# South Korea 1948 and Taiwan 1949

> South Korea (1948) and Taiwan (1949) both started poor and damaged by war. Both gave farmland to the people who farmed it, put children in school, then…

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Last checked: 2026-11-12
Publisher: Calankii (https://calankii.com)

## The starting point

Both had come out of Japanese colonial rule and war. Most people were poor tenant farmers. (Taiwan's statehood is disputed internationally. It is here for how it built institutions.)

## South Korea

- **Land first:** a land reform law redistributed most farmland to the people who farmed it by 1951. Land was bought from landlords and sold on to farmers ([Economic history of South Korea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_South_Korea)).
- **Schools:** elementary school became compulsory in 1949. The state had little money, so many schools were set up and funded privately by communities.
- **Planning:** an Economic Planning Board was created in 1961. Firms that met export targets got support. Textiles were 41% of exports by 1965.
- **Result:** income per person went from $87 in 1962 to $4,830 in 1989. Savings rose from 3.3% to 35.8% of national income.

## Taiwan

- **Step 1 (1949):** farm rents were capped at 37.5% of the harvest ([Land reform in Taiwan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform_in_Taiwan)).
- **Step 2 (1951):** public land was sold to tenant farmers.
- **Step 3 (1953):** large holdings were broken up and sold to tenants ("land to the tiller"). Some landlords were paid in shares of state firms.
- **Result:** Taiwan moved from sharecropping to owner-farmers, and farm income funded the first factories.

## What was new

Both did the slow, basic things first: fair land and schools for every child. Growth came after, not before.

## How it held people together

Owning land and seeing children in school gave millions of families a stake in the new state.

## What critics record

South Korea's planning board was created by a military government after the 1961 coup, and the country had no fully free elections until 1987. Taiwan was under martial law from 1949 to 1987 ([Martial law in Taiwan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law_in_Taiwan)).

## What it shows for Somalia

Somali communities already build and run their own schools, as South Koreans did in 1949. The two cases show that schooling for all and a stake for ordinary families came first, and wealth followed.

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