A handcart in Yongsan, Titan trucks from the mid-1980s, and what social change is

K, a man in his fifties, had sold vegetables from a young age. He had not gone far in school, but after leaving the army he worked as a laborer unloading vegetables at Yongsan Market, realized that hawking seasonings brought a better return than other vegetables, started a handcart trade, and once got the business onto its proper track. In his prime he had many regular restaurant customers, and, widening his ground as far as the area around the Yongsan ward office and the entrance to Wonhyo-ro, he had no difficulty supporting a family of five. From the 1980s, however, new competitors appeared and his own ground began to be invaded, and from the mid-1980s he began to lose regular customers to new hawkers who loaded not only seasonings but vegetables and fruit onto a small vehicle, a Titan truck, and solicited with a loudspeaker and a recorder: “Fresh [such-and-such] from [such-and-such] farm is here.” In seasonings and vegetables he had more than ten years of experience and was more confident than anyone, and in fact much of what they sold was second-rate, poorer in freshness and quality than his own goods; but raising the capital to buy a Titan was hard, and learning to drive, getting a license, and learning to handle simple electrical products felt a burden, so he hesitated and lost his regular customers to them. His chest felt tight and he grew angry, came to drink often, and found it hard to live even a day without drink, and so came to attend a hospital abstinence meeting. He had been brought to the hospital because, after heavy drinking, he often quarreled with people around him and acted violently, the police strongly recommended it, and his wife and family had him admitted by force.

What is found in this man is that K was very sincere and diligent, but he lacked the ability to grasp quickly the fact that the distribution structure of a rapidly changing Korean society, and residents’ way of life, were becoming considerably Westernized. Electronic products mixed with English were awkward machines for him, and he also could not prepare any plan for responding to the fact that residents’ eating habits were changing. At first he sensed that he was being pushed back and felt confusion and anxiety; then, even when he explained that his goods were better, he was pushed back in the competition and lost regular customers one by one, and he felt a sense of defeat from the newly appeared hawkers, and something like a severe anger from the customers. Although he had not received much regular education, he had even done army life, and for a time he had secured many clients, so his relations with people and his skill in trade seem to have been fairly smooth. If, then, when he began vaguely to feel that people’s eating habits and their desires for food were changing, he had taken a posture of responding actively to that change, he might have avoided such a crisis. But this man, rather than digesting the situation rationally, received it emotionally: he found hateful and detestable the foolish consumers who would not believe his words even as much as the words of slipshod truck hawkers who exaggerated and sold low-quality goods poorer than his own. Above, the essay briefly looks at a case of a person who is not adapting well to a so-called new change. However much social change occurs violently, and however much our surroundings change, there will not in fact be many cases in which the surrounding environment changes as K experienced it. The width of change that faces a person who has leapt from an East Asian cultural sphere into a Western cultural sphere is hard even to measure. Language, of course, and customs of life and social norms become entirely different. Even the direction in which vehicles run, and the seasons, have become different. In the future there can be any number of still greater upheavals. But there are far more people who, even while living inside a change that has become different in this way, try to live holding fast to an old way of life or a standard of value. If they take such an attitude they experience a social-shock phenomenon, suffer difficulty, and cannot survive. The essay therefore looks at a definition of social change and seeks a way of coping in order to overcome the shock of social change. Those mid-1980s figures are, without

