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The Population Potential of Postwar Korea*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Irene B. Taeuber
Irene B. Taeuber
Affiliation:
Office of Population Research, Princeton University
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Extract

Decades of propaganda have made students in the Western world so familiar with the Japanese interpretation of the population problem of Japan that even international commissions considered population pressure as an extenuating factor in the successive acts of military aggression by which Japan acquired hegemony over Formosa, Korea, and Manchuria. Few realized that the population pressure within Japan was minimal in comparison with that which already existed in the conquered areas; that, furthermore, Japanese imperial policy tended toward an increasing imbalance between population increase and employment opportunities. The deepening poverty of the Korean masses was often reported, only to be challenged by the citation of production statistics, but the provincialism of the West was such that discussion remained in the realm of charge and countercharge. Few students dared the linguistic hurdles barring factual analysis of the impact of Japanese political, economic, and educational domination on the traditional Korean patterns of fertility, mortality and migration. Whatever the explanation for this myopia of the social scientists of the interwar decades, its conquences were serious. No backlog of technically competent and conceptually mature research on the demography of Korea exists to guide either the analysis of the present or the assessment of the future.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , May 1946 , pp. 289 - 307
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1946

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References

1 These census counts are those given in: Takeda Yukio, “Naichi zaijü hantō-jin mondai” [Koreans resident in Japan], Shakai seisaku jihö [Social Policy Review], No. 213 (June, 1938), 99–137. Population totals for other periods and provincial distributions are given in Lee, Hoon K., Land utilization and rural economy in Korea (London: Oxford University Press, 1936)Google Scholar, chap. 1.

2 Vital statistics were published currently in the Chōsen sōtokufu tōkei nempō [Statistical annual of the Government General of Korea]. Summary data were also included in the official Nihon teikoku tōkei nenkan and Takumu tökei, and in such private or semi-private yearbooks as Chōsen nenkan, Dōmei jiji nenkan, and Nihon toshi nenkan.

3 The following census publications of the Chōsen sōtokufu [Government General of Korea] were available for analysis: Chōsen kokusei chōsa hōkoku [Census reports for Korea, 1930], Zen Sen hen [Section on all Korea], Vol. I. Kekka-hyō [Tables of results] (Keijō, 1934)Google Scholar; Chōsen kokusei chōsa hōkoku [Census reports for Korea, 1935], Fu-yū-men betsu chōju jinkō [Permanently resident population by cities, town, and villages] (Keijō, 1937)Google Scholar; and Chōsen kokusei chōsa hōkoku [Census reports for Korea, 1935], Dō-hen [Provincial section]. Vol. 5. Zenra-nandō [South Zenra Province] (Keijō, 1937).

4 Kiei, Sai, “Chōsen jūmin no seimei-hyō” [Korean life tables, 1931–35], Chōsen igakkai zasshi [Journal of the Chosen medical association], 29 (Nov., 1939), 68–108Google Scholar.

5 Comparative analysis of the life table mortality rates of Koreans in Korea in relation to those of Japanese in Korea and to those of other peoples at comparable levels of general mortality indicates a probable under-registration of deaths in early adult life, especially for males. In addition, comparisons of the enumerations in successive censuses and the ratios of successive age groups within given census age distributions indicate that the Seoul death rates utilized for children were somewhat lower than the actual rates.

6 Haruo, Mizushimaet al, “Fu-ken-betsu seimei-hyō. Dai ikkai” [An abridged life table for each prefecture of Japan], Chōsen igatkai zasshi [Journal of the Chosen medical association], 28 (Aug., 1938), 1136–1176Google Scholar.

7 Sawamura Tōhei, “Chōsen nōgyō no rōryoku sosei” [The structure of agricultural labor in Korea], Shakai seisaku jihō [Social policy review], no. 208 (Jan., 1938), 114–141.

8 The registration of births is so incomplete in Korea that fertility analysis has to be based on estimates of the number of births required to produce the number of children enumerated in the various censuses. For a brief note on the deficiencies of Korean birth registration and a description of the techniques utilized to derive estimated numbers of births from census age distributions, see “Korea in transition: demographic aspects,” Population index, 10 (Oct., 1944), 229–242CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 A gross reproduction rate of 3.5 means that, at the age-specific fertility rates for female births which existed in the interwar decades, and in the absence of any deaths between birth and the end of the childbearing period, a cohort of 1,000 women passing through the childbearing period would bear 3,500 daughters.

10 A net reproduction rate of 1.8 means that, if a cohort of 1,000 girl babies were depleted by deaths at the rate of the 1926–1935 life tables and the survivors bore daughters at the age-specific fertility rates which existed in the 1926–1930 period, they would bear 1,800 daughters while passing through the reproductive period.

11 Only fragmentary data are now available in this country from the Korean census of October 1, 1940. The Japanese government announced the total population of each part of the Empire in 1941. A search of the various Japanese and Korean yearbooks has yielded the population of the individual cities as of the census of October 1, 1940; the registration estimates of the population of provinces and cities as of the end of 1940; and the population of provinces, by nationality, as of the end of the year 1941, presumably adjusted to the data of the 1940 census.

12 The estimated number of Koreans on October 1, 1940 is the total census population minus the number of non-Koreans, primarily Japanese, given in the registration tabulations as of the end of 1940. A comparable computation for 1925, 1930 and 1935 indicates that the resultant figure should differ only slightly from the census count.

13 For a detailed analysis of the economic characteristics and trends of the Japanese period, see Grajdanzev, Andrew J., Modern Korea (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1944)Google Scholar.

14 Hisama Kenichi, “Chōsen nōmin no naichi ishutsu no hitsuzcn-sei” [The necessity for the emigration of Korean farmers to Japan], Shakai seisaku jihō [Social policy review], no. 244 (Jan., 1941), 113–128.

15 Note the provincial pattern of variation in both infant and general mortality in the official vital statistics regularly published in Chōsen sötokufu tskei nempō. See also Sai Kiei, op. cit., pp. 86–89.

16 Kiei, Sai, “Chōsen ni okeru shussei-ritsu oyobi shibō-ritsu ni kansuru shakai-seibutsu-gaku teki kōsatsu” [Socio-biological studies concerning birth and death rates in Korea], Chōsen igakkai zasshi [Journal of the Chosen medical association], 27 (Feb., 1937), 101–125Google Scholar.

17 Shüei, Harafuji, “Dō-betsu Chōsen-jin seimei-hyō” [Life tables for Korean people by provinces, 1934–1936], Chōsen igakkai zasshi [Journal of the Chosen medical association], 30 (Aug., 1940), 1–32Google Scholar. Numbers of survivors and the expectation of life were computed only for age 12 and above because of inaccuracies in the statistics on the mortality of infants and young children.