Economic Stagnation and Crisis in Korea during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Young Hoon Rhee

Australian Economic History Review, 2014, vol. 54, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: type="main">

In contrast to rapid economic growth in the twentieth century, Korea suffered a long economic decline in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the failure accelerating from 1850 to 1890. According to 36 different harvest records, rice productivity continuously declined from the early eighteenth to the late nineteenth centuries due to deforestation and increase in natural disasters. Contraction of rural markets after the interruption of trade with Japan also contributed to the decrease in rice production. The third reason for the nineteenth-century crisis was the dissolution of the government-led grain storage and redistribution system. Finally, the ultimate culprit for the crisis could be found in Confucianism with which the Joseon Dynasty was unable to properly understand and respond to the crisis.

Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/aehr.12032 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ozechr:v:54:y:2014:i:1:p:1-13

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0004-8992

Access Statistics for this article

Australian Economic History Review is currently edited by Stephen L Morgan and Martin Shanahan

More articles in Australian Economic History Review from Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().