한국 ODA: 기술원조의 설립 과정 (1954-1965)
Redefining South Korean ODA (Official Development Assistance): How Technical Aid Emerges from its Contexts (1954-1965)
Article information
Abstract
본 논문은 1960년대 초 KOICA(한국국제협력단)의 두 주요 전신 기관을 통해 한국 ODA(공적개발원조)의 기원을 고찰하였다. 오늘날의 부유한 한국의 KOICA(1991~현재)와는 달리, 초기에는 주변 국가, 특히 동남아시아 및 아프리카에 대한 소규모 봉사 활동이 주를 이루고 있었다. 이런 맥락에서 다음의 두 가지 주장이 제기되었다. 첫째, 한국의 원조는 일반적으로 추정되는 것보다 일찍 시작되었으며, 아프리카 파트너들에 대한 최초의 지원은 1960년 초에 논의되었다. 둘째, 몇 년 후 국가가 공식적인 국내 워크숍을 시작했을 때, 이들은 미국에서 지식의 전수 속도를 높이기 위해 “제 3국 훈련”의 형태로 그들의 파트너들끼리 짝을 맺어주었던 경험에 크게 영향을 받았다. 요컨대, 출발 단계에서 한국의 원조는 외교적 인정이든 지식의 교환이든 새로운 탈식민 파트너들과 가장 빈번하게 이루어졌으며, 이로부터 KODCO(한국해외개발공사, 1965~1991)라는 새로운 네트워크의 형태가 1960년대 중반에 현실화되었다.
Trans Abstract
This paper considers the origins of South Korean ODA (official development assistance), working through the lens of KOICA’s (Korea International Cooperation Agency) two main predecessor institutions in the early 1960s. In contrast to KOICA (1991-prsent), associated with a rich Korea, this earlier period was dominated by small-scale efforts at outreach with neighboring countries, especially in Southeast Asia and Africa.
In this context, two arguments emerge. First, Korean aid began earlier than is generally assumed, with the first outreach to African partners coming under discussion as early as 1960. Second, when the nation began its official in-country workshops a few years later, these were heavily influenced by the experiences Koreans had themselves undergone with the US in the form of “third-county training,” in which the US paired its partners to speed up the transfer of knowledge. In brief, Korean aid at its start point took place most frequently with new post-colonial partners, whether for diplomatic recognition, or for the exchange of knowledge, and went on to shape a new network as KODCO (Korean Overseas Development Corporation, 1965-1991) became a reality in the mid-1960s.
The Problem of Aid
In its present-day narrative, the foreign aid apparatus of the South Korean government, or KOICA (Korea International Cooperation Agency), uses an array of slogans to frame its official mission. One of these popular phrases, meant to describe events following the Korean War (1950–1953), characterizes the country as having undergone a transition “from recipient to donor,” suggesting a dramatic economic and political transformation.1, At the same time, this brief description remains deliberately vague about the mechanics of this transformation, and equally, offers very little information as to its precise timing and its politics. While acknowledging that South Korea has become a radically different country since 1954, this paper examines the origins of ROK (Republic of Korea) scientific / technical aid to its partners, considering the second half of this formulation: the circumstances under which the nation became an aid donor. In its own accounts, KOICA (1991- present) acknowledges the “early” distribution of such aid, but tends to emphasize its more recent history, especially events since the mid to late 1980s.2
The emphasis upon the near present allows KOICA to imply a mission beginning at some point in the 1980s, one associated with rapid economic growth, the transformation of domestic institutions, and perhaps most importantly, democratization, with the restoration of popular elections coming in 1987. During the rule of Park Chung-hee (1961–1979), the president gave up military rule (1963), and was twice elected (1963, 1967), before ending popular elections after 1971. In this last case, the 1971 presidential election was regarded as controversial for several reasons: Park spent considerable political capital to be permitted to run for a third term, and upon doing so, was challenged by his rival, Kim Dae-jung. The following year, Yusin (“restoration” or renewal) rule began with the suspension of elections, a practice that would continue with military dictatorship in the early to mid-1980s under Chun doo-hwan (1981–1987).
Although there is no explicit mention as such, the Korean development aid narrative thus lends itself to convenient associations with democratization and the political transformations of the mid-to late 1980s (1987). In this version of events, the benefits of economic growth resulted in a period of renewed giving from the government’s perspective, creating an upsurge in foreign aid to international partners, and an increased emphasis on social welfare for the domestic (e.g., national health insurance).3, In both cases, the assumptions underlying this story remain problematic, although the issue of health insurance will not receive consideration here. As for outgoing aid as a donor, the question of how and under what circumstances to define it offers an interesting problem. “Official” aid as a donor begins in the early 1960s (1963), but at the same time, there are numerous instances of “unofficial” aid deriving from roughly this same period, or even earlier.4
Aid Emerges from a Context of Origin
This essay argues two related points for the formation of (Korean) scientific / technical donor aid and its origins as a form of ODA, beginning in the late 1950s, early 1960s. First, it began earlier than its official point of recognition, coinciding with the first joint workshops (1963). This emphasis on “earlier” proves critical, suggesting that there were unofficial or unrecognized acts of giving as early as the immediate aftermath of the Korean War. It also suggests that the process of an ambition becoming or transforming into donor aid was already in progress. This observation leads to the second argument, the notion that Korean scientific / technical aid as a donor country emerged from earlier relationships, and in turn, was transformed by the ROK’s period of time acting as a recipient. In other words, Korean individuals and institutions, before acting as formal aid mechanisms on behalf of the ROK, learned precisely from interacting with a wide variety of international actors, here including various United Nations organizations, predecessor agencies to USAID (United States Agency for International Development), and the aid branches of partner nations (Germany, Sweden).5
This second argument does not mean to imply that Korean ODA served as a form of imitation or merely as a copy of what Koreans themselves experienced. Rather, it suggests that the structure of post-colonial aid is enormously complicated, and that Koreans took initiative as agents of their own hybrid aid institutions and practices, selecting from what they encountered, and adding to this their own preferred elements.6, It is important to recall here that South Korea served as one of the world’s single largest aid projects for much of the second half of the 1950s, continuing through the early 1960s.7 During this time, a wide variety of projects and individuals came to the peninsula, hoping to transform the South into a showcase of “Free World” values. Through this diverse series of encounters, Koreans learned how to respond to partners to get what they wanted, and in turn, explored how they hoped to be treated in these types of relationships.
