1. President Park Chung Hee and Economic Development of South Korea

Although it is hard to believe now, when Park Chung Hee took the helm of South Korea in 1961, its standard of living was lower than that of North Korea and the Philippines. The transition of GNP per person is shown in the table 1. It is after 1965 that we see economic development in South Korea. It is evident that the growth of South Korea is a result by which Korean made an effort strenuously.

Table 1 : The transition of GNP per person Unit $

1965 was a year when South Korea entered into the war in Vietnam, and also the year of signing the treaty with Japan. Because of the emergent demand from Vietnam, The South Korean economy had progressed greatly.
However, why did not the Filipino economy show similar progress? The Philippines were under the governance of the United States, and was closer to Vietnam than South Korea. The emergency demand to Philippine must be larger than that to South Korea. However the Philippines was not able to catch up with the time. The reason was in the difference of potential ability (ex, undeveloped industry, incomplete infrastructure and defect of educations) between the Philippines and South Korea at that time, but also the difference of colonial policy between Japan and the United States. I shall contend these reasons at following thesis.

At the same year of participation in the Vietnam war, South Korea signed the treaty with Japan. Not only the capital of compensation flowed into the country, but the private capital also flowed into South Korea suddenly. In those days Japanese economy was blooming, and the wage for labor was increasing rapidly. It is natural the Japanese enterprises branched in South Korea, because of proximity, prevalence of education, familiarity with the Japanese language, and lower cost of labor. Exactly by inflow of capitals and wisdom, the economy of South Korea progressed rapidly.

Then stagnation of agriculture became significant. In 1970, President Park started promotion movement of farm village named "Semaul Movement,"it meant new farm movement. Its motto was self-standing, diligence and corporation. Under this motto, road repairing, improvement of roof and construction of warehouses have gone ahead actively by the group work of farmers. The movement spread into the cities, and combined with movement of higher productivity, it contributed to the progress of industry. Indeed the development of South Korea is a result by which the South Koreans made an effort desperately. But this success of President Park was very similar to following governor-general Ukaki's governance.

2. The Condition of the Times when Ukaki was Appointed Governor-General of Korea

When Kazushige Ukaki was appointed as the governor-general of Korea in June of 1931, it was known to be one of the worst eras of worldwide agricultural depression. The prices of agricultural products have dropped drastically. Rice, which was representative agricultural commodity, has dropped its price down to one-third of the price set in 1919. It translates to the income of the rice farmers decreased down to one-third. In order to maintain rice fields, there are necessary expenses other than food such as clothing, agricultural tools, fertilizer and ceremonial occasions. If a farming house was to base their loan on the income from a subsequent year, it was obvious that these farmers would run into debt. The 1930's was an era when harmful effects of free economy have manifested.

To devise a countermeasure, higher tariff was imposed worldwide to prevent imports. The United States and Australia prohibitted immigration from Asia. Planned economy became the order of the day in Germany and Italy as Hitler and Mussolini gained power.

In Northeastern Japan, not only the farmers but the city officials were also hard hit by this depression; there often was none or late delivery of their salaries. Farmers have often sold rice for their own use to the market that caused further price dropping. Their daughters were sold to prostitution as they ran out of rice. In September of the same year, Manchurian Incident was happened by Japan; one of the reasons was that there was a huge demand to relocate the Japanese farmers, as a measurement to the agricultural depression.

Farmers in Korea also had to sell their own rice and ate millet, because of this depression. Japanese Agriculture and Forestry Department has stated in condemnation: "Unlimited Korean rice being exported to Japan has caused the price of rice to decrease" and demanded to suspend the shipping of rice. However, Korea had nothing else to export, therefore the only way to maintain their living standards was to send expensive rice out to Japan. With the support of the Japanese Army, Korean farmers managed to export their rice to Japan freely.

At the same time, American manufactures of sugar and cooking oil have repulsed against the unlimited import of sugar and palm oil from the Philippines. Labor unions in the United States, who felt threatened by the Filipino laborers immigrating to the mainland US, have also expressed their feeling and it was decided that the Philippines were to gain independence. It was a de facto cut-off. One may wonder, compared to Japan, which policy was more concerned of its people.

3. Agricultural Promotion Led by Ukaki

As soon as Ukaki was appointed, he began his inspection tour, and started his agricultural promotion plan. It started slightly earlier than the Japanese counterpart. What he claimed in this movement was the mindset of the people. Also Enkichi Yamazaki, who was invited by Ukaki to direct the movement had principles of "Spirit of Service, Spirit of Corporation, Spirit of Self Help". The difference from the Semaul movement is Service has been replaced by Diligence.

