3.3. Historical Review of Korea and Taiwan’s past
3.3.2. The Post-war Authoritarian Period : Miracle of Han-River and
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educationally.
3.3.2.The Post-war Authoritarian Period : Miracle of Han-River and Miracle of Taiwan
In the postwar period, the authoritarian governments in both Korea and Taiwan implemented some similar strategies of economic development and achieved some similar goals. Both, for example, started with import substitution industrialization and then shifted to export oriented industrialization in the 1960s. Thus, from 1976 until at least 1991, Taiwan's exports always exceeded 40 percent of gross national product (GNP) and in 1984, 1986, and 1987 exports exceeded 50 percent of GNP. Korean exports from 1976 to 1981 ranged from 24 to 31 percent of GNP (Bank of Korea).
Both countries also achieved considerable social mobility. Many people migrated from the farm to the city and moved from agriculture to industry. In Taiwan, many farm girls went to work in factories to earn their dowries and to put their brothers through university, a pattern also familiar in Korea. Both countries moved in the direction of greater equality in income, though Taiwan moved faster. Both also emphasized the importance of education and greatly facilitated the education of the two populations.
These regimes promoted high levels of education in part owing to the official Confucianism that authoritarian leaders in both Korea and Taiwan promulgated in order to maintain discipline in their societies. However, Confucianism has mixed implications for authoritarian rule. While encouraging education, Confucian ideas are also proto-democratic.
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In addition, study in democratic countries can result in more liberal perspectives. Of the twenty persons in Premier Chiang Ching-kuo's 1st cabinet announced on May 29, 1972, fourteen had studied or trained abroad. eight in the United States, four in the United Kingdom, and six in Japan including four who had studied in two of these countries(Roy 2003). Most two had primarily military educations. Certainly, it has become clear Calculated from Taiwan Statistical Data Book 1992 (Taipei: Council for Economic Planning and Development, Republic of China, 1992), 43 (GNP), 190 (Exports). Calculated from Major Statistics of Korean Economy (Seoul: Korean Statistical Association), that several of these persons did hold more liberal views that may have ameliorated the actions of Taiwan's government and which seem to have contributed to Taiwan's democratization after Chiang Ching-kuo's death(Roy 2003).
In Korea, nine of the seventeen members of the president Park Cheng-hee’s 1st Yushin Regime, which was announced on January 15, 1973, had studied overseas;
five had studied in Japan and six in the United States with two of these studying in both countries. However, at least six persons, including three of those who had studied overseas, had studied primarily in military institutions.
The nature of the economic development in Taiwan and Korea also had important differences. Taiwan's large-scale industries remained government hands, while most industrialization in Taiwan took place in small and medium-sized firms. In South Korea the great private Chaebols ( , Tycoon’s Korean term) dominated the economy, though these had important government connections.
Both regimes repressed labor, but in Taiwan labor activists could more easily gain employment in a small firm, while in Korea blacklisting. These different economic developments reflected key differences in the political regimes. The various
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Korean postwar authoritarian regimes were Korean. The Taiwan postwar authoritarian regime can best be described as "Chinese" and "colonial" rather than Taiwanese. Just as the Japanese colonial regime discriminated against Taiwanese, so did the Chinese colonial regimes of Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Chingkuo. During the leadership of the two Chiangs in Taiwan (1950-1988), Chinese mainlanders, who accounted for less than 14 percent of the population, always held large majorities in the government's cabinet and the KMT's core decision organization Central Standing Committee(國 黨 ). Taiwanese never held the positions of president, premier, or minister of foreign affairs, national defense, economics, education, finance, or justice. Taiwanese also never held senior positions in the KMT or in the military and the security agencies. Chinese mainlanders controlled the large state industries, leaving Taiwanese to organize their small and medium-sized industries.
From Park Chung-hee's take over in 1961, Korean authoritarian governments were military in nature and came to power through coups d'etat. Although Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo both had considerable military experience, Taiwan's government remained essentially civilian and the military and security agencies never seriously threatened the rule of the tow Chiangs.
In addition, from the retaking of Taiwan from the Japanese in 1945 until the death of Chiang Ching-kuo in early 1988, Taiwan had only one regime. Korea, in contrast, had five different republics, each with its own constitution: the 1st Republic under Rhee Syngman (1948-1960), the short-lived Dr. Chang Myun’s 2nd Republic (1960-1961), the 3rd and 4th republics under Park Chung-hee (1961-72 and 1972-79, ), and the 5th Republic under Chun Doo-hwan (1980-87).
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The voting systems of the two regimes also varied. In Korea, the Park Chung-hee government abolished local elections in 1961, but the central government continued to have elections, even if they were controlled. Local elections were only reinstated in 1994 after democratization.
In Taiwan, local elections were implemented in the 1950s, but the island had virtually no central elections. Other than partial "supplementary" elections after 1969.
until after democratization in the 1990s.
Finally, even though the figures may not be complete, the authoritarian governments in both Taiwan and Korea were violent. In Taiwan, the government killed as many as 28,000 Taiwanese after the so-called "February 28, 1947 Incident."
Then, in the White Terror of the 1950s, the regime executed 1,017 persons of whom two-thirds were Taiwanese and one-third were Chinese. Over the whole of the martial law period under both Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo, some 140,000 people suffered imprisonment in some 29,000 political cases. The number executed in political cases totaled three to four thousand.
According to official statistics, Korea arrested and executed fewer persons for political crimes than did the Taiwan government. From 1948 until 1993, 336 persons were executed for political crimes and in 1954 alone the government executed 38 people for political crimes.
1962 to 1989, 116 persons were executed for political crimes. After the
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National Security Law(國家 ) was passed in 1948, some 100,000 to 110,000 persons were arrested. During the Korean War(1950~1953), 550,000 were arrested as traitors, but no records remain to reveal their sentences. Under the rules of Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan, a total of some twenty-five years, about nine thousand persons, an average of three to four hundred per year, were arrested under the National Security Law.
On the streets, however, the Korean authoritarian governments proved much more deadly. In the Kaohsiung Incident in December 10, 1979, the Taiwan government claimed that 183 police (and no demonstrators) were injured. These figures clearly had problems, but the key point in this context is that no one was killed and relatively few injured in the most important political demonstration during the postwar authoritarian period in Taiwan. By contrast, the suppression in South Korea of the Kwangju Uprising of May 18, 1980, officially left 191 people killed and a further several thousand injured, though other estimates go considerably higher.
During the December 1987 presidential campaign, Kim Dae-jung, basing himself on statements by Ambassador William H. Gleysteen of the United States, said that one thousand had been killed in the suppression of Kwangju, Korea’s 1st largest city of southwest(Gleysteen 1999). In June 1987, during the seventeen days of intensive demonstrations that led to the first major steps toward democratization in Korea, the authorities fired over 300,000 tear-gas canisters at the demonstrators. This tear-gas alone cost about six billion won34 or US$7.3 million. By comparison, Taiwan's demonstrations during the authoritarian period (and afterwards) remained quite peaceful.
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