The argument here thus links the experience of a recipient country to its subsequent growth as a donor, arguing that the learning process helped to shape the individuals, practices, and institutions that emerged. This point should not be controversial, as development institutions tend to draw upon other examples and models as they take form, and South Korea had a rich set of potential models from which to choose. Still, the literature for the Korean case often views the two processes (receiving / giving) as largely separate, with ODA only coming much later, as with health insurance and other domestic programs related to social welfare.8, By arguing for a direct connection, the contrast offered here is a deliberate one, claiming that the Korean experience was one of learning, with those undergoing their training as aid recipients often later emerging as prominent individuals in the same programs that would serve as Korean outreach.9
In addition, this argument takes the position that the major Korean aid institutions established by the mid-1960s, with KODCO (Korean Overseas Development Corporation) as the representative example, owe their origins not to a benevolent impulse, but rather, from a desire to establish control over a series of dynamic processes already taking place.10, When established in November 1965, KODCO took charge over the movements of Korean workers abroad, with prominent examples for this time including West Germany and Southeast Asia. The first of these cases, the migration of Korean nurses and miners to Germany was often described as a “gift” on the behalf of the Korean government, with the action beginning in 1962.11, In fact, the recruitment of Korean nurses to the US and Western Europe was already well underway during the second half of the 1950s, and the Korean government feared the potential loss of its most talented members, health care workers.12
These examples from Europe remain relevant, but do not cover more prominent cases, closer to, and often deriving from within the region. For much of the colonial period, the peninsula interacted with close partners in East and Southeast Asia, as Japan expanded its interests to include development and new markets in northeast China and Southeast Asia. When the war ended, Koreans who worked at these sites did not simply lose their knowledge, nor did they forget their range of contacts.13, It took time to re-establish this type of network, and the intervening period of the occupation (1945–1948) and the Korean War (1950–1953) meant more than a decade devoted to conflict. Still, when Koreans made their first tentative forms of outreach, these gestures often involved partners from the region.14 Even as this activity was not officially framed as aid, it reinforces the argument about such practice emerging from prior contexts.
Along with the formative experience as a critical part of Empire, Koreans now had the added experience of re-engaging with the world as a new Cold War American partner, a factor which added to the potential network. In fact, much of the early postwar learning curve involved negotiating between these two sets of actors, that is, between the practice of Japanese and American Empire.15, In some cases, outreach offered to a “new” partner after 1954 involved both sets of forces. Especially within East Asia, working with partners such as Taiwan and Japan serve as the best examples here, invoking a lengthy colonial / imperial history, and now with all three actors figuring out how to perform as American Cold War partners, as allies and as substantial recipients of American aid. This does not mean that Koreans simply did as the US wanted, but it does suggest working carefully within a set of defined boundaries or constraints.16
Redefining Aid: South Korea’s ( Early) Partner Networks and the Fragments of Japanese Empire
In the aid literature, there are now highly specific criteria for defining the circumstances under which ODA can be considered as such, with these terms worked out by the late 1960s. In the loose sense, ODA appears in the form of government aid that specifically targets the economic development and welfare of developing countries, reinforcing the basic idea of powerful nations giving to those with less.17, More specifically, this aid should satisfy three conditions: it derives from the official sector (a government agency), is intended for the economic welfare of the recipient, and is granted on concessional terms.18 Under these terms, much of the early activity to be analyzed here does not constitute ODA as such, but it helps to explain the background context in which the formative Korea aid impulse began to take shape. Even as South Korea was a major aid recipient, Korean individuals and organizations began to reach out to their neighbors, working within the newly created circumstances of American interests.
To cite two examples, one of the earliest “gifts” came from the Korean Jaycees (Junior Chamber of Commerce), who donated medical supplies to Laos in 1954.19, This act took place under the auspices of Operation Brotherhood (OB), a scheme operated by Filipino Jesuits (with covert CIA support) to provide supplies and medical assistance to war-torn Laos and Vietnam in the mid-1950s. In the Korean case, the amount transmitted was minimal, and constituted more of a symbolic gesture than a material one. The second example involved the ROK military, which invited a small contingent of South Vietnamese troops for joint training exercises in the late 1950s.20 In this case, two anti-Communist neighbors, sharing the common issue of a divided nation, decided to come together in a gesture of mutual support. It is also important to note that this exchange took place within only a few years of the Korean War, and the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu (1954), meaning that there was a strong symbolic component here as well.
The small subset of countries fitting South Korea’s post-war network includes Taiwan (also a Japanese colony), the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, with these last three deriving from the circumstances of wartime conquests and / or alliances. The point to this discussion is that rather than look just to the post-war Korea-U.S. relationship, as important as that pairing might be, more likely partners for Korean ODA at its earliest stages included a range of post-colonial sites, neighboring countries, and most often took the form of Asian-Asian interactions. Not surprisingly, the recent colonial history of Korea involved a great deal of trade within Asia, functioning as a critical part of the Japanese wartime empire, and the postwar task lay with reinventing or refashioning many of these links. The two examples already cited, the Philippines and Vietnam, may not qualify for the category of ODA as such, but reinforce this argument, combining geographical proximity, Japanese wartime conquest, and shared interests.
When Korea began offering its first officially recognized aid (1963), its workshop partners included post-colonial nations with circumstances similar to its own. A number of these countries were newly independent nations in Africa (Kenya, Uganda), and the recently decolonized sites offered an opportunity for Korea to seek diplomatic recognition. In many cases, North Korea competed with the south over these sites, and sometimes, the desire to achieve exclusive recognition meant that the south had to withdraw. In addition, sites in Southeast Asia like Laos appear often in the list of partners, and here, we see circumstances very close to those of South Korea, a country on the verge of civil war, and one with which South Korea therefore identified in terms of addressing its own issues.21 These observations also hold true for South Vietnam, a central preoccupation for South Korea through the early 1970s.
