Winning the War with Goats and Pigs: United Nations Resource Development Programs in the Republic of Korea, 1945-1965

• In Event: War and Environment in the Korean Peninsula, 1598-1965

Abstract

Prior to 1945, decades of colonial occupation redirected resources from the Korean peninsula to Japan and its growing empire. The end of the Second World War promised a new era for the nation, one built on developing Korea’s natural resources for the benefit of the Korean people. Civil strife and armed conflict, however, threatened to undermine progress toward that goal. This paper examines United Nations efforts to support the Republic of Korea between 1945 and 1965 through resource development programs based on Western scientific principles. Special attention will be given to the crucial war years of 1950-1953, when UN advisors claimed that military victory relied as much on aggressive agricultural and forestry development as it did on battlefield successes. Beginning in 1950, and carrying through until the mid-1960s, the UN led efforts to rationalize natural resources and implement scientific management of the same. Such efforts included replacing endogenous Korean species, both plant and animal, with “better” species imported from the US, Europe, and Japan. This paper analyzes these attempts to improve Korean nature, wild and domesticated, from both environmental and military historical perspectives, arguing that while they may have enabled the Republic of Korea to remain a viable nation, they instituted ecological and development ideas that diminished the environmental health of the nation in the long term.

Author

• Lisa M. Brady, Boise State University