Social change is seen as change across society as a whole, including both a structural side and a normative side. Because there is a side that is hard to prescribe exactly, the essay tries to confirm the concept by looking at various theories. Roughly, they are sometimes explained by dividing them into evolutionary and cyclical views; evolution is again divided into unilinear and multilinear evolution, and a cycle likewise into a flat cycle and a spiral cycle. Among theories that explain the cause of social change there is a view that technological innovation is the driving force, and a view that ideas such as human consciousness and values are the driving force. There is also a view that society has a nature that tries to keep a balance, and that social change occurs in a process of recovering balance across the social structure in order to adapt to a shock inside or outside the system, and a conflict view that inner conflict in the system is the cause of social change. There is also a view that society develops in a process of repeating differentiation and integration. On the direction of social change, the most basic concepts of evolutionary theory — adaptation, progress, evolution, and directionality — become important in social change as well. A concept of progress or development, which regards social change as something positive, is used. Spencer compares society to a biological organism and focuses on the differentiation and integration of social structure. He sees as evolution a process of changing from an unclear, inconsistent homogeneity to a clear, consistent heterogeneity, and in detail divides a military type of society and an industrial type. Durkheim’s view is explained from an evolutionary standpoint that a society of mechanical solidarity gradually moves to a society of organic solidarity. Organic solidarity is a society in which, as population increases, a division of labor develops and each part must form a relation of mutual cooperation; a society bound by organic solidarity is characterized by diversity, heterogeneity, and mutual dependence, and a restorative law, not punishment, becomes an important means of control. Mechanical solidarity refers to a society before a division of labor develops, characterized by a strong collective consciousness; a single set of values is demanded, an individual’s behavior and attitude are uniform, and social control is carried out repressively mainly through criminal law. Comparing Spencer and Durkheim, Spencer held that if differentiation advances, integration can be achieved automatically, whereas Durkheim held that if pre-contractual elements such as values and norms are not in place, the integration of a society is difficult.

Marx’s dialectical theory of historical development did not see society as changing and developing in a straight line and gradually, but as changing and developing at a certain moment into a new type of society, and in that sense his theory is called a multistage theory of development, more specified than a mere evolutionary view. As the mode of production changes, the social system has also changed. Change in the base, the mode of production, which brings change in the social system as a superstructure, follows Hegel’s dialectical materialism. Labor is given importance in human action. The earliest productive forces and relations of production are in harmony and bring a continuing development of productive forces. But at a certain moment a contradiction occurs in which the existing relations of production put shackles on productive forces that try to increase further. The method of resolving this contradiction is the formation of new relations of production corresponding to the degree of the developed productive forces, and this soon brings a change in a new mode of production. This process is repeated, and society develops through stages. Next, cyclical theory holds that a society or a civilization, like an organism, repeats birth, growth, and decline, without a particular direction such as development or regression. By contrast, evolutionary theory grasps social change as a concept of development. Sorokin distinguished three sociocultural systems and explained a periodic cyclical process among them. He regarded a sensate type and an ideational type as two main cultural types, held a cyclical theory that history shows a period of oscillation going back and forth like a clock pendulum between these two opposed cultural types, and held that in this process of oscillation a synthesis of an idealistic culture is sometimes also achieved. He saw the source of change as inside the sociocultural system, and held a ‘principle of limits’ that any kind of truth, if developed too far, becomes a falsehood or is distorted. Pareto, in a theory of the circulation of elites, introduced the concepts of residues and derivations in order to explain a person’s non-logical action. Residues are comparatively permanent basic feelings that exist in human consciousness and are related to elite theory. Derivations are a mental element by which an individual plausibly rationalizes their own non-logical, unscientific belief system and the like. Spengler spoke of the decline of the West. Comparing civilization to a biological organism, he held that it cycles through five stages of birth, childhood, adolescence, maturity, old age, and death, and in that respect held that Western civilization had entered a stage of ruin — war, a conflict of values, a collapse of cohesion, and the like.