If post-1954 small-scale exchanges pose a potential problem for accounts of aid, the second issue to confront concerns the narrative offered by ROK governmental organizations. KOICA’s own history cites its predecessor agency, KODCO (Korean Overseas Development Corporation), as its origins, with this earlier body taking shape in 1965, a story we will pursue.22, However, KODCO (1965–1991) was itself formed from elements of existing organizations, such as the Overseas Emigration Bureau (1962).23 Moreover, when KODCO started, many of its activities were already well-developed, that is, it sought to control and regulate forms of migration already in process, especially the loss of health care workers to North America and Europe. In other words, the official narrative reflects a retrospective, idealized account, thereby lending the aid process a positive image.
If there is a dominant account for this period (1968–early 1970s), it concerns the role of medical personnel dispatched in the late 1960s. In this case, the majority of the examples come from post-colonial Africa, which was then experiencing rapid decolonization, following a path pursued by Ghana (1957), among others. A paper recently published in IJKH takes up the 1968 “African Dispatch Doctors” campaign, so this article will provide supporting context, covering background events between 1954–1965.24, South Korea found itself with legitimacy and recognition issues, especially as it competed with North Korea on the world stage.25 New post-colonial countries offered an opportunity to enlist new partners to one’s claims, and the ROK wanted to ask for exclusive recognition in many of these cases, bartering in exchange for this type of agreement.
This paper seeks to recover that missing context, covering the years between 1954–1965, and the emerging sets of post-colonial interests. As noted, a large part of the earliest ROK relations had to do with crafting a larger network to be used for political legitimacy and economic sustenance. In that context, the question of materiality sometimes figures as less important. In other words, the signing of an MOU (memorandum of understanding) or even the exchange of technical aid was likely informed by the need to create the public image of a relationship, a performance, rather than an actual pathway with the substantial movement of goods and services. This remark leads to the second part of the argument, with the question of Korean labor and the strategic mobilization of manpower: KODCO was designed specifically to handle migration as a strategic resource, and to leverage the value of Korean labor overseas.
KODCO performed a diverse range of jobs over the four decades of its operation, but its primary task, especially in its first two decades, centered precisely on these questions of tracking manpower and the distribution of technical skill. Starting with controlled migration to West Germany, the Korean version of the gastarbetiter (“guest worker”) program, KODCO saw an opportunity to simultaneously generate symbolic capital along with substantial foreign reserves, the latter deriving from currency remissions and developmental loans.26, Taking its organizational form at this point, the organization next saw its mandate expand dramatically with the outflow of workers to Southeast Asia, primarily Vietnam, one of the largest and most critical nodes for Korean manpower well through the early 1970s.27 This relationship sometimes becomes obscured due to the Korean military presence (1965–1973), while KODCO’s mission rested with managing a significant presence of private workers for both Korean chaebol and international contractors.
Crafting the South Korean ODA Story (1960–1965)
A number of the formative questions motivating Korean aid started in the late 1950s, prior to official recognition of such under Park Chung-hee. The preceding section covered relations between South Korea and Southeast Asia, with an emphasis on personal links remaining from wartime empire. Along with the examples previously cited (Laos, Vietnam), Thailand held a key connection which bridged the close of war in 1945, continuing through the next period.28, Specifically, Thailand was among the first to send its troops during the Korean War, part of its mandate as an American Cold War partner.29, With the close of combat in 1953, Thailand maintained this presence, with its troops extending their stay through regular rotations. With this symbolic presence, Thailand kept a small contingent in Korea for nearly two decades (1972), a significant message in terms of affirming the relationship between the two nations.30
During this period, South Korea established diplomatic relationships with close partners in the region, including South Vietnam (1956) and Thailand (1958). At the same time, the origins of post-colonial relations with other partners also became a possibility, as Ghana (1957) gained its independence, with many others soon to follow. In his survey of Africa, Chonghan Kim credits the administration of Chang Myon (John Chang, 1960–1961) as the first to explore these new circumstances, even as Park Chung-hee generally receives credit for the pursuit of such a policy.31, According to Kim, Chang’s government sought to expand beyond the limitations of Rhee-era membership in the U.N., actively using this role to form new ties, and to promote Korea’s overall image.32 Kim dates these conversations to the late 1950s, and specifies the February 1961 dispatch of a friendship delegation to Africa, seeking to begin the process.
This narrative promoted by Kim does not radically alter the existing literature, which places much of early Korean ODA in terms of ongoing diplomatic competition with North Korea. However, it relocates the question to an earlier point of origin, indicating that Korean leaders were already thinking about these questions as early as 1960. In Kim’s account, the motivation for African outreach began with Chang (August 1960) precisely because of rapid decolonization taking place in the immediately preceding period (1957–1960).33, Previously, Rhee did not face the need to handle these delicate negotiations, nor did he face any substantive pressure within the UN to consider the “Korea question.” However, the increasing number of new UN members, especially the Congo in 1960, meant a need to begin outreach in a more proactive fashion.34, This decision explains the initial dispatch of a three-man mission in early 1961, and in following years, South Korea also visited newly appointed African ambassadors to visit Seoul.35
Kim’s account derives from his perspective as a political insider, as he took a doctorate with Indiana University in 1956, before serving with the Korean government through the mid-1960s, working as a Charge d’Affaires for the South Korean Embassy in Uganda (1963–1964). Although he later became a professor at William and Mary, where he spent the majority of his career, Kim retained a healthy interest in (Korea’s) Asia-Africa policy dating to his period of public service in the diplomatic corps.36 For Kim, the Chang government’s move beyond the UN to direct outreach with new governments was made necessary by the changing numbers, especially from 1960. Beginning with the Congo and its complicated civil conflict (1960), followed by Uganda and Kenya in 1963, South Korea began to cultivate new partners by seeking to establish diplomatic missions, and in turn, denying North Korea the same. From this point, these forms of contact became a regular feature of relations, soon translating into the first technical aid programs.
