Chinese cabbage, which costs less than 10 yuan in China, costs 100 yuan in South Korea. The Korean people complained, but they could only tighten their belts while cursing. Since the 1980s, South Korea has ranked among the third most developed countries in Asia with its rapidly d

文 | Slow Discipline Hardcore says

edit | Slow Discipline Hardcore says

Chinese cabbage that costs less than 0 yuan in China costs 00 yuan in South Korea. The Korean people are complaining, but they can only curse at the same time. Tighten your waistband.

Since the 1980s, South Korea has ranked among the ranks of Asia's third-ranked developed countries with its rapidly developing economy.

However, in such a developed country, the most basic need for people's survival-food, is ridiculously expensive.

Our country has already realized the freedom to purchase basic crops, but is hard to find in South Korea.

Agriculture is in such a mess that the people can’t even afford cabbage. Is Korea, the place where " the Miracle of the Han River " appeared, really a miracle?

01 The price of cabbage in Korea is not "the price of cabbage"

There has always been a food culture of eating kimchi in Korea. As the main ingredient of kimchi, cabbage is naturally a must-have vegetable in the hearts of Koreans.

However, with the rapid development of South Korea's economy since the 21st century, its agricultural product economy has experienced serious imbalance.

The price of Korean cabbage has soared , almost to the point where ordinary families cannot afford it.

Not only this kind of agricultural product, the prices of other local food in South Korea are also extremely high, such as rice, meat, onions, fruits and so on.

are all essential ingredients that are indispensable in the Asian human diet.

The current situation of the food market in South Korea is completely contradictory to its economic indicators.

South Korea belongs to the list of developed countries in Asia , especially industrial development.

In 2016, South Korea's total GDP had surpassed Russia and ranked 11th in the world. However, the period from 2010 to 2016 was also the period when the prices of Korean food products increased the fastest. In 2015, the price increase rate of Korean cabbage even reached 90%.

This situation in South Korea makes the civilians there very worried about .

Food is the foundation of a country. Food prices are high , ordinary people do not have a good quality of life.

But it stands to reason that the price of goods is high. If everyone’s income in is also high, then there will not be much problem with .

but this is not the case in Korea .

10-2016, South Korea's economic growth was among the best in the world, second only to China and India at that time. Its per capita GDP has also increased accordingly, especially by 2016, which has approached more than 70% of Japan's per capita GDP.

However, although the per capita GDP of has increased , we all know that South Korea is a country where consortium giant is extremely developing .

Compared with China, which has a vast land and rich resources, and Japan, which is small but has a population of over 100 million, South Korea is characterized by less land and fewer people.

In modern history, after the original South Korea was divided into two countries, today's South Korea has very little advantage in territory .

The country is too small, and cannot drive economic indicators. What should I do with ? South Korea can only think of ways to improve convenience.

Their method is to use giant companies to drive the economic development of the entire country.

With the development of this policy, South Korea quickly became a country where the leading consortium accounted for a large share of 's economic share.

Per capita GDP, a simple calculation of the average number, does not cannot well reflect the true current situation of South Korea.

When the values ​​at both ends are too large, the average value of will be pulled by the extreme values ​​of and .

So although South Korea’s GDP per capita is very high, the bottom ordinary working people do not have very high incomes.

The high food prices have made many people want to and cannot afford to eat cabbage .

But as a country famous for its kimchi diet, cabbage is almost the basis of Korean daily food.

Korean kimchi originally originated from our country . After experiencing the development of agricultural technology in history, it evolved layer by layer into new , and now it has become Korean kimchi.

It can be said that kimchi accounts for a very large proportion of in Korean eating habits.

And due to the cold climate , Koreans also need cabbage very much from a practical point of view.

In addition, the rising prices of other foods have also seriously affected the daily life of Koreans.

In the past, Korean restaurants often provided free kimchi , but now most have stopped this practice.

or When giving gifts during the holidays or visiting relatives and friends, meat or vegetables may be favored by Koreans more than other gifts.

