Rewriting the Economic Growth History of Korea in the 1970s: Focusing on the Pollution Imports and the Shadow People of Economic Growth

Abstract

During the period of rapid economic growth since the 1970s, Korea imported many polluting industrial facilities from Japan, resulting in the generation of huge amounts of hazardous waste. While the problems of environmental degradation such as these were an integral part of Korea’s development process, they have received only scant attention in the official history of the country’s economic development, often being dismissed as peripheral issues. This paper aims to go beyond this tendency by rewriting the history of economic growth that underlay the disputes caused by the importation of polluting industries from Japan in the 1970s. Its features can be summarized as follows. First, Japan was the most damaging pollution exporter to Korea in the 1970s, and it was also the direct channel to import the knowledge of pollution, and alternative logic against the pollution issues. Second, discussions over industrial pollution in the 1970s occurred in the antagonistic relationship between four groups: the government, media, opposition party, and scholars. Third, a group of experts played various roles, including bureaucrats, researchers, and policy makers, leading the discussion of pollution in Korean society in the 1970s. It has been well over 50 years since 1970. Nevertheless, Korean society still does not hesitate to create areas and people that become shadows in the wake of development. This explains why we should focus on the “sick body” rather than the “numbers” in this age of science and technology.

Keywords

• economic growth history
• eco-economic history
• heavy and chemical industrialization
• pollution imports
• onsan disease