am afraid I have only examined the English language publications of Korean scholars. One good example of the nationalist bias in what is otherwise an excellent study is, Suh (1978). My confidence in extrapolating the broader assertion from limited materials was enhanced when another scholar, who had examined many of the Korean language sources, reached the same conclusion. See, Woo (1991) pp. 19-


20.
7.
Most significant here are the contributions of Cumings. He states his basic thesis in a summary form in Cumings (1984a). Scattered but brilliant insights on this topic can also be gleaned from his other writings: Cumings (1981); Cumings (1990); and Cumings (1984b). Another very important book that helps trace historical continuities is Eckert (1991). Also see, Woo (1991); and McNamara (1990).

8.
While these issues will be discussed in greater detail below, the economic data here is taken from Suh (1978, Tables 11 and 17). Note that the “national production” data do not include construction, trade, services and public utili-ties that are generally included in the more conventional “national income” data; the latter for pre-WWII Korea are not readily available.


9.
The best book on the late Chosbn continues to be Palais (1975). For a differing account, see, Choe (1972). A good “overview” account is provided by Ki-baik Lee in Eckert, et al. (1990). For another useful but abbreviated account that helps put traditional Korea in a comparative perspective vis-ci-vis China and Japan, see Fairbank, Reischauer and Craig (I 978) chapters 12 and 20.

10.
For a discussion of how “open” or “closed” Korea’s examination system may have been to non-Seoul based landed elite, see, Wagner (1974). Prolonged study of Chinese classics that was necessary to succeed in the exams appears to have been a major impediment for those without an inde- pendent source of wealth. Nevertheless, below the highest levels, there is evidence to indicate that some merit-based recruitment did occur.

11.
Palais (1975). especially chapters l--I and 14. The direct quotes are from p. 5. Palais has informed me in a per- sonal communication that he has modified some of these views. While these are not readily available to me, they are apparently developed in Palais (forthcoming).


12.
As I read the historical evidence, Palais is probably correct in denying intraelite factionalism the central place in his analysis of the political problems of Yi Korea. See Palais (1975), especially the “Introduction.” Nevertheless, most historical treatments document a deeply factionalized elite in Yi Korea. See, for example, Ki-baik Lee in Eckert et al. (1990), where he concludes that “intra-bureaucratic strife” rendered “the decision making process dilatory and ineffec- tive,” p. 110. Fairbank, Reischauer and Craig (1978), also note that factional struggles were “hereditary” and “endemic” in Yi Korea (p. 313). I see no analytical conflict, therefore, in suggesting factionalism as an additional debili-tating trait.

13.
See Palais (1975) chapter 2. Palais cites the figure of 10 million for Korean population in the mid-19th century. Later research has revised this estimate upwards. See Mitchell (1979-80). I owe this reference to James Palais.

14.
This is not to suggest, as Palais rightly corrected me on his comments on this paper, that the state did not on occasion aid economic activity. There is also some evidence from revisionist historians that late Yi Korea experienced a degree of economic dynamism, but none to suggest that this was state induced. Cumings cites the work of Korean historian Kim Yang-Sop to suggest that pre-Japanese Korean agricul-ture was probably not stagnant. See Cumings (1984b), p,


491. Also see Shin (1975).
15.
See Ladd (1908). While this is a highly pro-Japanese, even a prejudiced, account, there is no reason to not make use of some of its more descriptive observations,

16.
The quote is from George Kennan, a friend of Theodore Roosevelt, who influenced Roosevelt’s attitudes toward Korea. It was cited -though not approvingly -in Grajdanzev (1944), p. 35.

