During the decade of the 1980s, the Republic of Korea (South Korea, which hereinafter is referred to as simply Korea) emerged as a middle industrial power. In the structure employed by The World Bank (1989), Korea is grouped in the upper middle income sub classification of the middle income economies classification, along with such countries as Argen tina, Brazil, Greece, Hong Kong, Mexico, Singapore, South Africa, and 16 others (the Republic of China [Taiwan] would be included in this sub classification, were it not excluded for political reasons).
Real per capita gross national product (GNP) in Korea grew at an average annual rate of 9.8 percent during the 1980s (International Monetary Fund, 1990). Although this rate of growth was higher than that recorded in the 1970s, it is of even greater significance because it proceeded from a much higher base point.
Rapid growth in exports was a salient feature of the Korean economy in both the 1960s and the 1970s, and this trend
continued in the 1980s. The average annual rate of growth of Korean exports in the 1980s was 17.2 percent (International Monetary Fund, 1990). While this growth rate was approximately two thirds of the level attained in the 1970s, and about one half of that attained in the 1960s, the export volume upon which growth rates were based were enormously higher in the 1980s than they were in the two earlier decades. As an example, Korean export volume in 1979 was US$15.1 billion (The World Bank, 1981), while that in 1989 approximated US$70.0 billion (International Monetary Fund, 1990).
Although the Korean government cooperates with industry in efforts to keep labor unions as ineffective as is possible, wage levels and employee benefits increased significantly in the 1980s. This development has caused some Korean manufactur ers to consider a shift of production from Korea to lower labor cost countries. More often, however, the result has been a drive for ...