A Korean Economist's Impression from the Korea Workshop in Japan

Hyoungsoo Zang


I participated as a presenter at the Korea Workshop held at Hitotsubashi University on November 26 and 27, 1999. The Workshop is the fourth in its series of workshops aimed at constructing historical databases for a number of countries under the Asian Historical Statistics Project. First of all, I would like to use this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude for those who have worked hard to make the Workshop a great success. In particular, I thank Professors Odaka Konosuke and Hwang Insang for inviting me to this wonderful workshop.



The workshop was hosted in an old wooden building within the Hitotsubashi University campus, whose interiors were quite elegant. The building triggered in me some old memories from my high school days. I graduated from Pusan High School, an institution that was originally established in the 1910s for educating Japanese children in Korea. When I was attending the high school in the late 1970s, there was still an old two-story wooden building left, which was used as a classroom facility for freshmen. During hot and humid summer days of Pusan, the building was an oasis with cool air drifting in and out it. The building was later demolished and in its place, a modern gymnasium was constructed in the mid-1980s.

While I have had several experiences in attending various kinds of academic gatherings in several other countries, this was my first opportunity to participate in a workshop held in Japan. The workshop was distinguished by its variety of participants, including Japanese, South Korean, Koreans in Japan, former North Korean, and Canadian scholars, and visiting professors from China and Uzbekistan. This diversity naturally meant several different views were represented in the workshop. The range of views generated productive discussions in some cases, and heated debates in other cases.

The workshop inspired in me a strong interest in economic statistics on the Korean economy under the Japanese colonial rule. It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that my knowledge concerning pre-1945 Korean economic history only consisted of my memories of the old wooden building in Pusan High School. At this workshop, by an interesting twist of fate, I encountered another old wooden building, this time in Tokyo. The day the Workshop started was unseasonably warm, and like the wooden building of my high school memories, the building at Hitotsubashi was pleasant and cool even without any air-conditioning.

The first surprise for me during the Workshop was that most of the Japanese researchers interested in Korea were amazingly fluent in their spoken Korean. Moreover, the Japanese scholars seem to know much more about Korea than many of the Korean scholars knew about Japan. I was also astonished to discover that the Japanese academic and intellectual interest in Korean economic history was immense, as I had thought the subject to be an issue of interests only to Korean scholars. After some thought, I realized that the Korean peninsula had been an integral part of Japan's modern history. Thus, in some respects, it should not have come as a surprise that Japanese scholars were interested in one part of 'their' own history. This observation may seem to some readers to be a minor one, but for me, this discovery was important in informing my views on the Korea Workshop. In short, my understanding of the level of interest on Korea among academics in Japan had been somewhat primitive. I would suggest that a significant number of Korean economists are unaware of the high levels of research on the Korean economy being conducted in Japan.

Of course, Korean and Japanese scholars can conduct independent research on the same issues and each group reach separate, disconnected conclusions. When economists from the two countries, using various theoretical frameworks, discuss a "common" subject, the most important principle to keep in mind is objectivity. The subject should be approached in an impartial way, free from rash judgments based on previously held prejudices. One of the best ways to maintain objectivity is to first, understand the goals of a conference, and second, see how one's comments fits in with those goals. The main idea of the Workshop, to compile and analyze objective, accurate statistics, was clearly laid out, and easy to adhere to. Most of the opposing interpretations and debates that emerged during the Workshop sessions, I would argue, stemmed mainly from a less-than-full recognition of the general goal of the Workshop. In other words, although many of the debates were insightful and produced plenty of interesting ideas, some debates were unrelated to the basic objectives of the Workshop itself.

As long as the common larger objectives are kept in mind, there are many fruitful ways for Japanese and Korean scholars to collaborate. The construction of the database for Korea from 1910 to 1990 can be facilitated greatly when scholars from the two countries, or three countries if we include North Korea, work together on the same issues. With regular meetings or exchanges to check the consistency of each data analysis, we could compare results and fix any discrepancies as we proceed.