Balance and conflict, technology and spirit, and Korea’s fifty years after 1950

On the structural problem of a society, first, balance theory sees society as a balanced system and explains social change by analogy from the process by which a biological organism maintains itself. As a theory that formed the center of American sociology in the mid-century, Parsons’s homeostasis is mentioned. A biological organism has a tendency to return to its original state, and this is called homeostasis. A society is made of interdependent parts, and those parts contribute to keeping the order and stability of the whole. If a change arises in some part, a change that can absorb it occurs, reducing shock and tension, and the balance and stability of the system as a whole are recovered. Apart from processes that produce a structural balance of this kind, it is admitted that there are also processes that produce a structural change. It receives the criticism, for example, that it cannot explain a sudden, total social change such as a comprehensive social-change revolution in a developing country. Next, conflict theory holds that a society only appears to keep order because of the coercive force of those who have power over those who do not, so conflict is always present underneath, and it is essentially unstable. The cause of social change is therefore grasped as a ceaseless conflict between those who have power and those who do not. Marx finds the cause of conflict in an economic factor. Because there is a class that has the means of production and a class that does not, conflict arises between them. Contrary to Comte or Spencer, who emphasized the harmony of each part with the whole, he presupposes a tension and conflict of the parts that make up the whole. That is, a dynamic force that arises because the parts are in tension and conflict with one another — among them a contradiction and conflict of productive forces and relations of production — is seen as a factor of social development. Dahrendorf finds the cause of conflict in a political relation of authority. He names an organization of authority relations a ‘combination of command and obedience.’ It is also largely divided into people who give orders and people who carry out orders. They have opposed interests because of a difference in the distribution of authority, and when certain conditions are in place they gather as different interest groups. Once gathered as interest groups they enter a stage of conflict in order to keep or change their own position; then a vertical movement of authority relations, a change of place between a ruling layer and a ruled layer, a reform of norms, and the like arise as a change of social structure, and social change is achieved.

On the factors of social change, as a technological determinism, Marx holds that a change in relations of production brings a change in the base, and this brings a change in the superstructure, so that society changes and develops. Ogburn says that culture continues to change, but its contents do not all change together at an even speed; the empirical part of culture changes quickly, and a normative or value change changes slowly. A cultural phenomenon that appears when a difference arises in the speed and width of change is called cultural lag. That is, technology changes first, and afterward values and norms suited to that technology change, and they affect even a change in social institutions. As an idealism, Weber’s theory of the Protestant ethic tried to demonstrate that a cultural idea and belief had affected a change in the economic system. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism he holds that the religious belief of English Puritans was a cause of the rise of capitalism. Next, a social-psychological theory of change emphasizes the importance of individuals’ personalities in the effect of social change on economic development. There are Hagen’s theory of a creative personality and McClelland’s theory of an achievement-oriented personality. Hagen defines economic development as a continuing increase in income per person that comes from technical progress. This process is achieved by a ‘creative personality.’ He tried to demonstrate a hypothesis that people who have a ‘creative personality’ appear in a particular social context. On his claim, an authoritarian personality tends to hold fast to a traditional type of behavior, whereas a creative personality tries to pursue a new and better method. Yet for a creative personality to arise inside a traditional structure there must be a ‘withdrawal’ of ‘status respect,’ and this phenomenon puts pressure on an authoritarian personality, so that authoritarianism falls into defeatism. This consciousness of defeatism is conveyed to a child, and in the course of two or three generations a creative personality is raised. McClelland holds that an entrepreneurial spirit in which a need for achievement is purely high and widely spread achieves economic development. That is, “In general a society in which a high level of need for achievement is spread produces more energetic entrepreneurs, and they in turn create a more rapid economic development.” He concentrated on examining empirically a hypothesis that a particular culture cultivates a need for achievement in people. He tried to distinguish whether a society’s need for achievement was strong or weak by analyzing materials such as popular literary works, mass media, and fairy-tale books. As a result he confirmed that the higher a country’s degree of economic growth, the higher the need for achievement — left undated, without

