The Escape from Oppression and Poverty: A Developmental History of Korea
Myung Soo Cha
mscha@ynu.ac.kr
Last updated 27 Novemer 2023
This book argues that South Korean democracy and growth miracles are contingent and interdependent developments driven by geopolitical shocks. The imposition of colonial rule in 1910 provided a necessary condition for the occurrence of the twin miracles, which required the de-colonization in 1945 as a sufficient condition. Replacing the rule of power with the rule of law, Japanese rulers established market institutions. The pre-1945 developments were augmented with democracy being brought to South Korea by the U.S. to counter the Soviet-backed North Korean regime. Democracy grew on the economic and social ground flattened by the post-colonial land redistribution to dismantle the financial repression, the key instrument of South Korean import substitution export promotion, which diverted returns to capital from savers to targeted firms. Rising deposit interest rates led households to replace child quantity with physical capital to provide for old age, causing the savings ratio to rise consistently and rapidly. The financial de-regulation also triggered the shift from child quantity to quality, speeding up technological progress. The passage from labor to capital abundance and faster productivity growth caused living standards to improve rapidly, expanding the demand for civil liberty and political freedom and finalizing the transition from limited to open access order.
1. Introduction
2. Incomes, Inequality, and Population
8. Democracy
Sources of Statistical Data
Outline by chapter is here.
The book in theoretical perspective.
The Escape from Oppression and Poverty 