Although his evidence is primarily suggestive, Kim’s account also helps to explain the first group of nations selected for technical aid. Kenya in 1963 was part of the first joint workshop sponsored with USAID funding, involving eight members invited to Korea, with a focus on shared agricultural knowledge.37, Laos received outreach in 1962 as part of bilateral relations, and was then undergoing a violent civil conflict in which Koreans held an interest, as would be the case with South Vietnam.38, Uganda received a team of doctors in 1964, and again, offered a site where Koreans hoped to establish ties following its independence.39, As for the content of this aid, we will address the medical content in a later section. As for agriculture, Koreans had familiarity and expertise here, and may have been familiar with Taiwan’s agricultural outreach program to Africa, very much part of a similar program of ROC lobbying African nations to recognize the island, and not the PRC (People’s Republic of China).40
This style of early Cold War soft power display was not unique to the two Koreas. Indeed, the familiar story of divided nations (East and West Germany, North and South Korea, North and South Vietnam, Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China) means that there were multiple cases among which to choose, with potential opportunities for learning and borrowing. As mentioned, Taiwan favored agricultural aid to its African partners, based on the experience of Republican China and its agronomists during the 1930s.41, Whether South Korea borrowed from this example will remain speculative here, but Taiwan clearly offered a context for Korea in this and related areas of expertise. In Family Planning, for example, the effort based at Taichung became internationally famous, and Korean experts visited as they were mobilizing for their own national campaign soon to start.42 Just as South Korea sought partners with specific sets of interests, they also studied regional cases of aid donation, and considered whether the methods used might be adapted to suit Korean aims.
South Korean ODA Starts (1963)
The South Korean ODA story officially begins with joint workshops (“third country training”) held in the early 1960s, and sponsored by American assistance provided through USAID.43, These were the first workshops held in Korea designed to offer training to a foreign partner. At the same time, the funding provided by American sources emphasizes the relatively weak status of the Korean economy, still only a few years removed from the Korean War. Furthermore, the funding source raises questions about the workshop’s aims, given its location and its external connections.44 With the rapid expansion of the pool of post-colonial nations, USAID considered this form of pedagogy an investment in placing potential partners together, especially those with a newly independent status, or in the case of Korea, undergoing an extensive period of rebuilding.
In other words, the motivation here likely was not about placing Korea in a position of authority, but rather, maximizing the opportunity for pedagogy, teaching two countries simultaneously. The number of trainees to travel to Korea was low, kept under ten (eight), with the partner here being a recently decolonized Kenya.45, This type of arrangement meant a chance for American assistance to reach two potential partners, to elicit a positive response from those parties, and lastly, to place them in close proximity, to ensure future good relations. In this last case, both the US and South Korea sought to strengthen claims to legitimacy, making certain that the emergence of new nations served the aims of “Free World” interests at a time of fierce competition. To give an example regarding legitimacy, South Korea received appeals from Katanga during its quest for independence in the early 1960s, part of the complicated transition of Congo from colony to independent status.46
By the time South Korea started practicing these workshops in 1963, it had already been doing this type of work as a recipient nation since the close of combat following the Korean War. In these cases, the Korean trainees received exposure to a diverse range of skills and work contexts, with much of this training taking place in the United States. In some of these cases, the exchange took place between an American university and a Korean counterpart, with the relationship involving both pedagogy and the supply of materials.47, These cases, especially the Minnesota Project, a joint exchange between Seoul National University and the University of Minnesota (1954–1962) represent some of the most famous uses of ICA’s (International Cooperation Administration) international mandate, serving as a form of outreach following the agenda laid out in President Truman’s Point Four speech of 1949.48
By the early 1960s, US policy had changed, however, as scholars of diplomatic history and the US-Korea relationship have noted. In particular, the transition from ICA to USAID in 1961 meant fewer outright grants to foreign partners, and an increase in development loans, with funding tied to the attainment of specific sets of goals or aims.49 In other words, USAID sought to persuade its partners to pursue certain types of policies, and offered funding as a form of incentive, with additional funding to be determined later. I largely agree with this body of scholarship, which emphasizes a changing dynamic. In this version of events, the arise of the first Korean ODA under USAID lends the Asian partner a good deal of agency, using the funds in its own fashion. My qualification to this argument lies with placing the initial impulse for identifying the first partners in the late 1950s, several years previous, as observed by Chonghan Kim.
This type of symbolic capital was critical, and informed the majority of the “official aid” through the mid to late 1960s (1963–1967), providing the ROK with the appearance of numerical support, useful for legitimacy. Whether this type of relationship translated to material terms is another question, and perhaps substantive exchange was not yet the point, at least for many such partnerships. It is also useful to recognize the limited scope of these meetings, which remained extremely small throughout the period. According to Ji-hyun Kim, using sources from MOST (Ministry of Science and Technology), the numbers for participants remained less than one hundred prior to 1968, the first year to surpass that figure.50 The real increase began in the following decade, and 1968 took on added significance as the Korea question came up in the United Nations. For the most part, these early forms of “Third Party Training” brought sponsorship from USOM (United States Operating Mission), with a transition coming in 1965, when the ROK began to assume responsibility for costs.
Kim’s account notes that the USOM-sponsored style of training was not exclusive. If this type of program concentrated on Africa, with a reduced scale, there was a second scheme involving Co-Planning between the US and South Korea, with the numbers slightly higher. This “Co-USA” project focused on East Asia, in contrast to the first program, bringing South Korea closer to neighboring countries. More specifically, the Co-USA effort targeted neighbors also receiving USAID funds, meaning that there was a strong suggestion of regional cooperation, along with whatever technical goals provided the official mission. In addition, this program held a component of United Nations participation, again hinting at a larger set of goals. By the mid-1960s, these aims should not be surprising, given the interest in East and Southeast Asia, and especially given the war in Southeast Asia.