On social change in this country and the development of technology, the essay looks only at social development after 1950, when the most rapid social change by the development of technology was experienced. The past fifty years, were a period of great domestic upheaval for Korean society. Historical events that show the change of Korean society occurred: liberation from Japan together with the end of the Second World War in 1945 and the division of South and North that soon followed, the establishment of a South Korean government in 1948, the war of 1950–53, the student revolution of 19 April 1960, the military coup of 16 May 1961, a second coup in 1980, and the launching of the Sixth Republic in 1988 after the democratic struggle of June 1987. If the change in Korea’s socioeconomic character over these fifty years is briefly gathered into a few points, first, it was transformed from a traditional society into a capitalist industrial society. Second, narrowing the range to an economic side, it changed from an agricultural country into an industrial country. Third, it rose from a low-income country to a middle-to-upper-income country. Fourth, it changed from a closed East Asian society into a Westernized East Asian society. Fifth, on a political side, it settled as a democratic country. The ideology that has dominated Korean society over the past fifty years, the essay also places, is growth-above-all, the method that realized it was industrialization, those fifty years were, in the history of economic development, a process of industrialization, and the main content and direction of industrialization was an increase in exports. Among the conditions gathered in the essay are also that natural resources were poor while human resources were abundant, that the scale of the domestic market was narrow, that domestic capital needed for economic development was insufficient, and that a comparatively efficient organization of economic management was in place. That fifty-year snapshot and that historical list are, without

A new change, the essay says, is something that no force can stop. Another group placed in the essay is American Indians — they themselves, the essay notes, claim the name Native American, and say that the word Indian is what Columbus, not knowing, called them, mistaking America for India. They refuse to live together in white society, refuse even the compulsory education or vocational education provided by the federal government, and, assigned a special area for their independent life, live following old traditions and ways of life inside that reserved area. In order to keep as they are the social customs of the early nineteenth century, when their ancestors lived on American land, they refuse the use of cars and telephones and even do not use electric light. The groups together chose a policy of extreme isolationism. An example of a still more extreme change, the essay also places, can be seen in the Second World War: the Nazi policy of exterminating Jews, and Japanese imperialism’s attempt even to eliminate the Korean people’s language and surnames. We should not, the essay says, neglect an effort to adapt. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. K, a man in his fifties, is a person who had sold vegetables from a young age. He had not gone to school much, but after being discharged from the army he worked as a laborer doing such work as unloading vegetables at Yongsan Market, realized that if he hawked seasonings the return was better than with other vegetables, started a handcart trade, and was a person who once got the business onto its proper track. In his prime he had many regular restaurant customers, and, widening his ground of activity as far as the area around the Yongsan ward office and the entrance to Wonhyo-ro, he is said to have had no difficulty leading a family of five. From the 1980s, however, new competitors appeared and his own area began to be invaded, and from the mid-1980s he is said to have begun to lose regular customers to new hawkers who loaded not only seasonings but vegetables and fruit onto a small vehicle (a Titan truck) and solicited with a loudspeaker and a recorder saying, “Fresh [such-and-such] from [such-and-such] farm is here.” In seasonings and vegetables he had more than ten years of experience and was more confident than anyone, and in fact much of what they sold was second-rate goods poorer in freshness and quality than his own goods, but raising the capital to buy a Titan was hard, and learning vehicle-driving skill, having to receive a license as well, and learning skills that can handle simple electrical products felt a burden, so he hesitated and is said to have lost regular customers to them. So his inside felt tight and he grew angry and came to drink often, and it became hard to live even a day without drink, and he is said to have come to attend a hospital abstinence meeting. That he came to the hospital too was because, after heavy drinking, he often quarreled with people around him and often did violent behavior, so the police strongly recommended it, and his wife and family had him forcibly admitted. The point found in this person was that K was a very sincere and diligent person, but in him the ability to grasp quickly the fact that the change in the distribution structure of a rapidly changing Korean society, and that residents’ way of life was becoming considerably Westernized, was insufficient. For him electronic products mixed with English were awkward machines, and he also could not prepare any plan for responding even to the fact that residents’ eating habits were changing. At first he intuitively sensed that he was being pushed back and felt a sense of confusion and a sense of anxiety, and then, even when he explained that his goods were better, he was pushed back in the competition and came to lose regular customers one by one, and