The politics of land reform in South Korea
Authors:   , Zeon Young-cheol 
Published: June 2024

Land reform in the developing countries has been of particular concern to social scientists as well as politicians and revolutionaries because of the preponderant role of agriculture in the area. Economists have paid particular attention to land reform because it is involved in the problem of creating the economic surplus required to undertake necessary developmental investments. For the sociologist or anthropologist, land reform is an important agent of planned social change. For political scientists, the concentration of land ownership in a few hands or in a particular group of people, and the decisive leverage of those same hands in certain stages of the policy process, justifies particular interest in policies designed to reduce that concentration. The aims of this study are, in short, to delineate the political effects of land reform in South Korea. This study confines itself to a case of South Korean politics of land reform. The first part of the study will rely heavily on an extensive documentary research on recent political history and the origins of land reform in South Korea. This is supplemented by a survey research conducted in the summer of 1969 among two hundred former landlords and two hundred tenants. This study, after the first chapter of introduction, begins with a conceptual discussion of modernization, political development, revolution, and land reform. This chapter is intended to delineate the inter-relationships of land reform with these social and political processes. It is assumed that land reform is an integral part of the overall modernization process. In an agrarian society like the South Korea of 1940-1950, the land reform was an indispensable policy to effect modernization and political development and to avoid political instability or revolution. Having discussed the place of land reform in terms of its role in the process of modernization, the third chapter traces the historical development of the land tenure system in various historical periods of Korean history, namely: the Yi dynasty, the Japanese colonial administration, and the period of U.S. Military Government in South Korea. The results of this chapter point out the urgent need for land reform for the important political reason of the maintenance of political stability. The fourth chapter deals with the discussion of political activities revolving around land reform between the President and the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry. While the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry was more sympathetically oriented toward the farmers, the National Assembly was dominated by the landlord interest and its sympathizers. Accordingly, as a result of this antipathy between the two branches of government, flurries of political activity revolving around the land reform took place. The examination of these political activities within and without the National Assembly constitute the main body of the fifth chapter. Finally, the study examines the political effects of land reform. In examining the effects of land reform, survey research data will be analyzed in terms of the respondents' perception and evaluation of land reform. In addition, this chapter will examine the hypothesis that land reform in South Korea contributed to the maintenance of political stability by removing an important cause of rural unrest--inequality of land ownership--and that land reform led the South Korean farmers to vote consistently for the conservative incumbent government. In short, the land reform in South Korea fulfilled short-term political and social goals, such as political stability and the legitimation of the Liberal Party government and the elimination of the hierarchical structure of society. However, it is doubtful whether a long-term goal, such as creating a middle class thereby strengthening the foundation of democracy in South Korea, was achieved. The South Korean farmers do not, as yet, constitute a viable middle class due mainly to their still abject economic condition. Their level of political efficacy is too low to be effective in influencing the political process in South Korea.