A consideration affecting the duration of the occupation of Korea,
and hence the type of economic program, is the estimated length of
the occupation in Japan. General MacArthur has indicated his desire
for a United Nations, or other international administration to take
responsibility in Japan soon after the peace treaty is signed.
There would be obvious difficulties in any long-term occupation and
rehabilitation program for South Korea, initiated at a time when
the occupation of Japan was about to be relinquished by the United
States. Apart from the problem of tactical forces in Japan to back
up the Korean occupation, there would be communication and supply
problems. There might he political objection to the occupation of
liberated Korea after the termination of occupation in defeated Japan.
The United States Military Government in Korea has recommended
a five-year rehabilitation program starting in July, 1948, and
requiring U. S. financing for a deficit of $647 million. The
estimates indicate that the proposed rehabilitation of the Korean
economy would cost more per year for the first three years, than the
relief program of $137 million which was tentatively approved for
fiscal 1948, but reduced in July, 1947, to $92.7 million.
A feature of the proposed rehabilitation program is an expenditure
of $35 million to provide a chemical fertilizer industry and the
supporting power installations, roughly duplicating the installations
in North Korea which formerly supplied the fertilizer needs of
South Korea. An additional amount of approximately $85 million
is included in the five-year rehabilitation program to cover the
cost of fertilizer imports, pending the completion of the plants.
Other items in the program are investment in coal mining to provide
low-grade anthracite for briquetting, and to provide for the
development and reconstruction of the transportation, textile and
fisheries industries. There is no assurance, however, that (_a_) $35
million fertilizer industry would meet the estimated requirements,
or reach capacity production in the time allotted. The suitability
of low-grade anthracite dust as the basic energy source for a
considerable industrial establishment in South Korea has not been
tested, and (_b_) there are no reliable estimates of the reserves of
this fuel, and no evidence of this fuel, and no evidence that the
mines and railroads could be developed to fit the prescribed time
schedule.
In the event that it is decided to continue a one-nation occupation
of South Korea for some years, the least costly program would be
one designed to provide, not capital goods, but raw materials and
fertilizer in sufficient quantity to stabilize the economy at a
satisfactory standard of living as measured by a prewar Japanese and
potential North Korean living standards. In this way, the risk of an
experiment in industrialization without resources would be avoided.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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