17.
I use quotations around the evocative concepts of


predatory and developmental states to indicate my consider- able discomfort in describing these states as such. Predatory is misleading because it creates a state versus society image: in reality, where “predation” prevails, political and economic elite often collude to squeeze and misuse a society’s resources. Developmental is also misleading because the states so described are often not strictly developmental. For example, both the Japanese colonial state and the subsequent South Korean state under Park Chung-Hee, while successful agents of economic transformation, were also, to varying degrees, rather brutal states. The normative calcu1us, in turn, of evaluating a state that is simultaneously brutal and helps promote economic growth is clearly complex. In any case, two recent and useful essays that discuss the concept of developmental states are, Johnson (I 987); and Evans (I 989).
18.
Kublin (1959) has argued that Japanese “colonial doc-trine” evolved in Formosa (later Taiwan) and was subse-quently implemented in Korea. This is true insofar as Formosa was colonized in 1895 and Korea in 1910. It is important to note, however, that Kabo reforms in Korea (tried around 1895) and early experimentation in Formosa were simultaneous efforts, both probably a product of a sin- gle “colonial official mindset” in Japan-a product of Meiji Japan -with simultaneous political learning going on in both Korea and Formosa.

19.
Halliday (1975). pp. 35-36. For a discussion of the development of the Prussian bureaucracy, especially con-cerning how some such traits as an espirit de corps. an ethos of public service, a degree of insulation from aristocratic interests, tight internal authority structure and a relative absence of corruption, developed, see Rosenberg (1958); and for evolution of this bureaucracy in 19th century Germany, see Bonham (1991). especially chapters 2,7 and 8.

20.
For details see, H.I.J.M.‘s Residency General (1908).


2 I. The following examples are taken from various reports on “administration” that the Japanese colonial government published regularly. See, for example, H.I.J.M.‘s Residency General (1908); and Government-General of Chosen (1921, chapter on “local administration”).
22.
One scholar of Meiji Japan thus notes: “The police. had operational responsibility for a bewildering variety of government programs and policies in addition to public safety, traffic control, and criminal investigation and appre- hension. They enforced economic controls, discouraged unionism, inspected factories, censored publications, licensed commercial enterprises, arranged for public welfare aid, supervised druggists and publications, controlled public gatherings, managed flood control and fire prevention, main-tained surveillance of people suspected of “dangerous thoughts,” and did countless other things that brought gov-ernment close to the daily life of every Japanese.” See Spaulding (I 97 I ). pp. 36-37.

23.
Chen (1984), pp. 228-23 I, It is important to note that the extensive role of the police remained intact throughout the colonial period. For example, when Americans finally arrived in Korea after the Japanese surrender, they found (e.g., in South Cholla province) that police departments were the biggest within the local bureaucracy, and within the


police departments, “economic sections” of the police were important. See Meade (195 I), p. 3 I.
24.
The quote is from Shakuo Shunjo and is cited in Chen (1984), p. 222.

25.
See Lee (1963). For a discussion of the brief, more liberal interlude, see Robinson (I 989).

26.
For example, when confronted with the fact of being left behind in the race to modernity, many Koreans had looked to Meiji Japan as a model for their own advancement; for better or for worse, therefore, “modernity” to many Koreans came to be represented by Japan. See Henderson (1968, p. 67). Moreover, some Korean elites, enamored with Japan, had participated in Japanese-supported Kabo reforms of 1895. Later, the pro-Japanese Korean organization. I/chin-hoe (Advancement Society) enjoyed considerable support in


1905-10; for example, at its least popular phase in 1910, the I/chin-hoe still enjoyed a membership of nearly 140,000 and had some one hundred subsidiary organizations. See, for example, Chandra (1974, p. 52).
27.
The quote is from official documents of the Government-General and taken from Ireland (1926. p. 190).

28.
For one review of Japanese colonial economic poli-cies, see Ho (1984, pp. 347-386).

29.
See, for example, Schumpeter (1940), especially chap-ters IX-XI, XXI and XXII. and the conclusion.


30.
The reference is to Government-General of Chosen, Annual Report on Refkms and Progress in Chosen (Korea), Keijo, (Seoul), published regularly -for the most part. annually ~ during 1910-39. See, for example, the 1914 report, where in the opening chapter, repeated references are made to “financial efficiency” and to the “economy of administration.”

31.
The figures are from H.I.J.M.‘s Residency General (1908 and 1909). The real increase was probably somewhat less because this simple calculation does not take account of increase in production, which, in any case, we know to have been relatively small in those years.

32.
The 1905 figure is from H.I.J.M.‘s Residency General (1907), and the I91 I figure is from Government-General of Chosen (1910-I I). While reliable data on inflation for these years is not readily available, there is no indication in gov- ernment documents of huge price increases.

