How Did South Korea Come So Far, So Fast?

From time to time, I receive letters from readers who have questions about various facets of Korean culture or history. This subject - how South Korea went about developing itself so quickly after the Korean war to become the prosperous nation that it is today - is one that I think some of our readers may find to be interesting.

When the Korean war came to a cease-fire in the summer of 1953, according to my grandmother, South Korea looked very much like Kosovo did in the late 90's. Food was scarce, their largest cities had been reduced to piles of rubble, orphans were ubiquitous, and the general population struggled to find adequate shelter.

Over the next four decades, South Korea experienced an explosion of growth and industrialization to become almost as competitive as Japan on a global economic scale. To people like my parents and grandmother who saw firsthand what South Korea looked like after the war, this transformation from the post-war, rubble version of South Korea to the version that hosted the 1988 summer Olympics was a real life miracle.

Can we expect Kosovo, Rwanda, Afghanistan, and other war-torn countries to experience similar transformations thirty to forty years after their deepest crises? The obvious answer is no.

So how did South Korea come so far, so fast?

Sadly, the answer to this question involves shedding of innocent blood, which is almost always the case when any country experiences economic prosperity that is not in proportion to the collective efforts of its people putting in honest days of labor.

In the mid 1960's, the South Korean government, led by a man named Park Chung Hee agreed to support the United States in the Vietnam war in exchange for substantial financial rewards.

From 1964 to 1972, South Korea would end up sending more than 300,000 Korean soliders to Vietnam to support the United States. To put this number into perspective, consider that the United States sent approximately 1,000,000 of their own soliders to fight in Vietnam. Australia, the third largest foreign military presence in Vietnam sent approximately 48,000 soliders.

Of the 300,000+ soldiers that South Korea pledged to support the United States, approximately 5,000 died and another 11,000 were wounded.

For sending their troops to Vietnam, South Korea received a $150 million loan from the United States. The South Korean military continued to receive financial assistance from the States throughout the war, as outlined below:

1964: $122.0 million
1965: $112.5 million
1966: $228.1 million
1967: $432.2 million
1968: $656.3 million
1969: $418.9 million
1970: $371.5 million
1971: $597.9 million
1972: $454.0 million

All told, the United States injected more than 3 billion dollars into the South Korean economy during the Vietnam war.

Some scholars in South Korea believe that this massive injection of cash from the United States gave South Korean leaders confidence in their ability to bring more money into Korea through other types of business.

Large construction contracts throughout the middle east and the development of multi-national conglomerates like Hyundai and Samsung would continue to fuel the South Korean economy after the Vietnam war.

Still, it's generally acknowledged that the bulk of the capital that was needed to build South Korea so rapidly into the country that it is today came from the United States in exchange for Korean soldiers during the Vietnam war.

Dare I conclude this post with an observation that may offend some of our readers?

War is big business. Always has been, always will be.