일제하 면양장려계획(1934~1945)의 전개과정과 식민지개발

Abstract

This article analyzed the background, process, and result of the promotion plan for wool implemented three times from 1934 to 1945. In 1930's, more protectionism and agricultural depression of Korea caused poor imbalance of payments and economic collapse of farm families. The Japanese Government and the Government-General of Korea paid attention to wool as a countermeasure to overcome that crisis. Wool received attention as important industry that could bring economic stability to farm families by reducing trade deficit through self-sufficiency for war cotton and wool, developing North Korea region, and a cash income. Therefore, the Government-General of Korea carried out the promotion plan three times as a measure of developing North Korea region. The Government-General of Korea set the primary objective of 90% production rate and 5% mortality rate at the designing step, but actually the production rate was just 50%, while the mortality rate was 20~40%. Such poor performance showed that sheep raising was much more unstable than expected. There were only 38,000 sheep bred until 1943. As a result, the plan had failed to achieve its goal. The reason for the failure of the plan consisted of three factors. First, the environmental factor: there were lack of knowledge about Korea's environment and a gap between reality and theory. Thus, the plan got unexpected and poor results when it was practically implemented. The Government-General of Korea could not present a countermeasure to the problems, so sheep bred came to crisis such as malnutrition or mortality. Secondly, as the social factor, Korean farm families had neither custom nor farming system for raising sheep. It was hard to expect high productivity for wool because the sheep raising was a sideline for Korean farm families as well as did not match Korea’s society and culture. The economic factor, the third, was that the Government-General of Korea overestimated the wool production and ignored the high risk for raising sheep. It was difficult for Korean farm families to easily participate in the promotion plan because the plan showed both lower profitability and higher risk than expected, which resulted in the poor production for wool. The Government-General of Korea still had to rely on Korea society in wool production because it was not feasible to do a complete overhaul for the way of wool production. The development project under the condition shown above should have been implemented considering modern systems, capital and technology as well as Korean unique environment, society and culture. However, the Government-General of Korea tried to increase input in order to only pursue a drastic expansion of wool production. Consequently, sheep raising became more unstable and the promotion plan had finally failed to achieve its goal. In this manner, the colonial development exposed its limit because of ignoring that it needed to rely on Korea’s productive capacity.