Review of Trade and Transformation in Korea

Review of Trade and Transformation in Korea, 1876-1945 by Dennis L. McNamara, Journal of Economic History vol. 59, number 1, March 1999, pp. 220-21.



Trade and Transformation in Korea, 1876-1945. By Dennis L. McNamara. Boulder,
Colorado: Westview Press, 1996. Pp. xvi, 228. $59.00, cloth.

Korea was forced open to international trade by gun-boats in 1876. The only difference
from other Asian countries was that the ships were not from the West, but from a
neighboring Asian country, Japan. Defeating China and Russia in the scramble for Korea,
Japan finally annexed Korea in 1910, and the colonial rule lasted until 1945. This book
with eight chapters is about these important seven decades of imperialist modernization of
Korea. Its focus is more on ideological and social than on economic transformation.
Two seemingly unrelated topics constitute its main body: 1) intellectual clash between
Confucian reactionaries and proponents of modernization during the treaty-port period,
1876-1910 (chapter 3 and 4) and 2) the evolution of grain dealers' guilds of Inch'on, a port
city, into modern business organizations during the colonial era (chapters 5-7).

The first tale about the confrontation between Confucian literati and West-oriented
reformers revolves around three issues: 1) Korea's status as a tribute state in the celestial
Empire versus an independent actor in wider international politics, 2) society versus "self-
regulating markets," and 3) autocracy versus democracy with an "autonomous public
sphere." The narrative of this debate is on the whole standard and should be familiar to
Koreanists. Neither should the story sound completely exotic to non-Koreanist readers
with some exposure to the history of late Ch'ing China or Meiji Restoration.

The second story involving more of original research describes how traditional guilds of
grain dealers in Inch'on were transformed and incorporated into a Japanese-dominated
chamber of commerce and other business organizations. This is both interesting and
important to the author as evidence of an autonomous public sphere in Korea, emerging in
tandem with self-regulating markets. The provincial chamber of commerce announced
the arrival of a civil society by leading an opposition against central government's initiative
to merge the local grain exchange with the stock exchange at Seoul, the colonial capital.

The author weaves these two distinct accounts into the argument that Korea underwent
social as well as economic transformation during the seven decades. While by all
accounts the Japanese colonialism did bring capitalism to Korea (See, for instance, the
author's previous book, The Colonial Origins of Korean Enterprise, 1910-1945.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), it strikes me as innovative to claim that the
invasion sowed the seeds of a civil society as well. This original argument unfortunately
seems to be supported by less than convincing evidence. The Inch'on business
organizations were definitely intermediate civil associations in the formal sense of being
neither the state nor the family. Their actual operations however remained "within
boundaries established by the Government-General (p. 156)," a qualification hardly sitting
comfortably with the description "autonomous." Challenging the central government in
the transfer debate may have been an act of independence not commonly found in dynastic
Korea; but at least equally significant is that the provincial resistance was quashed in 1931.
More importantly, granted the opposition campaign had something to do with the sprouts of
a civil society, one cannot but wonder whether they would have remained to continue to
grow in post-colonial South Korea, given the commanding position of Japanese merchants
presiding over subordinate Korean partners in the chamber. The incident may be telling
us more about expatriate civil elements of Japan than of its colony. In short, the "public
sphere" the author identifies in Inch'on seems neither very autonomous nor quite Korean.

One could be so optimistic as to see a "nascent civil society (p. 165)" in the Japanese-
dominated business organisations in a colonial provincial city perhaps only by taking it out
of both time-series and cross-sectional context. Markets may bring civil society and
democracy - most probably in the long run. In the short run, social and political
development lagged hugely behind economic growth in Korea: after all, it is arguable that
until the late 1980s the "public sphere" remained largely dependent and restricted. For
most of 1910-93, Korea (South Korea after 1945) was under an autocratic rule of a former
or an incumbent admiral or general. Trade union activities were brutally repressed. And
business community with a large amount of familism (recall the current charge directed at
chaebols for practicing crony capitalism) was overwhelmed by wide-ranging industrial
policies, which included the subsidy to help a major colonial textile firm owned by a
Korean family survive its difficult early years (See Carter Eckert. Offspring of Empire.
Seattle: Washington University Press, 1991).

Myung Soo Cha
Yeungnam University