In the face of increasing food prices, Koreans can only complain , and at the same time they have to tighten their belts .

But food, clothing, housing and transportation are the most basic material guarantees for people. Especially in South Korea, prices have soared and products are still basic grains, oils, rice and vegetables.

The local government once promulgated policies and took many measures .

but the weak hard conditions of and are too fatal, and the final result is that they have no great effect.

An interviewer once interviewed an aunt in South Korea and compared the local cabbage price with domestic cabbage price .

Chinese cabbage generally only costs a few yuan .

But the price of Korean cabbage was relatively low at the beginning when and were converted into RMB, which was about 20 yuan for and .

is even more crazy now, reaching nearly one hundred yuan .

The price has reached 0 times more than the price of domestic cabbage..

Some celebrities also lamented when they went to China to participate in programs: The price of cabbage in China is so cheap.

The phenomenon of high food prices in South Korea has developed to the point where has shown an irreversible trend.

Speaking of which, these are inseparable from the development of this country's modern history .

02 Sacrifice agricultural development and industrialization

Around the 1970s, countries around the world reached their peak in their pursuit of building their own industrialization systems.

However, not every country can achieve this goal on its own.

This goal is very difficult for South Korea.

In the 1970s, South Korea's domestic agriculture was still in the traditional small farmer economy era after experiencing agricultural reforms.

is about to protect the agricultural economy and prohibit capital intervention. The scale is also family-oriented and small-scale.

However, the influence of international trends at this time has caused Korean senior officials to begin to change their thinking about .

Due to the pursuit of industrialization goals, South Korea began to think about how to carry out urban industrialization changes in its limited land.

You must know that if you realize industrialization, you will inevitably need certain land resources and human resources - these are also the two major problems facing South Korea.

First of all, as a country with an area of ​​only more than 100,000 square kilometers, South Korea's land resources can be said to be very rare.

In this way, urbanization is extremely restricted , and South Korea's response is to exchange for .

South Korea developed the urban industrial economy at the expense of sacrificing agricultural land resources , and devoted a large amount of financial and material resources to the construction of industrial production systems.

This led to a significant reduction in the cultivated area in rural South Korea, and agriculture began to have a potential economic crisis .

In addition, South Korea's goal of developing industrialization is also limited by the country's manpower .

South Korea's population is not high. In 1970, its total population was only more than 33 million .

may not have any idea if you just listen to the data. Let’s compare it with .

In the same year, the total resident population of Zhejiang Province in my country was more than 3 million, and it ranked tenth in the ranking of the resident population of all provinces in China that year.

In other words, South Korea's population was very small at the time, and it was less than one-tenth of the country's . The total amount of

is not large. After subtracting the old and young, the available labor force is even less .

But this is not the biggest problem.

After the United States stopped providing food aid to South Korea in the 1970s, South Korea could only find solutions at home.

Korean managers once bought the grains produced by domestic farmers at high prices and sold them at low prices in order to maintain low prices of grains, and the results were remarkable.

During this period, food prices in South Korea were relatively cheap, and food freedom was achieved.

And agricultural producers enjoy the country's high-price purchasing facilities and have not suffered too much.

But after the development of industrialization, , South Korea encouraged urban development in large quantities, and a large number of rural labor force were attracted to work in cities by high-paying opportunities.

Correspondingly, the labor force engaged in agricultural production also decreased .

With the reduction of land and the loss of labor force, the weakness of Korean agriculture is beginning to show .

However, during this period, other countries have allowed agriculture to enjoy the benefits of the times brought by industrialization.

will transform the original agricultural economy of small farmers into batch and large-scale farming.

South Korea has also begun to follow suit, preparing to transform its agricultural economic model, but South Korea has a problem with this conversion .

03 Letting go of agriculture is too simple.

As mentioned earlier, South Korea is a small country with few people, so when it comes to economic development, South Korea is also very restricted.

