Suchergebnisse

This article has two purposes. On the one hand, for those who are interested in Korea or even specialized in one or the other field of Korean Studies, it attempts to present an overall interpretation of the economic, social and political situation currently existing in South Korea, under the focus of the term "capitalism". For such readers the analytic framework of this essay might be of more interest than the factual information which, in parts, is well-known. Although not all aspects of the present South Korean society can be related to the concept of capitalism, it is the intention of this analysis to show that this society cannot be fully understood without regard to this term and its critical implications. The concept of capitalism that is used in this paper will emerge through the article itself, at least in its concluding part.

This study limits itself to the comparison of some economic statistics of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the Republic of Korea (ROK). In a first section it discusses the reliability of the available data and considers various factors concerning the comparability of today's economic achievements in North and South Korea. In the second part overall economic indicators (GNP/NI per capita, growth rates, industrial structure of GNP) and output data are analyzed. After adjustments for certain exchange rates and the socialist definition of Nl an estimated DPRK per capita N1 of 375 US dollars for 1970 corresponds to a ROK per capita Nl of 110 US dollars for the same year. This very rough indication of the North's economic superiority over the South is confirmed by the more relevant comparison of per capita output data for electricity, coal, oil (combined to a total of energy production), steel, iron, cement, chemical fertilizer, rice, meat, and textile fabrics. In 1970 the DPRK had reached a clearly and sometimes several times higher level than the ROK in all of these data of production per person.