Subsistence and Commercial Activities. Before the 1900s, Koreans lived as subsistence farmers of rice, barley, sorghum, and other crops and satisfied most of their basic needs through their own labor or through barter. Fishery products in the coastal villages were popular. The Japanese introduced some heavy industries, locating them in the north, and improved Korean infrastructure for obvious reasons. In the meantime, the south remained mainly agricultural, with some light industry. Division of the peninsula made it impossible for Koreans to exchange products between northern industries and southern farms. The Korean economy lost its balance.
A drastic transformation of the Korean subsistence economy took place after the mid-1960s as South Korea adopted a policy of economic modernization, emphasizing export-oriented industrialization and growth. A series of five-year economic plans beginning in 1962 has exceeded the goals originally set, and growth rates have been phenomenal. Real growth was 12.5 percent between 1986 and 1988, and 6.5 percent in 1989. South Korea became the world's tenth-largest steel producer by 1989 and began exporting automobiles, ships, electronic goods, textiles, shoes, clothing, and leather products. Because of South Korea's emphasis on industrialization, the relative importance of the agricultural sector has steadily declined. By January 1989, agriculture, fishing, and forestry employed approximately 13 percent of the total industrial work force and generated 10.2 percent of gross domestic product. At the same time, farmers increased their income (by 24.4 percent in 1988) by raising cash crops, thus increasingly becoming commercial farmers.
Industrial Arts. A variety of implements and objects of industrial arts is available. Most popular are manufacturing replicas of the Koryo and Yi dynasty celadons. Lacquerware and items with mother-of-pearl inlay are popular. "Knots" with silk thread for accessories are another product, manufactured using ancient arts. Most of these are sold domestically, but some limited quantities are made for export.
Trade. Since Korea's economic modernization has become oriented toward industrialization and growth, Koreans place a great emphasis on export. Annual trade in 1988 was more than $900 billion, and South Korea became the world's tenth-largest trading nation. Main export items include textiles, clothing, electronic and electric equipment, footwear, machinery, steel, rubber tires and tubes, plywood, and fishing products. Major import items are machinery, electronic and electrical equipment, petroleum and petroleum products, steels, grain, transport equipment, chemicals, timber and pulp, raw cotton, and cereals. South Korea achieved a surplus of more than $4.6 billion in the balance of payment for trade in 1989.
Division of Labor. During the Koryo and Yi dynasties, until it was outlawed in 1894, division of labor by class was pervasive: yangban (nobility), mainly the scholar-officials, were largely exempt from manual labor performed by commoners. Division of labor by gender was also prominent, strongly influenced by Confucian-oriented values: men were primarily responsible for outside labor as providers, whereas women performed domestic tasks. Despite the existence of male preference in many jobs and occupational ranks, the gender gap is narrowing, especially for highly educated women in the cities. Domestic work, however, has continued to be the work of women. In the case of urban working women, their burden has become doubly onerous. In the rural villages an increasing number of women participate in agricultural work, even in the rainfall (nonirrigated) field, which was not the traditional pattern.
Land Tenure. Traditionally, the king owned all land and granted it to his subjects. Although specific parcels of land tended to remain within the same family from generation to generation (including communal land owned by clans and lineages), land occupancy, use, and ownership patterns were legally ambiguous and widely divergent. The Japanese conducted a comprehensive land survey between 1910 and 1920 as their colonization began, in order to identify landownership. Farmers whose families had farmed the same land for generations but who could not prove ownership to the colonial authorities lost their land. Those farmers either became tenants or were forced to leave the land, emigrating to the cities or overseas. At the time of liberation, almost half (48.9 percent) of farm households were landless tenants, and another 34.6 percent were part-time part-tenants, whereas only 1.4 percent were owner-cultivators. After 1945, the American occupation authorities confiscated and redistributed the land held by the Japanese colonial government, although they allowed Koreans to retain their private property. The South Korean government then carried out a land reform in 1949 whereby Koreans with large landholdings had to divest most of their land to those who actually tilled it. Land reform provided for a more equitable distribution of available land. However, by 1989, more than 30 percent of Korean farmland was cultivated by landless tenants whose numbers were estimated to be 67 percent of the total farm population.