The rapid economic changes in post-World War II Korea are often described as "miraculous." Indeed, the country is frequently posited as a model for other countries to emulate. Yet few social or economic historians have seriously examined the roots of these dramatic changes.

Edwin Gragert, in this analysis of landownership patterns during the final years of the Yi dynasty, contends that economic changes relevant to Korea's current prosperity long predate the postwar Period; indeed, factors influencing these changes were in place even prior to the twentieth century.

A landmark in the study of socioeconomic change in modern Korea, Landownership under Colonial Rule stands firm in its revision of the nationalist thesis about Japanese land expropriation during the colonial period. The meticulous research offers the most detailed and complex view of the late Choson and colonial landholding system available in English. It reveals striking new evidence that acquisition came at a much later date, the result of market forces during the worldwide depression years.

Despite having a policy of massive settlement of Japanese citizens and plans for economic exploitation and transformation of the Korean peninsula, Imperial Japan was frustrated by social, economic, and political forces already at work in Korea. Dr. Gragert opens new approaches to research on the colonial period and provides a fresh perspective on modern Korean and Japanese history.