The state, food, and agriculture in dependent development: The case of Korea with special reference to her food dependency on the United States in the process of industrialization, 1945-1990

This dissertation examines and analyzes interrelationships between the state and food policies in the process of industrialization, and agricultural stagnation as a result of the state's development strategy. Through the description of actual patterns through comparison over time and occasional comparisons between countries, the objective of this study is to make a systematic analysis of the development strategy of the state, and its food and agricultural policies, and their relationship to social classes and food policy, and the change of food consumption patterns as a result of food dependency. Much focus is given to (1) Korea's food dependency on the United States with special reference to the state's development strategy, (2) the relationship between the autonomy of the state and social classes in decision-making regarding food and agricultural policies, and (3) the limits of U.S. food power.;More specifically, this study has following aims to explain food dependency: (1) to review the main domestic food policies, focusing on grain policies in relation to the Korean state's development strategy and autonomy; (2) to analyze the dynamic relationship between food policies of the state and the capitalist class, and working class in Korea, in the process of industrialization; (3) to discuss the changing interrelationship between two productive sectors, food-agricultural and manufacturing with reference to the creative food policies that well-planned state intervention can carry out; (4) to discuss the dispossession of peasantry in the process of capital accumulation and social destruction of rural communities of Korea in relation to U.S. agribusiness; and (5) to destruction of rural communities of Korea in relation to U.S. agribusiness; and (6) to examine U.S. influence on Korea's increasing food dependency and the changing food consumption patterns of Korean people in the expanding global food system in order to explore the causes and effects of Korea's food dependency on the United States.;Because food dependency is an important factor in both state autonomy and position in the world system, Korea's food policies provide the means for examining the issues of state autonomy, state policy and position in the world system context. Thus, this dissertation is designed to demonstrate that historical-structural analysis can point to general patterns and mechanisms of Korea's external conditions of food dependency in the world system, especially the U.S. hegemony in world economic and political system into which Korea has been incorporated, and of Korea's internal conditions of food dependency determined by the role of the state by which food system, food policy, industrialization strategy, social class structure have been shaped in a particular way.