Third Country Training and Asian Host Sites
From the Korean perspective, the 1963 workshops represent a key beginning, a turn to domestic workshops, with 1965 offering a second transition, with the added responsibility for assuming costs. For here, the interesting point is that these workshops form part of a longer lineage of such training, linking back to the period following the Korean War. If there is a lengthy history for “third country training,” the specific genealogy goes back to the postwar United States, and its desire to place allies in close contact with each other. For Korea specifically, Korean trainees had been participating in this form of pedagogy since at least the close of the war, and often in neighboring countries such as the Philippines and Japan.51
Indeed, a good deal of the training Koreans received prior to 1962 took place in the US, but also in regional countries. In fact, among the most common sites for Koreans to train were the Philippines and Taiwan, with the former representing the second most favored choice for the period covering the mid to late 1950s.52, Presumably the US wanted to promote cooperation and increased activity between its neighbors with this scheme. Moreover, language and culture were very much at issue: with its existing relationship with the US, the Philippines held the basic infrastructure necessary to support pedagogy, and could offer an English-language environment, accommodating differences to a certain extent. Reports summarizing this activity cite Korea specifically as a site likely to be inhospitable to visitors precisely because of the lack of English, and the relatively small population of other participants capable of handling Korean. By about 1960, this scenario sounds very much like a typical US ICA-based scheme, one assuming that “Asians” were motivated to cooperate under the aegis of American support. Some scholars also cite specific US aims as the underlying basis for workshops in certain locations, with the Philippines receiving permission to host only after it recognized South Vietnam.53
As the figures indicate, the US represented the most common site for training through 1960, taking more than 90% of the traffic in trainees. This style of practice reflects the dominant model for ICA (and its predecessors), which believed strongly in establishing a one-to-one relationship between an American university and a host nation, focusing on a narrow range of specialties. The use of the Philippines and Taiwan represented more of a regional focus, and one with long-trusted partners. In the former case, the US relationship to the medical system remains famous, and the use of Filipino contractors, such as stevedores, also remains part of the story, although less conspicuous.54, For Taiwan, the American relationship to the KMT dates to the 1920s and 1930s, especially with famous projects such as the PUMC (Peking Union Medical College) and the attempts to promote “scientific agriculture,” in this last case, primarily through Cornell University.55
For the move to Korea, the American decision to grant workshops likely formed a logical part of expanding its regional connections. The Philippines, Taiwan, and Japan collectively represented a major portion of the American accumulation of military bases since 1945, with the first of these holding a much longer history. South Korea had been a trusted part of this system since the Korean War, and increasingly, the focus of American regional interest, with Park Chung-hee showing ambition early in the decade. Finally, the incoming USAID (1961) sought to distinguish itself from predecessors by offering fewer outright grants, and then tying aid to the achievement of specific sets of targets or goals. Therefore, the idea of promoting regional cooperation fits nicely within this revised vision, offering a low-cost means of linking post-colonial countries together via their joint training.
Controlling for Migration (1962–1965)
Accounts of Korean contract labor typically begin with the formation of KODCO in 1965, the body generally considered the predecessor agency to KOICA. Prior to KOICA’s formation KODCO (1965–1991) would oversee the placement of Korean workers in many parts of the globe, perhaps most famously in West Germany and Southeast Asia. However, the program directing this work begins not with KODCO, but the Overseas Emigration Bureau, an institution formed in 1962 to coincide with changes to ROK immigration laws.56 Moreover, the decision to promote outgoing migration in 1962 matched the beginning of state-directed economic planning, with the first Five Year Plan (1962–1966) calling for a rapid reduction in population. Family Planning tends to linger in popular imagination for this point, but the migration scheme formed a significant part of the plan to bring the population in line according to the expectations of external partners.
For our focus here, ODA as it relates to science / technology, this concern with migration refers specifically to the movement of Korean nurses to West Germany, a famous “success” story, followed by the targeted dispatch of doctors to Africa from 1968.57, When the German program began, the migration of Korean nurses was then regarded as a problem, an issue of “brain drain” common to developing countries. Upgraded professional qualifications meant better professional options for Korean women, and many of those new positions required migration to overseas sites, where national health systems sought access to cheap labor. Indeed, Indiana University targeted Korean nurses for additional training as early as 1958, and noted that they might want to move to Seoul, rather than resume their work in rural facilities.58 Indiana’s predictions were correct, but failed to anticipate that these professional ambitions might extend further than Seoul, and included locations such as the US, Canada, Scandinavia, and Germany.
In other words, what KODCO sought to accomplish in 1965 was to establish control over a series of migration patterns already in progress. Along with the Indiana nursing program, other major efforts at medical rehabilitation included Seoul National University (1954–1962), Yonsei University (1958), and the National Medical Center (1958–1968).59, In the first of these cases, Seoul National acknowledged that it could not fully regulate its overseas students, and accepted the loss of a certain percentage, those staying behind to take positions in the United State s.60, As for the NMC, this issue represented a point of discussion as soon as the project began. A report written to evaluate the project observes that planners “expected …… doctors who had finished their training at the NMC would go to other Korean hospitals,” strengthening medical standards outside of Seoul.61 However, many of these doctors pursued migration on their own, leaving the Korean context for better situations in North America.
The market for nurses was more active, with Korean nurses holding several appealing options. Within Korea domestically, “salaries at private hospitals were considerably higher,” meaning that it was possible to use the NMC as a form of retraining, before switching jobs.62, The international market similarly witnessed a “demand for Korean nurses abroad …… in the USA, West Germany, and Canada,” meaning that migration remained a realistic possibility.63, In fact, the reports, adds, “in some counties there were organized campaigns for the recruitment of Korean nurses.”64 Aware of this situation, the European members of the NMC board decided not to add to the problem, specifically prohibiting their participants from such labor recruiting. This decision would not change the larger market, of course, but reduced the overall number of those active in this form of targeted or selective recruiting.
The German labor migration scheme is generally credited to the Overseas Emigration Bureau dating to 1962. However, such migration was already taking place as mediated through the agency of German Catholic churches, which set up an informal system to recruit. German contact with South Korea dated to the Korean War and its aftermath, when a Red Cross hospital in Busan became a way for the new FRG (Federal Republic of Germany) to provide assistance, while simultaneously transforming its own identity.65 These informal types of networks posed a problem (loss of talent), while also creating an opportunity, one through which the Korean government could capitalize. In short, the decision to create a structure of migration oversight, and to use it as leverage for developmental loans, came only after the pattern of movement was underway. KODCO was therefore an institution created retroactively, established to make sure that circumstances remained under Korean control.
Young-Sung Hong provides the background context for mediating between West Germany and this first migration wave of Korean nurses. The German Red Cross Hospital (Busan, 1954–1959) represented the German contribution to Korean War relief, and holds a timing similar to the related projects stemming from Europe and North America. With the handover of the project to South Korea, Germans hoped to continue to direct their energy to development aid and relief work, but were unsure of specific aims. In this setting, German churches, including both Protestant and Catholic groups, took up the work of collecting for development work in 1959.66 Part of the logic informing this effort had to do with sorting out church-state relations within the postwar German state, still finding its way after 1945. In brief, there was ample funding available, and an interest in continuing the work of the hospital.