The difference between this movement in Korea and that of Japan was that the focus of guidance was at personal level. The government appointed the villages in which suitable leaders lived as the leading villages, and guided each individual to keep an account book . Nearly everybody was illiterate at the time, thus the village officials who were able to read and write, kept these account books instead. They taught these villagers how to read, write and keep simple account books, and also the basic principles of management such as: "Measure what comes in and reduce what is going out." It was an utter invasion of privacy, however this was a necessary step to help the almost bankrupted farmers or private companies, however small it might have been.

Adding to this movement, simple schooling system has started in 1934. It aimed to teach those young men who could not afford to go to school, how to read, write and do arithmetic. These schools were scheduled parallel to normal schools; the students were free to come whenever their work was slow and the teachers who taught normal schools also taught these young men who were willing to further their education.

The biggest problem facing Korean farmers at the time was short labor hours. They were demanded to work as much as those farmers in Japan, starting with weeding, fertilizing crops, and making fertilizers. For the winter time, production of barley, lotus, rape, were encouraged as well as live stock industry and folk pieces. In order for this movement to be thorough, leagues of young men and women were actively organized. What we have to pay attention here is that these organizations had been downplayed before, because they were believed to become hot-bed of anti-Japan movement, however at this time they were held actively. In the meetings for these leagues, formal discussion of local policies is important but informal speeches and relations among the members are more important. And government cannot overlook them. If the government of the time was dubious or suspicious of such anti-Japan sentiment in these forums, such free and democratic policy must not have been endowed.

Korean women did not work traditionally outdoors, that was one reason of Korean poor. The government has led them to work in their farm between housework and at the same time, these women acquired such skills as bookkeeping, doing away with superstition, cutting down unnecessary expenditure, keeping a side business, in order to benefit their living conditions. As a result, rice production rate calculated based on the area, which was fifty to sixty percent of Japanese production rate, has increased drastically and livestock has also shown remarkable growth; Korean agricultural economy has recuperated

This agricultural promotion movement has continued on even after Ukaki retired and Minami took over the governor-general position. It has changed its character over the years, and it has ceased as a movement when it was incorporated into the Total National Movement in 1941.

A journalist by name of Sawaichiro Kamata, who assisted Ukaki as his brain, had been called back to Korea in the post-war era for the Semaul movement.

4. Korean Industrial Revolution

What deserves special attention in pre-war Korea was the development of electricity. In the early 1920's, Yutaka Kubota, who made a significant and worldwide contribution to the post-war water-power development as the president of Nippon Koei, visited Korea and bought a mass amount of maps. He has found, from these maps, that there could be a great deal of electricity by turning the direction of the water opposite to drop it on the Sea of Japan. It had a plan of producing 100,000 kW, in an era when Kanidera, the biggest power plant in Japan, produced maximum 45,000 kW.

Even if this was a great plan for new power plant, there would be no use if there is no one to use electricity. Kubota, along with his partner Kazuo Morita, convinced Jun Noguchi, who was a friend to Morita. Noguchi was president to Nippon Chisso, a manufacturer of chemical fertilizer. In this period, chemical fertilizer was the biggest consumer of electricity. With their passion,First Power Plant has started in 1929 at Bujeon Gangj; it produced 130,000 kW. At the same time, a large chemical plant was constructed in Hyeungnam.

Table 2 : Large Power Plants in Korea compared to those of Japan and TVA

Along with the development of electricity, the mining industry was another key factor to this industrial growth in Korea.

Governor Ukaki has noticed that there were many gold accessories in traditional Korean art and encouraged gold mining with subsidy. As a result, what were once forsaken gold mines have revived, and as subsidiaries, other mines were also discovered and led to the revival of those mines. It was soon discovered that Korea was not only rich in minerals, but also people started to recognize Korea as a "specimen room" of the minerals.

As the development of those minerals continued, infrastructure (i.e. roads and electricity) were acquired. Maturity of other technologies necessary in the mining industry, such as ore dressing and refinement, has accelerated, along with manufacturing of cement, machines and services to all these different products.

Manchurian Incident, and establishment of Manchuria in 1931, has brought an economic effect similar to the one that the Vietnam war has brought to Korea in the 1960's. Korean high school history textbooks condemn the industrial development of this time as: "The Japanese Empire has planned a major invasion of the Chinese Continent, therefore turned the Korean peninsula into a huge logistics base. In order to carry on this project, power plants and military factories were constructed, mines were developed, heavy industry was introduced to Korea. However all this was a means to continue on with the war for the Japanese Empire, and aimed to enslave and subjugate the economy of the Korean peninsula under the colonial economic system."

