韓國의 農地改革에 關한 硏究 = A Study on the Land Reform in Korea

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Twenty years have passed since the Land Reform was enacted which ben one of the most important policies in the modernization of the farming villages in Korea. In this paper, the writer is aiming at evaluating the Land Reform from a institutional point of view. To sum up:
There are two kinds of Land reform land reform patterens in underdeveloped countries, One is a capitalistic pattern of land reform: the government ocnfiscates the farmlands with compensation and sells them out to the farmers again. The other is a socialistic pattern of land reform: the government confiscates the farmlands without compensation and distributes them to the farmers gratis. Thus, the latter is the more thorough of the two.
If one examines the Korean rural situation before the Land Reform, he will find that about 50 percent of all farm households were occupied by landless tenants. Small-scale farming households with less than one cheongbo (=about one hectare), constituted 75.5 percent. The farmers were forced to pay high farm rents with a share of the crop which had been harvested on the farm, and they were progressively being reduced to abject poverty. In consequence, after Word War Ⅱ, many countries redistributed their farmlands. Japan and North Korea carried out their land reforms. With all these stimuli from outside the country, the Korean people also cride out ardently for a land reform. And thus, American military administration, right after 1945, enforced a system called the "Three-to-One Tenant System", which sgnifies that two-thirds of the production must go to the real cultvator and one-third to the landlord, and it tried to keep the farming communities in a stable condition.
The new Korean government established in 1948 hurried to make every preparation for the execution of land reform, and started to formulate a "land reform law." The hottest issues in the formulation of the law were those of setting an estimated value on the land and of the length of the repayment period. At last, a caiptalistic pattern of land reform was adopted. The method of repayment, according to the reform regulations, was that the farmers must pay for the land with an amount of crop equal to 250 percent of the average annual harvest. However, the payment period could be extended up to 10 years, which meant that only 25 percent of the annual production could be contributed toward the land price.
As a result of the reform small-scale from households with less than one cheongbo of farmland reduced to 65 percent of the total right ofter the Reform they made up 79.1 percent). Thus the problem of small-scale farms, which has been inveterate in Korean farm managment until now, has not been improved at all. This is due to the fact that in addition to the 25 percent anual payment of farm Produce farmers had to sell their produce to the government at low price. Thus the burden of repayment became too heavy for the farmers and the whole situation afterwards drove the farmers economy into eventual bankruptcy. The endeavour to industrialize land capital was unsuccessful because of the delay in paying compensation money, and the payments in installments, and because of inflation. It seemed that there were only negative aspects in the Reform. There were, however, some good influences; the removal of the parasitic landlord system, the establishement of small private farms, and the contribution to the overall food supply by making the repayment in grain.
The Reform charged rural social structure by causing a decrease in the number of farmers in the poor-farmer class. Also, the number of farmers in the middle and wealthy-farmer classes increased. To go into the details; The households with less than one cheongbo of farmland constituted only 79.1% right after the Reform, but they have been reduced to 65% at present. On the other hand, these with 1∼2 cheongbo of farmland have been increased to 26.9% (formerly 16.5%), and those with more than 3 cheongbo of farmland numbered 2,930 households (0.1%) before the Reform and have now increased to 39,000 households (1.6%). There is now, in paticular, tendency for she number of middlescale farming households to increase.
This phenomenon is being watched with keen interest. It was found that the rate of social mobility within the village 72.9%. This means that a considerable amount of vertical mobility between the classes has been occurring. Another notable fact is that these tends to appear a now "landlord-tenant relationship", which is against the lnd reform law.
It is true that the pettiness of Korean agricultural management is an obstructing element in modernizing the farming communities, but this problem cannot be solved, even though we make way for farming enterprises by removing the upper limits of ownership of farmland or by raise and adjust the upper limits. This is because, under present Korean rural circustances, there are innumerable obstacles which make it impossible to manage farming on a large scale. We cannot ignor the present rural structure in establishing the direction for the modernization of Korean farming communities. It is believed that a new plan to make the most of the good points of largescale farming on the basis of smallscale farming is the only way for Korean farming communities to follow at present.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Ⅰ. 序論
• Ⅱ. 農地改革前의 우리나라의 農村事情
• 1. 小作農化한 農民
• 2. 農地問題를 둘러싼 社會動向
• 3. 美軍政의 小作料引下
• Ⅲ. 農地改革의 實施와 그 成果
• 1. 農地改革의 實施
• 2. 農地改革의 成果
• Ⅳ. 農地改革과 農村構造變動
• 1. 農民層의 分解
• 2. 農地改革과 社會的 移動
• Ⅴ. 3町步上限制와 農業近代化
• Ⅵ. 結論