Factor Supply and Factor Intensity of Trade in Korea.—By Wontack Hong. Korea Development Institute, Seoul, Korea. 1976.

The main purpose of the book is to investigate the changes inthe factor intensity of Korea's trade. The time span covered for theanalysis is 1960-1973, the period during which Korea experienced bothrapid capital accumulation and a prodigious expansion of manufacturedexports. The book contains 12 chapters in all. Following an introductorynote, Chapter 1 presents an overview of growth and trade in Korea. It isshown that annual commodity exports of Korea, which amounted to lessthan 100 million before 1962, increased at an average annual rate of 40%during 1962-73 and were around $3200 million in 1973 and §4500 millionin 1974. The share of manufactured goods in total commodity exports,which never exceeded the 20 percent level during 1953-61, steadilyincreased thereafter and had reached a level of over 90 percent after1970. It is further shown that in the Sixties in Korea, importsubstitution and export expansion went concomitantly and that privateentrepreneures determined the allocation of resources. However, in theSeventies, the government encouraged entrepreneurs to diversify exportsaway from unskilled labour-intensive manufactures, for example, textilesand ply-wood, to relatively skill intensive and moderatelycapital-intensive manufacturing, such as the ship-building and machineryindustries. This was necessary if the coun¬try was to take fulladvantage of the changing comparative costs which were becoming apparentin her foreign trade.