However the first industries that have risen were fertilizer industry, and cement industry, not military factories. Also it should be noted here that because of the development in mechanical and chemical industries, Korea was later able to utilize their technologies in the time of the Vietnam war in the 1960's.

As seen in the Table 3, increase in agricultural productivity and drastic development in industry which began in the Ukaki era, has caused a remarkable social change. Robberies decreased, the rate of children attending school has increased; all these conditions reflect the improvement in living standard, and the increase of amount in electricity consumption is the driving force in the contemporary development of Korea.

Table 3 : The Development of Korea

When in discussing a nation's economic development, one cannot avoid the issues in education. One fact that intrigues us is that among the non-white ex-colonies, only Korea and Taiwan have become members of the advanced nations today. Needless to mention, they were both governed by Japan in the pre-war period. There may be those who point out that Hong Kong and Singapore are quite advanced, but they are city-states and do not have rural areas, which are usually weak in terms of development, therefore they cannot be discussed at the same level as Taiwan and Korea.

The Philippines, ex-American colony, has remained as an developing nation. The United States started to govern the Philippines in 1898, which is three years after Japan started its governing Taiwan, 12 years before its governing of Korea. It is an interesting question as to how these two nations were the only nations that showed such significant growth, but Philippine who were student of USA could not grow. We would like to compare the differences in policies of Japan and the United States from the educational standpoint. And when we consider the policy of Japan today, it presents very important information.

As the United States governed the Philippines, it recognized education as the mightiest weapon, and began offering free primary education by bringing 700 teachers and a mass amount of textbooks. Lieutenant-Governor has traditionally been appointed as Chief of Education, and encouraged education on the population of the Philippines. As a result, prevalence of the primary education in the Philippines was above that of Korea in the mid-1930's. We had to wait till the last days of the war to see the Korean rate of children attending school surpassing that of the Philippines.

In higher education (college and university), the start of state-run the University of the Philippines was around the time of annexation of Korea. Even before the commencement of the University of the Philippines, Christian schools, such as St. Thomas, have educated students outnumbering the University of the Philippines. As of 1937, in every one million Filipino people, there were 1,900 students. Although it was far from reaching the rate in Japan, the rate of higher education in the Philippines outnumbered that of Korea by one digit (at the same time Koreans had only 130 school students every one million people). There was a large amount of Korean young students who studied in Japan, however even when counting those students, it was far less than that of the Philippines

On the education of the Philippines, the report submitted during the time of Japanese occupation of the Philippines by the Committee of the Research of the Philippines, states that on primary education: "The rate of children attending school shortly before the Great East Asian War has reached 84.7% (In comparison, the same rate in Korea is 43%). However the school children range from age five to age eighteen, and the rate plummets only to about 20%. In 1940, 1% of the first grade pupils were already fourteen years of age.

Weakness of staff is also a problem; majority of them have only completed 12th grade, or dropped out of high school." It also points out how many pupils of primary schools were drop-outs.

Regarding secondary education: "66% of the students are wishing to advance onto higher level of school to train whitecollors." As an example of vocational education raised here is: "Majority of the students at the Philippines Technical School are major in auto repairing, radio repairing, and machine operating. They have not stepped out of the boundaries of training factory workers."

On higher education: "One of the failures that needs to be mentioned is that it stimulated unhealthy admiration toward white collar profession. It is regretful that technical education was ignored in lieu of so-called liberal arts, such as law, literature and religion."

As seen from Japan, the report points out that technical education has been treated lightly, especially the logical aspect that would make the basis for the future, has been neglected.

However, I believe that the root of the problems in the contemporary Philippines, yet economically struggling, is within the idea of what an education in the Philippines ought to be. This equates to the discussion of the difference between American education and pre-war Japanese education, and one can link the discussion to the problems manifesting in the contemporary Japan.

The first point is private versus public. Japanese prioritize the public, whereas Americans prioritize the private. Korea, coming from their long Confucian tradition, has valued also the notion of private before Japanese governance.

The second point is the idea of self-correction; Japanese educators in their colonies have inserted the spirit of independence. I believe this has worked as a dynamite to the success seen in post-war Taiwan and Korea. I feel the lack of such self-sustaining idea in the developing nations.

