Korean agricultural services : the invisible hand in the iron glove; market and nonmarket forces in Korean rural development

The contributions of six A.I.D. agricultural services projects to Korean agricultural development are assessed in this impact evaluation. A.I.D. assistance, the authors suggest, was appropriate and, in some cases, critical in increasing land and labor productivity. A.I.D. helped in the construction of new fertilizer plants and grain storage facilities and, while it is not possible to pinpoint specific policy changes directly attributable to A.I.D. technical assistance, the continuing dialogue on projects and policies and the extent of A.I.D. involvement (including participant training, which may have been A.I.D.'s most enduring contribution) evidently had a positive overall influence. Major policy reforms and their timing, however, were products solely of the Korean government's perception of political and economic needs. A.I.D. assistance to the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation (NACF) - a critical element in rural growth - increased government control over rural areas, but at the time the NACF was the only mechanism available to deliver agricultural services. Lessons emerging from the Korean experience include the importance of land reform as the bedrock of agricultural development, the difficulty of fostering mechanization without careful attention to labor absorption, the importance of sequencing agricultural interventions (beginning with research and training), and the recognition that policy reform is more likely to come through a cumulative process of dialogue than directly from technical assistance. Subsidies (a key component in Korea's rural strategy) may be more effective in promoting agricultural development than are parastatal institutions. Korea, because of its particular administrative structure, and because it first stimulated industrial rather than agricultural development, is unlikely to be a model for other nations. Included are a 35-item bibliography (1971-83) and 9 appendices providing detailed data on Korean agricultural development.