he felt a sense of defeat from the newly appeared hawkers, and something like a severe sense of anger from the customers. Although he had not received much regular education, he had even done army life, and for a time, seeing that he had secured many clients, his relations with people and his skill in trade also seem to have been fairly smooth. Therefore if, when he began vaguely to feel the fact that people’s eating habits or their desires for food were changing, he had taken a posture of responding actively to this phenomenon of change, he might have been able to avoid such a crisis. However this person, finding hateful and detestable the foolish consumers who would not believe his words even as much as the words of slipshod truck hawkers who exaggerated plausibly and sold low-quality goods poorer than his own goods, received the situation emotionally rather than digesting it rationally. Above, a case of a person who is not adapting well to a so-called new change was briefly seen. Yet however violently social change occurs, and however much our surroundings become different, there will not in fact be many cases in which the surrounding environment changes as K experiences it. The width of change that faces a person who has leapt from an East Asian cultural sphere into a Western cultural sphere is to a degree hard even to measure. Language of course, and customs of life and social norms, become entirely different. Even the direction of the running of vehicles and the seasons have become different. In the future a still greater upheaval than this can exist in any amount. But there are far more people who, even while living inside a change that has become different in this way, try to live holding fast to an old way of life or a standard of value as they are. If they take such an attitude they experience a social-shock phenomenon, suffer difficulty, and cannot survive. Therefore here a definition of social change is looked at, and a way of coping in order to overcome the shock of social change is to be sought. Social change is seen as change across society as a whole, including both a structural side and a normative side. Social change has a side that is hard to prescribe exactly, so the concept of social change is to be confirmed while looking at various theories of social change. Looking roughly, they are sometimes explained by dividing them into evolutionary and cyclical views, and evolution is again divided into unilinear and multilinear evolution, and a cycle likewise into a flat cycle and a spiral-shaped cycle. In theories that explain the cause of social change there is a view that technological innovation becomes the driving force and a view that ideas such as human consciousness and values become the driving force. Also, society has a nature that tries to achieve a balance, and there is a view that social change occurs in a process of recovering balance across the social structure in order to adapt to a shock inside or outside the system, and also a conflict view that sees inner conflict in the system as the cause of social change. There is also a view that society develops in a process of repeating differentiation and integration. On whether it is evolution (development) or a cycle — on the direction of social change. The most basic concepts of evolutionary theory, adaptation, progress, evolution, and directionality, become important concepts in social change as well. A concept of progress or development, which regards social change as something positive, is used. Spencer compares society to a biological organism and focuses on the differentiation and integration of social structure. He sees as evolution a process of changing from an unclear, inconsistent homogeneity to a clear, consistent heterogeneity. In detail he divides a military type of society and an industrial type of society. Durkheim’s view is explained from an evolutionary view that sees a gradual transition from a society of mechanical solidarity to a society of organic solidarity. Organic solidarity is that, as population increases, a division of labor develops and each of those parts must form a relation of mutual cooperation, and such a society is called a society bound by organic solidarity. A society bound by organic solidarity has diversity, heterogeneity, and mutual dependence as its characteristics. In a society of organic solidarity a restorative law becomes an important means of control. As a restorative law a method of sanction aimed at restoration of the original state, not punishment as its aim, is taken. Mechanical solidarity refers to a society before a division of labor develops. A society bound by mechanical solidarity is characterized as a society in which a strong collective consciousness is dominant. Collective consciousness is a form of consciousness that appears in common among the members. In a society in which a strong collective consciousness is dominant a single set of values is demanded, and an individual’s behavior and attitude are also uniform. Social control is carried out repressively mainly through criminal law. Comparing Spencer and Durkheim, Spencer saw that if differentiation advances, integration can be achieved automatically, whereas Durkheim saw that if pre-contractual elements such as values and norms are not prepared, the integration of a society is difficult. Marx’s dialectical theory of historical development, because he did not see society as changing and developing in a straight line and gradually, but saw it as changing and developing at a certain moment into a new type of society, is in this sense called a multistage theory of development, more specified than a mere evolutionary view. As the mode of production changes, the social system has also changed. Change