The third point is the spirit of diligence. Cleaning up the school is the duty of school children since elementary school in Japan. Both children of wealthy families and poor families learned to work together. Now at factories in Japan, both college graduates and factory workers have joined together to seek the solution for all the problems. Yampan , the ruling class of Korea, has extremely belittled labor, and they have been said to have their servants light cigarettes for them. These yampan were the very cause of this stagnation seen in modern Korea before Japanese governance. Even in Europe and America, officers and soldiers ate separately, white collar professionals and factory workers were separated greatly. This tradition was heavily inherited to the Philippines, and it became ordinary that technical workers were neglected.

The spirits of Japanese education was written in Kyouiku Chokugo, the Message of Meiji Emperor. We must review it.

6. Training of Agricultural Leaders

One cannot overlook the importance of the Japanization movement of the Koreans in the pre-war time about contribution to progress of Korea. In this process, night schools opened to offer pertinent courses for young men, farmers were trained to become agricultural leaders, and training for factory workers was offered as well. Statistics on formal education does not include such proper and important training for working individuals. I will discuss the training of agricultural leaders within the Japanization.

Several years prior to the beginning of this agricultural reformation started in the early 1930's, schools began to offer courses for elementary school graduates. They were working on the means to cultivate farms in a better way along with the teachers. The lands were loaned from their parents. They were successful to gain twice the amount of the surrounding farmers. Parents, who first ridiculed this educational activity, graduated started to recognize its success, and these young men had grown into agricultural leaders. This instruction of the graduates has begun in 1927 in Gyeonggi Do, and in 1935, 13,000 graduates have been subjected to this training at 60% of normal school. It lasted for three to five years per individual.

To organize this agricultural training, the Center for Agricultural Training was established in 1933 in Gyeonggi Do. With the start of this center, similar training sites for young men and women have opened in every county. The management of each training center was left up to the counties, so that their names and the subjects that were taught differ from center to center. Many of them separated their courses into a month-long short term course and a long-term course which lasted for a year. For long-term courses, the students lived in the dorms to train together. Many centers have put training for elementary school graduates as prerequisite. This does not mean, however, that training for elementary school graduates has ceased, but it increased the focus of agricultural internship and spiritual training. As far as the latter is concerned, it is now condemned that it increased the subordination to Japan among the Korean people. However I contend that spirits of corporation and self-assisting have continued onto the Semaul movement. I cannot think of the post-war success in Japan and Korea without these spiritual emphases.

Interchange with Japan has begun in 1938. 50 people were sent to the youth center in Iwate, Japan, and by June of 1944, 3000 people, including 300 young women, were sent to training centers and farming houses in Japan. It has covered to fill in for the scarcity of personnel in Japan but it also functioned to give them hands-on experience with different farming technologies. I believe that there were many things to be learned, although the learned skills did not reflect on the economic development right away.

7. Conclusion

The reasons for Korean success as seen today obviously have roots in their effort to surpass Japan. However the origin of such success, initiated by President Park, cannot be discussed without making a note on policies made by General Ukaki. The second half of the twentieth century was an era when the incomes showed the widest gap in the human history. There is a huge difference between those nations who caught up with the time, and those who did not. South Korea, while many other nations have suffered in their poverty, has managed to catch up. I think that we Japanese are able to say that we have done some great things in the past, especially the development of Korea as seen today.

The basic premise of economic development lies in wealth and intelligence. Developing, or undeveloped nations have hard time to deliver these goods on their own. In order to actively utilize such goods and service, a nation is required to use their own latent ability, which needs to have grown in the time prior to this. In that respect, Korea was successful in terms of both delivering and making uses of those resources, whereas the Philippines failed. "Rome was not built in one day" as the old saying suggests, Ukaki's policy did not suffice at the time, but the leaders who were trained and educated this time, later became the central power in the Semaul movement in time of President Park. I also believe the difference between the industrialization and infrastructure led to success in Korea and failure in the Philippines.

During the second oil shock, I headed the committee of energy conservation for my company. At the time I painfully realized the need for carrying out the mission at any cost: At the time I painfully realized the need to have the spirit that we can get nothing without efforts, for carrying out the mission. Japan inserted the spiritual power necessary to carry out such a hard task to Korean. Then Korean was able to win the contemporary development through this spirit and nationalism to surpass Japan. However by excess nationalism is a negative factor when obtaining international fund and introducing knowledge. I feel recent recession of growth in Korea come from excess nationalism of anti-Japan.