Revisiting Korean Family Planning (FP): Population and the pre-1962 Context

Abstract

South Korean family planning is often characterized in terms of a progressive narrative in which the Park Chung-hee state transformed rural life (1964- early 1980s) through the successful application of social science with the help of a series of international collaborators. Similar stories are sometimes told for Taiwan and other parts of East and Southeast Asia. This paper argues, however, that Korean concerns about population issues have a much longer history, with origins dating to the late 1930s. The subsequent uses of these concerns indicate the diverse ways in which Japanese imperial training and education were successfully adapted by Korean actors to fit emerging American modernization efforts in the 1960s.