Korea’s Labor Force: Muscle Behind Economic Miracle
All I have to offer is blood, sweat, toil and tears: Churchill
By Andrew Salmon
Contributing Writer
Economic pundits examining South Korea in summer 1953 had few positive signs to assess. The war had resolved nothing: The peninsula remained divided; and inter-Korean animosities were fiercer than ever. Much of the nation's urban area and national infrastructure was devastated. Moreover, most of the industry, and key natural resources ― minerals, precious metals, hydro-electric power ― lay in the North. The country was a basket case ― yet three decades later, was being lauded as an ``economic miracle.''
Post-war South Korea had only one significant resource: people. And they hardly looked formidable. Many 19th century Western observers considered Koreans corrupt, backward and lazy; many 20th century observers saw them as fractious and brutal. Yet the seeds to transform a nation of peasants into a nation of workers ― in 1960, workers in the agricultural, forestry and fishery sectors accounted for 63 percent of the labor force; by 2008, this had plunged to 7.2 percent ― were pl
Apr 2, 2010