in the base (the mode of production), which brings change in the social system as a superstructure of society, follows Hegel’s dialectical materialism. Labor is given importance in human action. The earliest productive forces and relations of production achieve harmony and bring a continuing development of productive forces. However, at a certain moment a contradiction occurs in which the existing relations of production come to put shackles on productive forces that try to increase further. The method of resolving this contradiction is the formation of new relations of production corresponding to the degree of the developed productive forces, and it soon brings a change in a new mode of production. And this process is repeated and society develops through the following stages. This is the process of social change that Marx holds. Next, in cyclical theory, it is said that a society or a civilization also, like an organism, repeats birth, growth, and decline. It is held that, without a particular directionality such as development or regression, it simply repeats a process of birth, growth, and decline. By contrast, evolutionary theory grasps social change as a concept that it develops. Sorokin distinguished three sociocultural systems and explained a periodic cyclical process among them. Sorokin regarded a sensate type and an ideational type as two main cultural types, held a cyclical theory that history shows a period of oscillation going back and forth like a clock pendulum between these two opposed cultural types, and held that in this process of oscillation a synthesis of an idealistic culture is sometimes also achieved. He saw the source of change as inside the sociocultural system, and held a ‘principle of limits’ that any kind of truth, if developed too far, becomes a falsehood or is distorted. Pareto, in a theory of the circulation of elites, introduced the concepts of residues and derivations in order to explain a person’s non-logical action. Residues are comparatively permanent basic feelings that exist in human consciousness and are related to elite theory. Derivations are a mental element by which an individual plausibly rationalizes their own non-logical and unscientific belief system and the like. Spengler spoke of the decline of the West. Comparing civilization to a biological organism, he holds that it cycles through five stages of birth, childhood, adolescence, maturity, old age, and a stage of death. In this respect he held that Western civilization had entered a stage of ruin. For example, war, a conflict of values, a collapse of cohesion, and the like can be named. On whether it is balance or conflict — on the structural problem of a society. First, in balance theory, society is seen as a balanced system and social change is explained by analogy from the process by which a biological organism maintains itself. As a theory that formed the center of American sociology in the mid-century, Parsons’s homeostasis is mentioned. A biological organism has a tendency to try to return to its original state, and this is called homeostasis. A society is made of interdependent parts, and those parts contribute to keeping the order and stability of the whole. If a change arises in some part, a change that can absorb it occurs, reducing shock and tension, and the balance and stability of the system as a whole are recovered. Apart from processes that produce a structural balance as above, it is admitted that there are processes that produce a structural change. For example, it receives the criticism that it cannot explain a sudden and total social change such as a comprehensive social-change revolution in a developing country. Next, in conflict theory, it is held that a society only appears to keep order because of the coercive force of those who have power over those who do not, so conflict is always present underneath, and it is essentially seen as unstable. Therefore the cause of social change is grasped as a ceaseless conflict between those who have power and those who do not. Looking at Marx’s view, he finds the cause of conflict in an economic factor. Because there is a class that has the means of production and a class that does not, conflict arises between them. Contrary to Comte or Spencer, who emphasized the harmony of each part with the whole, he presupposes a tension and conflict of the parts that make up the whole. That is, a dynamic force that arises because the parts are in tension and conflict with one another, and among them a contradiction and conflict of productive forces and relations of production, is seen as a factor of social development. In Dahrendorf’s view, the cause of conflict is found in a political relation of authority. He names an organization of authority relations a ‘combination of command and obedience.’ Also, it is largely divided into a person who gives orders and a person who carries out orders. They have opposed interests because of a difference in the distribution of authority, and when certain conditions are in place they gather as different interest groups. So once gathered as interest groups they enter a stage of conflict in order to keep or change their own position. When this happens, a vertical movement of authority relations, a change of place between a ruling layer and a ruled layer, a reform of norms, and the like arise as a change of social structure, and social change is achieved. On whether it is technological innovation or spirit — on the factors of social change. As a technological determinism, Marx holds that a change in relations of production brings a change in the base, and this brings a change in the superstructure, so that society changes and develops. Ogburn says that culture continues to change, but its contents do not all change together at an even speed, and that the empirical part of culture changes quickly, and a normative or value change changes slowly. A cultural phenomenon that appears when a difference arises in the speed and width of change in this way is called cultural lag. That is, it is held that technology changes first, and afterward values and norms suited to that technology change, and they affect even a change in social institutions. As an idealism, in Weber’s theory of the Protestant ethic he tried to demonstrate that a cultural idea and belief had affected a change in the economic system. