The Price of Progress in South Korea
D'MONTE, DARRYL
TRIALS OF AN ASIAN TIGER The Price of Progress in South Korea BY DARRYL D'MONTE SEOUL THE VISITOR to South Korea's capital is immediately struck by how "Japanized" it is. Sleek cars travel...
...Both have more nuclear facilities under construction...
...By 1993 that had increased nearly a hundredfold to $7,466, and next year it is expected to reach $10,000, pushing the South even further up the list of advanced nations...
...Foreign loans, imported technology and "efficient" (read "low-wage") labor became the formula...
...and West Germany...
...In fact, in the South, where they already provide 43 per cent of the electricity, current plans call for a total of 23 atomic energy plants to be on-line by 2015...
...In the early 1970s, though, an insidious health problem began to surface...
...In the city, people lament that their traditional cuisine, renowned for its diversity, is disappearing in favor of fast food...
...The average Korean spends some nine years in school—longer than in Spain, Ireland or Russia—and the illiteracy rate has been brought down to 4 per cent...
...As Yong-Soo Lee, a senior editor at the independent mass-circulation daily Dong-A Ilbo, puts it, "In 20 years Korea achieved a level of wealth it took some advanced countries 200 years to reach...
...Sleek cars travel superefficient highways past block upon block of postmodern skyscrapers and imposing apartment buildings in this orderly, outwardly affluent, model of a successful East Asian city...
...Between 1961 and 1980, the 9.7 per cent growth rate here was the world's fastest—five times greater than the United Kingdom's and about three times that of the U.S...
...One of its recent publications argues that "there is no distinction, historically, economically, socially or politically, between the so-called 'nuclear industry' and militarism...
...For the North stands to gain considerable hard currency from selling its latest "defense" technology to countries like Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Syria...
...Both began to grow in the 1950s, but South Korea started the decade ravaged by war (1950-53), then had to begin from scratch...
...Darryl D'Monte, a longtime contributor to these pages, is a writer who specializes in Asian environmental affairs...
...Activists battling the general nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, as well as conditions at specific sites, have sought for some time to fold the grassroots protests of workers and residents into the broader antinuclear and Green movements...
...No one wants to return to the days of underdevelopment, of course, but many agree that economic advancement does not automatically guarantee well-being...
...When the dictatorship instituted its "growth first" policy, he observes, it colluded with the chaebol, the heads of the country's biggest companies, permitting them to maximize expansion and profits without any restrictions on their practices...
...One result of the rapid modernization has been a large-scale nuclear power program...
...The death by radiation of a worker at a nuclear facility, for instance, produced a spate of damage claims from fellow employees who believed that they too had received excessive exposure...
...A nationwide survey of 43,000 workers in 1973 then found that one in eight was suffering from an occupational disease...
...Elsewhere, female electronics workers complained that their eyesight was failing because of plant conditions...
...Its first five-year plan, initiated in '62, quickly revealed a determination to pursue that goal through vigorous expansion, no matter what the human or environmental costs...
...antithetical to democratically open and accountable citizen supervision and control ."Although Kim Young Sam has taken steps to alter the entrenched pattern, how effective they will prove to be remains an open question...
...In short, it seems that South Korea today realizes it will have to address the regrettable conditions occasioned by the typically Northeast Asian combination of dense population concentration and a mushrooming economy, including rampant consumerism...
...Up to a third of those employed in textiles, it turned out, were afflicted with severe respiratory ailments...
...Nor has progress been limited to the economic front...
...In the best of circumstances, the argument continues, the nations of Northeast Asia would arrive at economic and security arrangements that would thwart the nuclear arms race and end the rule of repressive elites...
...Such plundering openly defies the oft-repeated admonition that countries need to think regionally and act locally...
...As industry became increasingly sophisticated, new health problems emerged and tensions mounted...
...This industry was created, regulated and subsidized to serve the needs of the military...
...But not until relatively recently, when environmental degradation came to have a direct impact on the lives of individuals, did Koreans begin to reassess their "miracle...
