韓國 農民의 階層分化 및 農村 勞動力 流出에 관한 硏究 = The Essay on the Classification of Farmers and the Migration of Agricultural Population in Korea

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Most Economists generally concur that there are no cases of successful development of a major country in which agricultural development did not accompany industrial one.
In Korea it is more and more apparent that development over the long run is not likely to occur if it is tied to both an agricultural and industrial foundation.
However, according to the statistics the agricultural sector has been inferior to the non-agricultural one. The causes of such a inferiority in Korean agriculture are able to draw from the transformation of agricultural process. The following conclusions and arguments are drawn by statistics and survey.
1. The Classification of Farmers.
During the Japanese Rule, more than 70 per cent., of Korean population were engaged in agriculture and as the result of land consolidation by Japanese (including the govenment, civilians and organization) except for approximately 18 per cent., who were self-employed, the Korean farmers belonged either to the pure tenant-farmer category and had no land of their own or to the poor farmer category and worked their own small plots along with the land held by wealthier landlords.
Through the period the number of the pure tenants (having no land of their own rapidly increased. According to the statistics on tenancy the number of them increased from 36.8 per cent. in 1916 to 51.9 per cent. in 1936. This indicated the transfer of land ownership from peasnts to landlords; Landowner cultivators abandoned their own and rich farmers did not carry out entrepreneural (capitalistic) production and raised themselves as landlords because of high rents. This is the very cause of impossibility of capitalistic production in agriculture.
After the Liberation, the land reform in 1949 served that the tilled land formerlly possessed by Japanese and Korean landlords with more than 3 Chongbo (a chongbo is 2.45 acres) were distributed with compensation to landless peasants or peasants with little land. However, it neglected economic problems and served only socio political functions for the Korean authorities.
For size of holdings, after the land reform tiny holdings increased. According to the statistics, in 1948 68.2 per cent. of farm househoulds had holdings of less than 1 Chongbo, 27.4 per cent. held between 2 and 3 Chongbo and 4.4 per cent. owned over 3 chongbo. In 1951 these percentages were 78.5, 21.4, and 0.1 respectively. Such a small scale of family farm is still remained. In 1969 the average size of family farm is about 0.9 Chongbo. It is so small that the farming is not carried out by a entrepreneural production.
The increases in tiny holdings rapidly created a poor peasant class who could not earn living cost with agricultural income. They have to be employed by rich owner farmers to earn living cost. The number of such employed peasants rapidly swelled. The number of the farming households that held less than 0.5 Chongbo was 35.6 per cent. of total farming househoulds. They belonged to agrarian wage-earning employee category, because their agricultural income was 57 per cent. of living cost and their wage income was 30.2 per cent. of total income. This is one of the main charateristics of agricultural process after the land reform.
2. Migration of Agricultural Over-population
As above, mentioned during the Japanese rule more than 70 per cent. of Korean population were engaged in agriculture though industry in Korea gradually developed. But it was dependent upon the Japanese economy. The Japanese forced Korea to be their commodity market and a source of supply of raw materials. Thereby, the partial industrialization dependent upon the Japanese economy was carried on. Industrial growth was not enough to make the kinds of inroads into the agricultural population. In other words, the surplus over population was not capable of being absorbed by non-agricultural sectors.
Furthermore, the Japanese confiscated land holdings of Koreans by a variety of unjust means through the land survey program after 1910. In addition, the lopsided distribution of land, coupled wirh an iniquitous system of rent (farm rent averaged from 50 per cent. to 60 per cent. of the crops, often mounting 70 per cent.) had caused much unrest among the peasants. Under such circumstances, productivity of farmers was so low that disguised employees were overflowed in rural areas.
On the other hand, many peasants were forced to migrate to Manchuria, Siberia, and Japan. According to the statistics, the number of them was about 3.5 millions in 1945.
During the period after World War Ⅱ to the present, the korean rate of industrial growth was not rapid enough to absorb the surplus over population. According to the statistics about 8 million workers are engaged in the farming production and 2.5 millions of workers in the agricultural sector are over employed. These unemployees can exist in rural areas by the strong tie of family system. In addition, the number of employed workers in agricultural secror is subject to sharp fluctuations according to seasons and employment is not stabilized.
The recent migration from rural areas to urban ones is not due to find more productive, stable non-agricultural employment. According to the statistics, the composition of wage earning employees shows 5.1 per cent. in primary industry, 23.3 per cent. in secondary industry and 71.6 per cent. in tertiary industry, excluding irregular workers and workers at daily.

3. The Disparity Between Agricultural Sector and Non-agricultural One

Economic policies in Korea have neglected to make a balance between income level of the agriculturla sector and that of non-agricultural one. A Meosum(considered as an agrarian laborer) can earn only 71,900 Won a Year. It is not only 55 per cent. of the average living cost of the laborers. It is on the average only 67.9 per cent in comparison with the secondary industrial laborers. But the proportion of wage and living cost is about 80 per cent. in the latter. Such disparity of wages and low wage level is due to the dualism in the economic structure and the oversupply of labor force in korea.

4. Agrarian Problems in Korea

Most economists concludes that economic development requires the vast numbers of rural people shift out of agriculture. They has also agreed that industrialization is necessay if such a redundant rural people is to find more productive non-agricultural employment, thereby permitting those who remain in agriculture to recognize their farms into more productive large scale units. Therefore, agrarian problems are to be solved only if researched as the problems of interrelationships between agricultural and industrial-urban development.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Ⅰ. 序 言
• Ⅱ. 資本主義와 農業
• Ⅲ. 農民의 階層分化
• Ⅳ. 農村 過剩人口와 勞動力 流出
• Ⅴ. 韓國의 農業問題 (結言)