In the late 1950s, German churches recruited nurses from the developing world as part of this effort, essentially crafting an informal mechanism through which to provide training and an exposure to their healthcare system. A number of the nurses within this network were Korean, meaning that migration began several years earlier, on an un-official basis, and on a much smaller scale. From the German perspective, this project was motivated by religious impulses and benevolent intentions, effectively a mission combining training and enhanced medical pedagogy. When the project took on its formal shape of 1962, the two sides had very different perspectives as to its intent, with the Koreans seeking compensation for their labor contribution, Moreover, when KODCO assumed control in 1965, the factor of seeking payment became the major goal, mobilizing Korean labor as a collective means of achieving economic progress.
These remarks concerning Germany also hold true for South Vietnam, with KODCO overseeing the traffic in private labor, to go along with arrival of a Korean military presence. The American consortium RMK-BRJ (Raymond Morrison-Knudsen / Brown, Root, and Jones), a six-firm group based in Texas, held close connections to the Johnson White House, and received permission to regulate the vast majority of Vietnam procurements (highways, airfields, buildings).67 When Korean firms bid for and won a portion of these contracts, KODCO was responsible for oversight in terms of ensuring a steady, reliable supply of workers. Along with Vietnam, regional neighbors including Thailand, Brunei, and Malaysia also received Korean labor, with these regional partners supporting the war effort through security and logistics work. The shipping, air, and logistics sectors in these sites made sure of the supply of materials conveyed to the war zone.
In both sites, West Germany and Vietnam, KODCO represented Korean workers as a state-directed labor broker, bringing together the hiring firm and the labor supply. When KODCO is described as one of the earliest forms of Korean ODA, this statement is often made in light of KOICA’s later appearance in the early 1990s. At the same time, the statement also holds relevance in that the organization took responsibility for conveying technical workers (nurses, engineers, construction labor) to partner nations, and in this sense, they provided assistance to these neighboring sites, even if not representing ODA in terms of satisfying present-day definitions. The point again, is that the ODA process illustrates that KODCO came along “late,” regulating the identification, training, and conveying of this labor only after such markets already existed. In Vietnam, as with Germany earlier, KODCO often had to ensure that laborers did not simply switch jobs or leave contracts to their own advantage.
Concluding Remarks
The Vietnam context was far more complex than that of West Germany, so we will not continue much past 1965 to probe the topic in more depth. As we summarize here, we can note that Korean interests began using Southeast Asia as a place in which to experiment, testing out various methods and approaches for conveying aid, whether in military or private form. By this point, the learning process was well underway, and sometimes, Korean outreach in Vietnam reflected this style of new knowledge and its applications. For example, the Korean military sought to provide advice in agriculture through its KATG (Korean Agricultural Technology Group), a body designed specifically to assist the Vietnamese with their natural environment.68 Over a period of 8 years (1967–1975), the group focused on farming and fisheries, providing the latest knowledge from the domestic context.
The other major example comes from civic activities designed to establish friendly relations between Korean soldiers and Vietnamese villages. The civil affairs branch of the Korean military conducted much of this activity, providing symbolic coverage for a range of related actions. Officially known as the “Pigeon Brigade” (and sometimes “Peace Dove,” or 비둘기부대 in Korean), the group arrived in Vietnam in early 1965, following an earlier placement of medical personnel, along with a group devoted to Taekwando training.69, All three of these placements preceded the arrival of the Korean military, meaning that there was a substantial lead-in time in terms of preparing for on the ground activities, as well as creating a context for engaging directly with Vietnamese populations. The collected activities performed by the brigade often appear in newsreels and publications under the label “Civic Actions” (or 대민활동 in Korean), with this language reflecting the desire to offer Vietnamese a reason to engage with Koreans on favorable terms.70
When distributed internally to soldiers, these civic materials typically came framed with the language of psychological warfare, indicating that these activities would help to smooth the path for better relations with Vietnamese villages. Buddhist Studies scholar Jonathan Feuer has brought another context to this activity, noting that the same label, “Civic Actions,” was also associated with the introduction of Buddhist chaplains to the Korean military.71, Images appearing alongside construction, new schools, and similar projects depict Buddhist acts of compassion, offering another common element between the two cultures.72 Images provided in the materials offer several specific examples of Buddhist worship, respect for Buddhism as a faith, and of course, the perception of a common or shared heritage between Korean and Vietnamese approaches. In this frame, a common Buddhist heritage reflects a Korean interest in localizing or appealing to indigenous elements in another culture in the effort to convey knowledge.
At the same time, Koreans learned an enormous amount from the Vietnam experience, including construction skills, management, and working with international work teams, including Southeast Asian and American labor. Yoon Chung-ro has documented these trends extensively in his work, interviewing Koreans who worked with Vinnell, another of the private contractors responsible for oversight of procurements projects in Thailand and Vietnam.73, To add to this point, Vinnell’s relationship with Korea dates to the Occupation and the Korean War, when the firm was initially responsible for bringing supplies to the peninsula.74, In effect, Korea’s long-term project was one of developing its own expertise: first receiving supplies, then working alongside a firm like Vinnell in Vietnam, and eventually superseding the need for such assistance. By the early 1970s, Korean firms began providing some of the first container routes from Korea to the West Coast, working in conjunction with the American firm, Sea & Land.75
Of the two arguments advanced here, the first, regarding the early impulse towards aid, provides minor changes to the existing timeline, without dramatically changing the story. Its primary function is to provide context to the 1963 workshops, showing that contact with African nations began with the Chang Myon government in 1960. The second argument, however, takes up the existing problem of migration, and shows how Koreans proactively used this trend to mobilize a new government agency, KODCO, one which soon became the main aid mechanism. This argument grants Korean actors much more participation and agency in constructing this institution and its activities. In this version, KODCO was never the heroic or celebrated institution organized spontaneously in 1965, but instead, a carefully planned response to the problem of the loss of nurses and other elite technical workers. Instead of panicking, the Park government took this existing problem, started to track migration with the Overseas Emigration Bureau (1962), and then refined the process further with the formation of KODCO (1965).
Notes
K OICA (Korea International Cooperation Agency), 20 Years of KOICA, 1991–2010 (Seoul: KOICA, 2011). See Chapter 1, “History of Korea’s ODA and KOICA.”
