The “Peculiarities” Of Modernisation In Korea: Revisiting The Debate On “Colonial Modernisation” Vs. “Colonial Plunder”

ABSTRACT

This article revisits the “colonial modernisation” thesis and its nationalist critique, the thesis of “colonial plunder” in the context of Korea. The two accounts have long been subject to politically charged disputes: while the former posits a causal link between Japanese colonialism and Korea’s rapid industrialisation, the latter suggests that Korea’s transition to capitalist development was blocked and distorted by Japanese colonialism. This article offers a critique of both accounts at the theoretical and historical levels. For a theoretical critique, it draws on the Marxist discussions of the notion of the “peculiarities” of national capitalism with reference to Britain and Germany. The article argues that both theses, by deriving the presumed ills or virtues of Korean capitalism from Japanese colonialism, assume the existence of a “normal” and “benign” path to capitalism and look at Korean capitalism and Japanese colonialism in isolation from the universal contradictions emanating from their being integral to the capitalist world-system. For a historical critique, this article assesses the dissolution of Chosŭn Korea at the turn of the twentieth century and the formation of the Korean capitalist class and shows that Korea’s transition to capitalism was both an inherently global process and driven by violent class struggles.

KEY WORDS:

• National capitalism
• colonial modernisation
• colonial plunder
• capitalist world-system
• class struggle

Acknowledgments

I thank three anonymous referees for actively and critically engaging with earlier versions of this article. They provided constructive criticisms and insights that helped strengthen and clarify the arguments made.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. While this article frames the debate on the relation between Japanese colonialism and Korea’s capitalist development as a dispute between the “colonial modernisation” thesis and the “colonial plunder” thesis, this is not meant to suggest that the authors discussed in this article can be neatly and exclusively categorised under these two categories. This division is primarily based on the way in which the polemic is perceived and framed among Korean scholars. I thank one of the anonymous referees for alerting me to this point.

2. A comparable example can be found in the unproblematic reception or even beautification of the East Asian developmental state by broadly critical and left-wing Western scholars. For instance, while the authoritarian Korean developmental state, the Park Chung-Hee regime, was the target of the political left and the general public within Korea to the extent that it was termed “fascist,” it was mistaken for a progressive social force against free market fundamentalism amongst the political left and even some Marxists in the West. For instance, Harvey (2005, 89) applauds the export-led success stories of Japan, West Germany and the Asian “tigers” and states that it “was hard not to conclude that the West German and Asian ‘regimes’ of accumulation were deserving of emulation.” He also describes Japan’s tight relationship between corporations and banks as “felicitous” even if “rates of labour exploitation were high” as it “generated an astonishing export-led growth performance in the 1980s” (see also Fine 2013).

3. This critique is not intended to undervalue the rich historical analyses offered by the authors of the colonial modernisation thesis or Cammack’s and Pirie’s valuable work on capitalist development in the developing world and Korea.

4. It is not uncommon to conflate Tonghak, a semi-religious, anti-imperialist and pro-modernisation reformist movement with the Peasant War of 1894, as seen in Cumings (1997, 115−120). According to this view, Tonghak provided the peasants with a spiritual as well as organisational leadership. This perspective has been challenged, particularly by North Korean scholars, who argue that the Peasant War was independent of Tonghak influence. According to them, while there was an overlap, the history of Tonghak was too short to penetrate the lives of peasants and the class bases of the two movements were different: while the leadership of Tonghak consisted of aristocrats, the Peasant War army was primarily led by peasants with a more radical vision for social change (see Oh 2002). For differences in the reception of the history of Tonghak and the Peasant War by Korean scholars see Wang (2015).

5. According to the 1948 US-Korea Treaty on Aid, the majority of the goods, machinery, materials and other assistance provided to Korea as aid were resold in Korea and the proceeds deposited into the Counterpart Fund Account at the Bank of Korea.

Additional information

Funding

The author did not receive any funding for the production of this article.