Agriculture

Korean agriculture achieved remarkable growth over the past century, as is indicated by the near quadrupling of rice yields from 1.4 to 5.4 tons per ha during 1918–2015. This chapter documents the growth of input, output, and productivity occurring in different components of the agriculture of colonial and South Korea. The input data include time series of arable acreage, labor, seeds, fertilizer, and agricultural machinery for colonial and South Korea. During 1910–18, when the Cadastral Survey was under way, rice output growth as indicated by the data published by the colonial government probably partly reflects the improved statistical coverage, and thus overstates the actual expansion. Moreover, the colonial authorities revised the method by which rice output was estimated in 1936, causing the official aggregate to jump by 25.8%. This chapter reproduces the official rice output series side by side with the series adjusted by Sub Park (G59). The pre-1945 and post-1955 agricultural output series presented in this chapter cannot be spliced because the South Korean statistics are based on the improved sampling procedure adopted in 1965.