Ibid., 41–43.
Joseph Wong, Healthy Democracies: Welfare Politics in Taiwan and South Korea (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006). Korean national health insurance started to provide full coverage as of 1989. “History,” National Health Insurance Service(NHIS), accessed December 8, 2023, https://www.nhis.or.kr/english/wbheaa01300m01.do/.
“History of Korea’s ODA and KOICA,” K Developedia, accessed December 8, 2023, https://www.kdevelopedia.org/Development-Overview/all/history-korea%27sodkoica--201412110000389.do/. “Unofficial aid” generally means a collaborative effort or project that is not formal ODA (e.g., private construction, infrastructure), but that provides economic / material benefits. See Jin Sato for his take on Japanese “unofficial aid,” “Tokyo’s Vision of Southeast Asia: Private Interests and Economic Cooperation in the 1950s,” in Engineering Asia: Technology, Development, and the Cold War Order, eds. Hiromi Mizuno, Aaron S Moore, and John DiMoia (London: Bloomsbury, 2018).
Gregg Brazinsky, “From Pupil to Model: South Korea and American development policy during the early Park Chung Hee era,” Diplomatic History 29, no. 1 (2005).
Tae-gyun Park, “Different Roads, Common Destination: Economic Discourses in South Korea during the 1950s,” Modern Asian Studies 39, no. 3 (2005). See also Dongmin Park, “Free World, Cheap Buildings: U.S. Hegemony and the Origins of Modern Architecture in South Korea, 1953–1960” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2016).
David Ekbladh, The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).
Wong, Healthy Democracies: Welfare Politics in Taiwan and South Korea.
Seo Byung-seol trained with the Minnesota Project (1954–1962), before becoming a leader in SK’s anti-parasite effort during the Vietnam War. See Mark Harrison, Sung Vin Yim, “War on Two Fronts: The Fight against Parasites in Korea and Vietnam,” Medical History 61, no. 3 (2017). Aya Homei and John DiMoia, “Integrating Parasite Eradication with Family Planning: The Colonial Legacy in Post-War Medical Cooperation in East Asia,” Social History of Medicine 34, no. 4 (2021).
KODCO was South Korea’s main aid institution from 1965–1991, with KOICA then taking over.
Hyesim Na, “A Study of South Korean Migrant Nurses in West Germany from the Perspective of the Catholic Church in Germany,” Togiryŏn’gu 37 (2018).
John DiMoia, Reconstructing Bodies: Biomedicine, Health and Nation-Building in South Korea Since 1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013). See Chapter Three for the Minnesota Project and medical migration.
Jiyoung Park, “Doctors as Brokers: Medical Diplomacy between Thailand and Colonial Korea,” (presentation, “First Workshop in Trans-Asian Scientific Diplomacy in Cold War Japan and Korea,” Yokohama, February 16, 2024).
Chung-Si An and Jeon Je Seong, Han’gugŭi Tongnamashiayŏn’gu [Southeast Asian Studies in Korea: The History, Trends, and Analysis] (Seoul: Seoul National University Press, 2019).
Hiromi Mizuno, “A Kula Ring for the Flying Geese: Japan’s Technology Aid and Postwar Asia,” in Engineering Asia, eds. Hiromi Mizuno, Aaron S Moore, John P. DiMoia. Matt Augustine, From Japanese Empire to American Hegemony: Koreans and Okinawans in the Resettlement of Northeast Asia (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2023).
Tae-gyun Park, “Different Roads, Common Destination.”
“Official Development Assistance: Definition and Coverage,” OECD, accessed April 15, 2024. https://www.oecd.org/dac/financing-sustainable-development/development-finance-standards/officialdevelopmentassistancedefinitionandcoverage.htm/.
Ibid.
Miguel A. Bernard and Carlos P. Romulo, Adventure in Viet-Nam: The Story of Operation Brotherhood 1954–1957 (Manila: Operation Brotherhood, 1974). The program brought medical aid to Laos and Vietnam. See also Simeon Man, Soldiering Through Empire: Race and the Making of the Decolonizing Pacific (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018). Kathryn Sweet, “Health Sector Contestation in Cold War Laos, 1950–1975,” in Fighting for Health: Medicine in Cold War Southeast Asia, eds. C. Michele Thompson, Kathryn Sweet, and Michitake Aso (Singapore: NUS Press, 2024), 84–118.
James Lawton Collins, Jr., The Development and Training of the South Vietnamese Army, 1950–1972 (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1975), 12.
“Laos Crisis, 1960–1963,” Wilson Center, accessed April 15, 2024, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/topics/laos-crisis-1960-1963/.
Jihye Kim, From Sweatshop to Fashion Shop: Korean Immigrant Entrepreneurship in the Argentine Garment Industry (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2021), p. 29. See also, USAID, Operations Report, June 30, 1962, “ICA Data as of 1960.”
Robert Repetto et al., Economic Development, Population Policy, and Demographic Transition in the Republic of Korea (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), 115.
Junho Jung, “Medical Diplomacy: North-South Korea’s Diplomatic Rivalry and Medical Cooperation with Third World in the 1960~70s,” International Journal Korean History 29, no. 1 (2024).
Benjamin R. Young, Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader: North Korea and the Third World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2023).
Young-Sun Hong, Cold War Germany, the Third World, and the Global Humanitarian Regime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
RMK-BRJ (Raymond Morrison-Knudsen, Brown, Root and Jones), a six-firm consortium, was the largest group responsible for the employment of much of this labor. See Em-Kayan, the Morrison-Knudsen in-house journal, held at Boise State University: (accessed December 8, 2023, http://digitalcollections.boisestate.edu/jsp/RcWebSearchResults.jsp?result_start=0&result_items=48&result_layout=GRID&query1_modifier=AND&query1=em%20kayan&query1_field=ALL/). RMK-BRJ also employed other Asian labor, especially from East and Southeast Asian partners.
Daniel Fineman, A Special Relationship: The United States and Military Government in Thailand, 1947–1958 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997).
Ibid.
Thanks to Morragotwong Phumplab, Thammasat University, for responding to questions on this troop placement.