To give a fully balanced perspective, I feel that I must make the following observation regarding the logistic aspects of the Workshop. On the second day of the Workshop, due to intense debates, the first session was extended so long that lunch started after 1:40. A chain reaction of delays resulted, and the final session ended well after 6:40, at least one hour over the original schedule. For participants highly interested in a specific issue, extended discussions in their area of interest may have been welcome. Nonetheless, for most of the participants, very lengthy debates on subjects that seemed only tangentially related to the objectives of the Workshop drained them of their abilities to concentrate. This was especially true for the participants who attended all the sessions for both days of the conference, an activity that required continuous focus. The delays and their impact on the perhaps too tightly scheduled sessions were the only drawbacks I found in the operation of the Workshop. In order to avoid any misunderstanding, I would like to emphasize again that I greatly appreciate the efforts exerted by those involved in organizing the Workshop, and that I recognize that managing a conference of this size is no easy task.

In closing, I feel quite strongly that the research on constructing the historical database for Korea should have been initiated and undertaken by Korean economists. It is a pity that scholars in Korea, including myself, have been uninterested in such a project until we were introduced to the COE Project. I am afraid that we, Korean economists, may have been guilty of intentionally or unintentionally avoiding explorations of our troubled modern history. As scholars, we Korean economists should not have avoided our past, and should have taken a more progressive attitude towards such a fundamental project as constructing a historical database. As a result of the Workshop, I can say that scholars of both Korea and Japan are now making great strides in achieving our common goal of analyzing 'our' modern histories together. I am confident that in the future, even more joint research projects, more productive discussions, and more fruitful cooperation between Japanese and Korean scholars will be undertaken. Overall, my impression was that the Korea Workshop was a great achievement.

(Research Fellow, Korea Institute for International Economic Policy, Seoul, Korea)


International Workshop on Long-term Economic Statistics of Korea

(November 26 - 27, 1999)

Program

November 26 (Friday)

Session1 : Long-term GDP
1 Report Toshiyuki Mizoguchi, "National Accounts of Korea:1915-1990"
Discussant Satoru Okuda
2 Report Hak K. Pyo and Hyeog-Ug Kwon, "The Sources of Economic Growth in Korea: Long-term Perspective"
Discussant Hiroshi Uyama

Session2 : Industry
3 Report Insang Hwang and Hongyul Han, "Industrial Structures of Korean Economy: 1940s - 1950s"
Discussant Yukiko Fukagawa

Session3 : Agriculture
4 Report Yong-Sun Lee , "The Agricultural Growth in Postwar Korea"
Discussant Kazuo Kuramochi

Session4 : North Korean Economy
5 Report Hyoungsoo Zang and Myung-Chul Cho, "North Korea's Agricultural Sector: Assessment and Prospects"
Discussant Tetsuo Murooka
6 Report Mitsuhiko Kimura, "The Structure and Characteristics of North Korean Economy"
Discussant Il-Chon Kang
7 Report Yoshiro Matsuda, "On the Accuracy of the Population Census in1993"
Discussant Hoil Mun

November 27 (Saturday)

Session5 : Financial and Monetary Economy
8 Report Yosihisa Godo, "The Monetary and Financial Statistics of Korea: 1940s-1950s"
Discussant Kazuhisa Ito
9 Report Tsutomu Miyakawa , "On the Price Movements in Post War Korean Economy"
Discussant Yukimitsu Sanada

Session6 (11:15-12:30): International Trade
10 Report Insang Hwang and Yangseop Park , "The International Trade Statistics of Korea: 1945-1962"
Discussant Kazuo Hori
11 Report Noriyuki Nojima , "Trade Statistics Database of Korea"
Discussant Kyoji Fukao

Session7 : Comparative Statistical History
12 Report Hyung-gu Lynn, "Manufacturing Statistics and Systems in Colonial Korea"
Discussant Toshiyuki Tamura
13 Report Hak K. Pyo and Sooil Jin , "A Comparative Profile of Human Capital: US, Japan and Korea"
Discussant Sung-Jin Kang

Session8 : Labor
14 Report Hiroyuki Chuma and Jong Hak Weon , "The Korean Labor Market in Transition: An Analysisi of Internal Labor markets"
Discussant Nobuko Yokota: 10min
15 Report Jae-won Sun, "Population Migration and Labor Market in Colonial Period"
Discussant Yong-Gi Kim
16 Report Masahiro Abe and Seung-Yeol, Yee, " Korean Labor Market Statistics"
Discussant Kin, Yong-Gi