The Chinese Realm:
Regions -South Korea
Historically, South Korea [earegs] has been a pawn in the struggles of more powerful neighbors. It has been a dependency of China [chempire], a colony of Japan [jpempire] and divided between the Soviet Union (N. Korea) and U.S. (S. Korea) after WWII.
South Korea and North Korea are bitter enemies, yet they are in a situation known as a regional complementarity, when two adjacent regions complement each other in economic geographic terms. North Korea has raw materials while South Korea has industries and good economic relationships could occur if the two countries were not partitioned.
South Korea’s external trade connections reflect this partitioning. It has been developed primarily through several areas. One being the infusion of foreign aid from the United States and later Japan. Later on, the South Korean government broke up the large feudal estates and gave them to farm families and imported fertilizer, eventually leading to self-sufficiency in agriculture and in some years surplus. They developed the industrial program known as state capitalism (government control of banks and large industries). South Korea is the world’s largest ship building nation with thriving iron, steel, and automobile industries.
[The text of the above was written by Scott Girhard, San Antonio College from his online course GEOG 1303 World Geography. Used with permission.]
Physical [chphyskr]
[top]
[top]
[top]
Economic [chcoumea]
[top]