해방 이후 충남 강경(江景)의 ‘개성상인’과 면직물 직조업

Abstract

This paper aims to focus on the features and the changing aspects of the cotton weaving industry of Gaeseong merchants, who had lived in Ganggyeong-eup, Nonsan-si, Chungcheongnam-do, from Korean liberation to 1970s. Large number of people from Gaeseong moved to Ganggyeong before and after Korean War, where lots of Gaeseong people had already lived. There were some reasons why many of them engaged in the cotton weaving industry; they did not need much initial capital to start the business and they could expect help from people who came from their hometown and ran weaving factories in advance. Furthermore, their hometown Gaeseong was a well known city where the weaving industry had been developed. Since then, Gaeseong merchants, the leaders of the cotton weaving industry of Ganggyeong, had ran their business with keeping their identities of Gaeseong people in mind. In their settlement and business process, they showed some characteristic behaviors, such as mutual help of people from same region, emphasizing credit, doing business not with debt but with their own money, and focusing on their jobs without sidelines. Those are corresponded with well-known features of Gaeseong merchants and offer that manufacturers in Ganggyeong, who came from Gaeseong, had succeeded identities of Gaeseong merchants. However, the characteristics of Gaeseong merchants was not just positive matter to cotton weavers in Ganggyeong. Due to the nature of Gaeseong merchants, doing their business in equity capital, the scale of the business had been limited, and it was difficult to them to respond quickly to market changes because new investment and innovation had been delayed. At the end, with the decrease of the demand for their main products and failure to respond aggressively to the market, most cotton weaving factories operated by Gaeseong merchants in Ganggyeong were closed down in that time.