The Impact of South Korea's Pre-War Manufacturing Experience Essay

The Impact of South Korea's Pre-War Manufacturing Experience - Essay Example This paper illustrates that Korea is the third largest economy in Asia, next to Japan and China. An economic backwater in the 1950s and prior to that, South Korea has practically built its current economic progress from scratch. Its road to success is widely credited from the low-cost but high-quality export production which drives an annual trade growth rate of at least 12%, making the country the thirteenth-largest trading economy in the world. The Korean economy boasts of a long-term growth which converted the once low-income and war-torn country into an economic powerhouse in a span of mere decades. In fact, in just half of a century later since the Korean peninsula was divided at the 38th parallel, the southern state has demonstrated that poor and weak country, constantly being subjugated by its more powerful neighbors, can leapfrog the international hierarchy of development and practically eliminate the incidence of poverty. Today, its export-driven economy enabled the country to become the world’s largest shipbuilder, the third biggest manufacturer of large capacity memory chips, and a substantial player in the global automobile industry. The pre-industrial economy of Korea points to several factors for its system and influences – Japanese occupation; the conflicts, such as the Korean War and the Second World War; Korea’s partition; and, finally, and Park Chung Hee and his Korean Model. When Japan bested China in the Sino-Japanese War in 1894, it began to interfere with Korean affairs until it fully annexed the country in 1910. In effect, it was the Japanese who developed Korea’s economy, educational system, and infrastructure. However, such hand in Korea’s development was harsh and that it was mainly geared towards designing the Korean economy to benefit further the Japanese economy and not for some altruistic reasons.