Although after World War II South Korea once accepted support from the United States and gained a lot of resources and financial resources, it still has to think about its own path to develop its own economy.

is what was mentioned above and supports the domestic major capital consortium through to drive the overall economy.

But the disadvantage of this operation is that when the power of capital is too strong , many policies and measures to interfere with in South Korea will be greatly affected.

started in the 1980s, and South Korean executives began to think about the transformation of agriculture.

South Korea began to no longer bear price subsidies for agriculture, and also stopped protecting the small farmer economy in a short period of time .

Capital began to be allowed to intervene in South Korea's agricultural field.

But this kind of letting go in Korea is hasty and thorough , without considering the consequences of doing so.

First of all, in the traditional small-scale peasant economy, cultivators are organized into small farmers and small family units, so power is dispersed and weak.

Before the 1980s, South Korea's agriculture relied on the country to survive.

And when the country withdrew from , which is the backing of , and resources intervened at the right time, Korean agriculture , which was still in its "infancy", was basically unable to resist.

The baby was kidnapped by others before it learned to walk. South Korea's hands-off direct pushed the country's agricultural economy into the abyss .

Not only that, South Korea's agricultural economic transformation has not implemented a series of protection policies from the beginning.

It wasn't until the small-scale peasant economy suffered a blow that South Korea's top leaders began to realize the seriousness of the problem.

South Korea quickly implemented a series of policies and began to invest more manpower and financial resources to support its professional farmers. I hope this can save the country's agricultural market economy .

But the international environment faced by South Korea at that time was:

International exchanges and transactions between countries began to become closer, and there were agricultural industrialization systems that were already mature countries .

As a result, South Korea's agricultural market, which was only liberalized at this time, is very fragile, and can only be seized by foreign capital to seize the domestic market .

The market has been lost, and the income of South Korea's rural farming population has also dropped accordingly. Coupled with the development of cities, the rural labor force loss has become more serious.

And the amount of self-produced grain in South Korea naturally decreases , and the domestic crop market is more dependent on imported grain.

Repeatedly formed a vicious cycle . South Korea's agriculture was hit more seriously, and market prices began to soar.

Since the 21st century, South Korea's agriculture has been squeezed more and more seriously. At the same time, it has lost its market and grain reserves.

But at the same time, South Korea's own people continued to boycott the import of foreign food .

04 Boycott of imports in an attempt to save

Local people in South Korea have always believed that 's own crops are the best , and people often carry out related demonstrations and propaganda.

They only want to resist the invasion of foreign capital into the grain market, hoping to develop more of their country's agricultural economy.

This idea is also clearly reflected in South Korea's tariffs on imported food.

South Korea has very high tariffs on imported crops. At the same time, the list of crops that can be imported only contains some grains that are not in high demand.

South Korea does not allow the import of high-priced food that is often purchased by its own people.

As a result, South Korea's domestic demand is high, but supply cannot keep up with , so food prices naturally remain high.

In fact, it is understandable why Koreans do this. After all, the food industry is the foundation of people's survival.

If a country's agricultural economy is held in the hands of others, it is simply equivalent to being pinched by the throat .

However, when South Korea's top leaders originally sacrificed their agricultural foundation for industrial development, they probably did not expect that today would happen.

Due to objective reasons, South Korea has maintained its food supply with a small-scale farmer economy since ancient times.

But is only for the rapid development of . Abandoning the foundation that people rely on for survival is tantamount to destroying the foundation.

After the development of industrialization, South Korea did not deal with the problems of agricultural economy at all..

The agricultural that has been protected is suddenly open to the market , and is coerced by the trend of international integration . It is equivalent to a domestically raised pet being suddenly released into the wild.

could only receive a violent impact in the end, and was swallowed up by the torrent of great powers.

05 Summary

Although the current Korean food prices have accepted many national policy adjustments , has had little effect .

High prices have made many people complain that life is difficult . The mess left by history can only be taken over by the people at the bottom.

The problems of South Korea's agricultural development also serve as a wake-up call to other countries. On the road to national development, we must not ignore the people's livelihood .