Economic growth requires certain basic conditions.
I would not pretend to know what all of these are, but stability and the possibility of upward mobility would, I suspect, be among them. You mention three other possibles in your comparison between England and Korea, namely improvements in agricultural technology, a warming climate and a perfectionist ideology. These factors were not lacking in China, Korea and Taiwan. These were well organized and, in some important respects, progressive, societies before Europeans came with their gunboats. What I believe was historically unique about western Europe was both an insatiable curiosity and an overwhelming greed.