33.
See Robinson in Eckert (l990), p. 265. There is appar- ently also a good doctoral thesis on the subject of this land survey by Edward Gragert at Columbia University. Unfortunately, I was unable to locate this unpublished man-uscript.

34.
For a full discussion. see Ho (1984).

35.
The colonial government’s own assessment is intereat- ing. While lamenting the political opposition from educated Koreans, government documents of the period note: “People of the upper class having personally experienced imperial



favor and being in a position to feel directly or indirectly the benefit of the new regime, seem to be contented with it.” See Government General of Chosen (1914). p. 64. Also see Robinson in Eckert, et al. (1!290), pp. 266-267.
36.
Migdal(1988). for example, tends to view state capac- ity in agrarian societies as inversely related to the power of landowning and other traditional elites. Evans (1987). makes a similar argument.

37.
For these policy swings and for the direct quote, see Grajdnazev (1944), pp. 92-94.

38.
Suh (1978), p. 73, Table 33. Also see, Ishikawa, (1967), pp. 84-109.

39.
This distinction can be sharpened by using the con-cepts of “idea gaps” and “object gaps” proposed in the “new” economic growth theory. Whereas the “object gap” refers to lack of concrete objects as factories, that direct attention to savings and investment bottlenecks in development, the “idea gap” refers to the knowledge base on which develop-ment rests. The “new” growth theory emphasizes (as did sev- eral old growth theories) the role of knowledge and technol- ogy in economic growth: See, for example, Romer (1993). One may thus argue that in Korean colonial economic his-tory, even if “objects” were destroyed during decolonization, the legacy of “ideas” was substantial.

40.
The point here is not that these same groups subse-quently facilitated Korea’s export-led growth. Some con-tributed to this process, others failed and yet other new ones also emerged. The point here is instead that a “system” was being created. I am indebted to Chung-in Moon’s criticisms that forced me to clarify this point.

41.
There is a great self-congratulaory discussion of how Governor-General Ugaki thought of this scheme to provide subsidies for gold mining. See his speech in, Govemment- General of Chosen (1935).pp. 85-87.

42.
All the materials in quotations in this paragraph are from Eckert (1991), pp. 73-74. Note that the exhortations to businessmen began rather early with colonial rule. A govem- ment report of 1914 notes that the Governor General called business leaders to a party, explained government’s policies, and urged them to be concerned not only with profits but “to bear in mind the promotion of the interest of the state.” See Government General of Chosen ( 19 14). p. 13.


“DEVELOPMENTAL STATE”
43.
This theme is well developed in McNamara (1990). pp. 127-I 30.

44.
This, for example, is the approach adopted in Suh (1978).

45.
These and the subsequent facts concerning geographi-cal distribution of industry are from Grajdanzev (1944). Appendix III.

46.
For evidence on the nature and extent of lower class restiveness, especially as expressed through the communist movement. See Scalpino and Lee (1972). chapter III.

47.
See, Cumings (198 I), Chapter 2 for a moving discus-sion of the human toll exacted by the large scale movement of Koreans under Japanese rule.

48.
The following account is based on the case study of Onoda cement factory in Park (1985). Part II, B, sections 1, 4,5, and 9.

49.
See, Eckert (1991), chapter 7, from where the account in this paragraph is drawn.

50.
This quote and the materials in this paragraph are drawn from Ogle (1990). p. 6.


5 1. I am currently involved in writing such an essay, but in the context of a larger study from which the present essay is drawn. The larger study is a comparative analysis of the “state and economic development” in four countries, namely, Korea, Brazil, India and Nigeria.
52.
See Cumings (184b). pp. 479480. For his detailed analysis of why and how Americans left the colonial state more or less intact in Korea, see Cumings (1981), chapter 5.

53.
See Woo (1991) for the specific issue of state control over credit.

54.
For one insightful analysis of this question, see Evans ( 1989).

55.
Note that Evans’s “autonomy” component of the “embedded autonomy” formulation (1989) mainly directs attention to the second of these three structural components.



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