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism he holds that the religious belief of English Puritans was a cause of the rise of capitalism. Next, in a social-psychological theory of change, the importance of individuals’ personalities in the effect of social change on economic development is emphasized. There are Hagen’s theory of a creative personality and McClelland’s theory of an achievement-oriented personality. Hagen defines economic development as a continuing increase in income per person that comes from technical progress. This process is achieved by a ‘creative personality.’ He tried to demonstrate a hypothesis that people who have a ‘creative personality’ appear in a particular social context. On his claim, an authoritarian personality tends to hold fast to a traditional type of behavior, whereas a creative personality tries to pursue a new and better method. Yet for a creative personality to arise inside a traditional structure there must be a ‘withdrawal’ of ‘status respect,’ and this phenomenon puts pressure on an authoritarian personality, so that authoritarianism falls into defeatism. This consciousness of defeatism is conveyed to a child, and in the course of two or three generations a creative personality is raised. McClelland holds that an entrepreneurial spirit in which a need for achievement is purely high and widely spread achieves economic development. That is, “In general a society in which a high level of need for achievement is spread produces more energetic entrepreneurs, and they in turn create a more rapid economic development.” He concentrated on examining empirically a hypothesis that a particular culture cultivates a need for achievement in people. He tried to distinguish whether a society’s need for achievement was strong or weak by analyzing materials such as popular literary works, mass media, and fairy-tale books. As a result he confirmed that the higher a country’s degree of economic growth, the higher the need for achievement. On social change in this country and the development of technology, here only social development after 1950, which experienced the most rapid social change by the development of technology, will be looked at. The past fifty years were, looking at Korean society, a period of great domestic upheaval. Together with the end of the Second World War in 1945, liberation from Japan and the division of South and North that soon followed, the establishment of a South Korean government in 1948, the war of 1950–53, the student revolution of 19 April 1960, the military coup of 16 May 1961, a second coup in 1980, and the launching of the Sixth Republic in 1988 after the democratic struggle of June 1987, and the like, historical events that show the change of Korean society occurred. If the change in Korea’s socioeconomic character over these fifty years is briefly gathered into a few points, first, it was transformed from a traditional society into a capitalist industrial society. Second, narrowing the range to an economic side, it changed from an agricultural country into an industrial country. Third, it rose from a low-income country to a middle-to-upper-income country. Fourth, it changed from a closed East Asian society into a Westernized East Asian society. Fifth, on a political side, it settled as a democratic country. The ideology that has dominated Korean society over the past fifty years is growth-above-all, and the point that the method that realized it was industrialization, and that those fifty years were, in the history of economic development, a process of industrialization, and also that the main content and direction of industrialization was an increase in exports. First, the point that natural resources were poor while human resources were abundant. Second, the point that the scale of the domestic market was narrow. Third, the point that domestic capital needed for economic development was insufficient. Fourth, the point that a comparatively efficient organization of economic management was in place. A new change is something that no force can stop. Another group is American Indians (they themselves claim the name Native American, and say that the word Indian is what Columbus, not knowing, called them, mistaking America for India). They refuse to live together in white society, refuse even the compulsory education or vocational education provided by the federal government, and, assigned a special area for their independent life, live following old traditions and ways of life inside that reserved area. In order to keep as they are the social customs of the early nineteenth century, when their ancestors lived on American land, they refuse the use of cars, telephones, and the like, and even do not use electric light. The groups together chose a policy of extreme isolationism. We should not neglect an effort to adapt. Such an example can be seen in the Second World War, and the Nazi policy of exterminating Jews, or Japanese imperialism’s having tried even to eliminate the Korean people’s language and surnames, can be said to be a representative example of just this kind of thing.

Last updated: 14 November 2026