...Anything that threatened development, such as concerns about pollution," notes Yong-Soo, "was ignored, concealed or repressed by the authorities...
...Koreans have discovered it is not only in preindustrial societies that people—women and children in particular—face social hardships...
...But no one here is deluding himself about the long road to that happy state...
...At the outset, employers and employees alike largely ignored the surging number of industrial accidents (now up to 100,000 per year...
...Gone, though, is the throbbing dynamism still found in such places as Bangkok and Bombay...
...Thanks to improved health and family planning services, life expectancy exceeds India's by 11 years...
...Idealists, among them the Korean Greens, are urging a basic shift in priorities...
...India, possessing an industrial base newly freed from the shackles of colonialism, was able to embark right off on a series of five-year plans designed to spur long-term prosperity...
...In addition to preaching the need for self-defense against any number of imagined enemies, Pyongyang has elevated nationalism to something of a cult...
...South Korea's largest environmental organization, the Baedal Eco-Society, is sharply critical of the situation on both sides of the border...
...By any standard, South Korea is one of the world's most developed countries...
...Then these countries would be free to turn to the challenge of achieving their human potential...
...Soon the two accounted for almost two thirds of the manufacturing sector as Korea took over Japan's "sunset" enterprises...
...Yong-Soo Lee shares the Baedal Eco-Society's distaste for South Korea's military-industrial ties...
...Like Japan, the nation has retained forests on as much as two thirds of its area, but it has done so by denuding many poorer parts of Southeast Asia...
...There is, however, a decidedly darker side to the picture...
...In the 1980s the South moved from light to heavy industry and to chemical production...
...Improving the lot of all citizens, they contend, should be the primary objective of the growth process, and preserving their environment should be weighed carefully against the demands of industry...
...Social security and unemployment coverage have been strengthened, too...
...It may well feel threatened by joint United States-South Korean military exercises, "the largest nuclear war games in the world," but the development of an armaments industry is seen as a blatantly economic affair...
...Amid all the attention given of late to North Korea's uncertain nuclear ambitions, it is sometimes forgotten that the South has nine atomic energy plants, while thus far the North has one five-megawatt research reactor...
...With 45 million people, it also stands a good head taller than the other Asian Tigers—Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore...
...The changing attitude is characterized here as "modernity shock...
...As for the North, Baedal accuses it of making a fetish of its juche, or ideology of self-reliance...
...When South Korea was finally in a position to launch a similar scheme in 1961, its per capita income stood at a paltry $82...
...The contamination of rivers and drinking water, and the destruction of the mountains around Seoul—a favorite weekend retreat for hoards of citizens seeking relief from high-pressure work schedules—have dampened the euphoria over stellar economic growth rates...
...This year's United Nations Human Development Report, perhaps the best all-around barometer of progress, ranks it 32nd...
...Surveys conducted in the area also showed a disproportionately large number of birth defects and a high rate of cancer among residents...
...At one industrial complex, a group of seamstresses in a flourishing textile export division developed swollen throats and sore eyes...
...And they complain that their government's 30-year policy of encouraging the use of automobiles has turned Seoul into a "parking lot...
...The autocratic, authoritarian and secretive nature of the industry-government relationship, as demonstrated in both Japan and the Korean Peninsula, is...
...The military dictatorship that assumed power in 1961—and pretty much held sway until Kim Young Sam was elected President in December 1992—whipped up enthusiasm with the slogan, "Let's build a better tomorrow...
...Even Foreign Minister Han Sung Joo admits that progress has had a high price: "It has certainly brought material comfort and prosperity, but it has also brought mortal dangers to human existence...
...Moreover, despite having largely broken with the past Seoul does not yet appear completely comfortable with the present, a condition that is reflected throughout the nation...
...Among the amazing features of the South's rise was its speed...
...India, meanwhile, places 135th, and the comparison is not necessarily unfair...
Vol. 77 • August 1994 • No. 8
