South Korea's Search for Leadership

Abstract

I T WOULD BE MISLEADING to apply to Korea the stereotype of a feudal society with the government and army dominated by a landed nobility blocking social reforms. In such a country politics would be determined mainly by class relationships but in Korea today the determining factor is more difficult to identify. During the Yi Dynasty, Korea did have a traditional social structure, with power centralized in the hands of the nobility, which based its position on land ownership and discouraged social change out of fear of losing its dominant position.' In the last fifty years, however, Korea has suffered a series of blows which have destroyed the old order. When Korea was subjected to Japanese rule in i9io, the nobility lost its national political position. Over the next thirty-five years some noble families lost their land to the Japanese, while others kept their holdings. Thus in the economic sphere, Japanese colonialism did not affect the nobility in a uniform way. Another effect of the Japanese regime was to elevate some commoners into the bureaucracy; thence they branched out into business or politics after I945, thus forming a new element in the Korean elite. When Korea became independent at the close of World War II, three years of American military government in the south further altered the class structure, though the greatest changes resulted from the division of the country at the thirty-eighth parallel. Millions of refugees fled from Communist rule in the north.2 Their social backgrounds were varied, and in the south some rose far above their former station, while others sank in status. In this way the division of Korea produced far-reaching social changes even in that part not subjected to the totalitarian revolution. In I949 a land reform carried out in South Korea by the new Rhee government deprived the remaining noble landowners of their holdings. Former owners received bonds as compensation, and some immediately sold these in order to purchase city real estate, while others held them until they became worthless the following year after the outbreak of the Korean War.3 Thus the land reform did not affect the nobility uniformly. The war itself