The colonizers, the developmental state, and uneven geography of development: Reclamation of South Korea's tidal flats, 1900s-1980s

Abstract

South Korea's tidal flats, called getbol, are muddy and grayish coastal wetlands under the tidal influence that constitute the predominant landform of South Korea's west and southwest coasts. Today, getbol is appreciated for its biological and geological diversity, for which it recently earned UNESCO's World Heritage status. Yet, throughout the 20th century, more than 50% of getbol areas were lost due to coastal reclamation, a civil engineering practice of enclosing and filling in getbol. This paper closely examines the history of getbol from the 1900s to the 1980s. While being messy and complex, the history shows a tendency for reclamation to have evolved from small to large in terms of scale and from private-led to state-led initiatives. In popular imaginations, the reclamation of getbol is thought to have been driven top-down by governing authorities, particularly by the “developmental state” that roughly governed from the 1960s through the 1980s. While this explanation aligns with the general trend, this paper highlights that the state did not act solely upon its own will but responded to the desires of those that the state had to satisfy to gain political legitimacy. Ultimately, within the context of South Korea's uneven geography of development, this paper argues that the reclamation of getbol transitioned from a project for the entire nation to a project for the rural populations and the agricultural sector, which lagged behind the country's tantalizing economic growth.