Socialist Viewpoint

The somber backdrop for the history of Korea is its poverty. During the first half of the 20th Century, the country was stripped by Japanese imperialism and World War II. Almost immediately thereafter, the Korean war finished destroying the country.

Recovery afterwards was warped by the Cold War. The dictatorship in the south was treated to generous aid and massive infusions of capital from the U.S. while the north was treated to an economic embargo not much different than that suffered by Cuba.

South Korea benefited further from the Cold War because the U.S. armed forces stationed there relieved the South Korean government from paying for its own defense, and the troops guaranteed a steady cash income for farmers and merchants. North Korea had to pay for its own defense, and with a belligerent U.S. on its doorstep, typically spent over 20 percent of its budget on its military forces. This large defense effort greatly slowed the capital accumulation necessary for industrialization.

North Korea’s climate and agricultural resources have not helped. Most of the north has a short growing season of about 150 frost-free days a year and rains that come all at once in the monsoon season. Less than 5 percent of the rainfall comes during the winter. North Korea has about 1 acre of arable land per person and so it must be intensively cultivated or food imported. In practice, both occur with a third of the population working in the agricultural sector. As an indicator of agricultural “wealth,” South Korea has 2 pigs per capita while North Korea has only one-third.

The four years 1996-2000 brought weather extremes that virtually destroyed the agricultural system. Hunger became a social problem and the UN and other relief agencies have tried to help. The United States is the only country with an aid commitment that has held up food shipments for political purposes.

Per capita income in North Korea is now half of Iraq’s (for example) and a fifth of that in South Korea. Electrical energy production has dropped to 75 percent of the 1992 level with the de-commissioning of their graphite-moderated reactors. The balance of trade is bad and has steadily worsened. For 2000, exports were only half of imports and this situation will not be allowed by the capitalist countries much longer.