Chonghan Kim, “Korea’s Diplomacy Toward Africa,” Orbis 11 (Fall 1967). For Dr. Kim’s Biographical information, please see: Briana Hollins, “Heart and Seoul: Early Korean Students at Indiana University Part 2,” IU Libraries Blogs, accessed April 15, 2024, https://blogs.libraries.indiana.edu/iubarchives/2022/06/06/heart-and-seoul-part-2/.
Chonghan Kim, “Korea’s Diplomacy Toward Africa,” 887.
Ibid., 886.
Ibid., 887.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Huck-ju Kwon et al., eds., International Development Cooperation of Japan and South Korea: New Strategies for an Uncertain World (London: Palgrave McMillan: 2022), 78. See Chapter Four, “South Korea’s Foreign Aid as a Foreign Policy Instrument.”
Ibid., 77.
Chonghan Kim, “Korea’s Diplomacy Toward Africa.”
James Lin, “Sowing Seeds and Knowledge: Agricultural Development in Taiwan and the World, 1925–1975,” East Asian Science Technology Society 9, no. 2 (2014).
Ibid.
Ronald Freedman and John Y Takeshita, Family Planning in Taiwan: An Experiment in Social Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969).
20 Years of KOICA, 41–43. See also Country Assistance Program, USAID, Part One.
Evaluation Survey of USOM Participant Training Program, Vietnam, 1954–1960, pp. 2–3. The explanation provided here notes that training in both the US and a “third country” will allow trainees to utilize the aid coming to their countries.
20 years of KOICA, 41–43. See also Ji Hyun Kim, “South Korea’s Motivations for Official Development Assistance: 1963–2010” (PhD diss., Ewha Women’s University, GSIS, 2014). See Section A, Chapter Four, “Starting Technical Assistance in the 1960s,” 57–65. Kim draws upon MOST (Ministry of Science and Technology) and MOFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) sources, and of these two, I followed up with the latter.
In fact, American press coverage for the crisis frequently refers to the possibility of “another Korea.” See Phillip Garner, “Congo and Korea: A Case Study in Divergence,” Journal of International Development 20, no. 3 (2008). Thanks also to Sarah Van Beurden of Ohio State University.
John Olin School of Business, Olin Business School, Korea Project Files 1958–1966, Washington University St Louis.
Point Four: accessed April 15, 2024, https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/inaugural-addresses-of-the-presidents-of-the-united-states/harry-s.-truman-inaugural-address/.
Gregg Brazinsky, “From Pupil to Model.”
Ji Hyun Kim, “South Korea’s Motivations for Official Development Assistance,” 59.
USAID, Evaluation Survey of the Korea / US Participant Training Program, Washington DC, September 1963.
USAID, Evaluation Survey, 42.
“Information for International Cooperation Administration Regional Participants Receiving Training in the Philippines,” USOM Philippines. A copy can be found at https://vietnamproject.archives.msu.edu/recordFiles/159-547-21/UA2-9-5-5_003005.pdf (accessed April 15, 2024). Michigan State operated several ICA projects with the RVN (Republic of Vietnam, or South Vietnam), especially for training police. See Simeon Man, Soldiering Through Empire, 71, for details of this specific claim.
Alfred Paredo Flores, Tip of the Spear: Land, Labor, and US Settler Militarism in Guåhan, 1944–1962, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2023). See Chapter Three for the Luzon Stevedoring Company (Lusteveco).
Cornell University trained many agronomists / agricultural experts for Republican China (1911–1949), and these same individuals often came to Taiwan after 1949. See James Lin, “Sowing Seeds.”
Robert Repetto et al., Economic Development, Population Policy, and Demographic Transition in the Republic of Korea.
ong, Cold War Germany. Hong places this story in the context of comparable East German / Soviet technical training.
John DiMoia, “Placing Image and Practice in Tension: South Korean Nurses, Medical Pedagogy, and the Indiana University Bloomington Nursing Program 1958–1962,” East Asian Science, Technology and Society 11 (2017). The IU-Korea Nursing archive is held at the IU-PUI Indianapolis campus. Mildred Adams, Adaptation of advisory service in nursing education in Korea (Indianapolis: University of Indiana, School of Nursing: 1967).
UNARMS (United Nations Archive and Records Management System), Folder S-0526-0093-0006-National Medical Center (Seoul).
For this period, Korea’s two most common types of students abroad were medical doctors and (nuclear) engineers.
Jon Bjornsson, The National Medical Center in Seoul: A Scandinavian Contribution to Medical Training and Development 1958–1968 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1972), 59.
Ibid, 61.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Hong, Cold War Germany, 108.
Ibid.
Jim Glassman and Young-Jin Choi, “The Chaebol and the US Military—Industrial Complex: Cold War Geopolitical Economy and South Korean Industrialization,” Environment and Planning A; Economy and Space 46, no. 5 (2014).
Sinjae Lee, “Implication of the Korean Agricultural Technology Group Activities during the Vietnam War,” Journal of Rural Development 43, no. 4 (2020).
Chŏnsa P’yŏnch’an Wiwŏnhoe, P’awŏr Han’gukkun Jŏnsa Sajinjip 1964–1970 [Pictorial War History of ROK Forces to Vietnam, 1964–1970] (Seoul: Ministry of National Defense, 1970), 13.
Chuwŏr Han’gukkun Saryŏngbu, Civic Actions (ROKA-Saigon, 1966).
Jonathan Carl Feuer, “The South Korean Buddhist Military Chaplaincy: Buddhist Militarism, Violence, and Religious Freedom” (PhD diss. UCLA, 2023).
Civic Actions.
Chung Ro Yoon, “P’awŏl kisulchaŭi Pet’ŭnamjŏnjaeng kyŏnghŏmgwa saenghwalsegyeŭi pyŏnhwa : Pinnelsaŭi saryerŭl chungshimŭro [The War Experience and the Changes of Their Life World of the Korean Workers for the Vinnell Firm in Vietnam],” Sahoewa yŏksa 71 (2006).
For Vinnell: 095 VINNELL Corp. Binder #1, 1 J an 51 thru 31 Dec 51 / General Headquarters, Far East Command, Supreme Commander Allied Powers, and United Nations, National Library of Korea.
John DiMoia, “Reconfiguring transport infrastructure in post-war Asia: mapping South Korean container ports, 1952–1978,” History and Technology 36, no. 3–4 (2020).