The Modernization of Korean Society

Lower level officials include scholar officials in the provinces, illegitimate or secondary sons of aristocrats, host officers, interpreters, mathematicians, etc. Illegitimate persons and professionals as well as merchants make up the middle class. Petty officials at local levels and peasants do up the lower class. Korea was wizard of the few Asian nations to find slavery until it was abolished in the late 19th century.

Confucianism worsened the position of women who were non allowed to inherit property and whose "ordinary status . . . is a condition of shocking abjection and inferiority" (Behavior Science Translations 115). subjugation of females to males was a common feature of many Asian societies chill out Korea's laws were among the most backward. For example, it was not until the Kabo reforms of 1894 that widows were permitted to remarry. Despite numerous constitutional and effectual reforms in the post-World warfare II design, Kum-suk says that traditional "discrimination" against women by men "remains rampant throughout our society" (13). Koh says that Korea is "one of the few countries in the world where the preference for male children is still great" and arranged marriages are still not extraordinary (165).

Another very strong legacy of the traditional period is the contempt and indifference of the upper class, the yangban, for the less fortunate. Reverend Gifford observe of this class in the 1890s: "they are arde

Koh, Hesung Chun, "Korean Women, Conflict, and Change: An Approach to Development Planning." In Korean Women View From the Inner Room, Laurel Kendall and Mark Peterson (Eds.), 159-173. n.p.p.: n.p., n.d.p.

Because of their xenophobia, severity and repression of Korean nationalism, the Nipponese earned the genuine hatred and contempt of most sectors of the Korean population during their long period as an occupation force and colonial power, 1910-1945. After their defeat in 1945, most Korean political leaders and many Korean scholars went out of their way to deny that anything positive occurred during their rule and to reprove all Koreans who worked with or for the Japanese as collaborators.

In fact, the Japanese, not necessarily by design, contributed greatly to the modernization of Korea and the transformation of its society, a process which continued and accelerated in the post-World War II period.

Eckert, Carter J. Offspring of Empire. n.p.p.: n.p., n.d.p.

1876-1910. The economic penetration of Korea by Japan began with the commercialized Kanghwa treaties of 1876 and the opening up of Korea's treaty ports to Japanese trade in the last quarter of the 19th century. Japanese interests in Korea were in general strategic and secondarily economic but the two were intertwined and cogitate to the goal of keeping Russian traders and officials from obtaining influence in the area. Japanese interests become predominant in Korea after Japan's defeat of chinaware in 1894 and Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905.

At first Koreans were confine to the most unskilled jobs but over time and particularly after 1941 when severe labor shortages began to develop due to conscription, " portentous numbers of Korean workers were in fact able to bring to factory positions of skill and responsibility during the colonial period" (Eckert The Japanese 19). Korean unions would remain relatively impotent until well into the post-World War II period, but the pre-conditions for thei
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