Over the Mountains Are Mountains: Korean Peasant Households and Their Adaptations to Rapid Industrialization

Chapter 3. Development and the Influence of a Mountain Environment

CHAPTER 3 Development and the Influence of a Mountain Environment Subsistence agriculture with hand tools and draft animals has been the dominant mode of life in Sangongni as long as people can remember . Even as late as 1983, the income of four-fifths of the households was acquired exclusively through agriculture, with more than half of the remaining households gaining a major part of their income from farming as well. The traditional technology of Sangongni's farmers, which included knowledge of several crop rotations, seed selection, sprouting of seedlings in special seedbeds for transplantation in the fields, and the on-farm manufacture of compost, was in many ways quite sophisticated, and allowed the peasants of the village a certain latitude in how they chose to crop their land. To this traditional repertory of techniques has been added, in recent years, commercial fertilizer , pesticides, and machinery, as well as the scientific knowledge that the consultants of the Agricultural Guidance Office and the Agricultural Cooperative Federation provide. Market relations have become more important, but the characteristics of the Korean mountain environment continue, as they have in the past, to condition the possibilities for the operation of villager's farms. As will be shown in detail in following chapters, the management of farms and the organization of families are closely related. Because of this the geographical characteristics of the mountain environment, even though they do not determine village social structure, condition the social organization of the village. These geographical characteristics of Sangongni are of two types: those related to the location of the village in an area remote from major urban centers, and those related to the climate and topography of mountain districts in central Korea. The location of the village conditions the effectiveness of administrative links with the national pol44 Development and the Influence ofa Mountain Environment 45 ity and the way the village articulates to the national economy through the marketing system. Kautsky, of course, already recognized that increasing participation of peasants in market relations would have a profound effect on their social organization, but he never explored how the articulation of regional market systems structures these new relations (d. Skinner 1964, 1965a, 1965b; C. A. Smith 1976). Not only does the articulation of the village into the market system affect household cropping patterns and labor requirements, however, but it also affects the opportunities villagers have to diversify their household economy, and the degree to which villagers can accumulate capital. In addition, the climate and topography of Sangongni 's environment limits the length of the growing season, the seasonal distribution of water, and the availability of fields of different types. By conditioning the cropping regimes available, the climate and topography thus also affect the labor requirements of households and village social organization. Each of the geographical characteristics of the mountains is not simply a given of the environment, but is related to the level of development of the technology available to villagers. The economic significance of the remoteness of the village from major urban centers, for example, obviously varies with the availability of mechanical means of transport and paved roads-something that has not been constant over the past generation (Keidel 1980:147-58). Other aspects of village technology have also changed. In the following pages, as we explore the geographical and agricultural characteristics of the village, we will see how the significance of climate and topography for the management of farms and the organization of households has changed with changing circumstances so that by the mid-seventies, the peasants of Sangongni had the incentives they needed to make substantial investments in agricultural improvements. Locational Factors Sangongni is located in the Yongso region of Kangwon Province directly east of Seoul. From the Kyonggi Province boundary near the center of the Korean peninsula, Kangwon Province extends all the way to the Sea of Japan, and before the division of the Korean peninsula stretched over 200 kilometers from thirty-seven to thirty-nine degrees north latitude (or from about the latitude of Norfork, Virginia, to that of Washington, D. C.). Kangwon Province and Kyonggi Province together cover the central part of the Korean peninsula, consist- 46 Development and the Influence ofa Mountain Environment ing of the Han River Basin and the mountains that surround it (see fig. 3.1). Economically and culturally, the two provinces are closely tied to one another, but ecologically they are quite distinct. Kyonggi Province has extensive...