한국공업화과정(韓國工業化過程)에서의 광물자원(鑛物資源)의 수급구조변화(需給構造變化)와 경제성장(經濟成長)에 있어서의 역할(役割)

The Changing Patterns of Demand-Supply and Role of Mineral Resources in Economic Growth during Industrialization of the Republic of Korea

A total of 12 mineral commodities significant in domestic output, economy and/or strategy of the Republic of Korea are chosen to examine the structural changes in production and demand-supply of these minerals during the last two decades of her industrialization. These include iron and manganese ores as the raw materials for iron and steel making, copper, zinc and tungsten ores among other non-ferrous metallic minerals, limestone (cement), kaolin, talc, pyrophyllite and graphite among other non-metallic minerals, and anthracite coal as the only domestic source of fossil energy. These are reviewed historically in time-series based on the statistical data which are tabulated and graphed in terms of domestic output, export, import, apparent demand-supply, its increasing rate, and self-sufficiency rate of each commodity. The increasing rates of demand-supply (IRDS) of some more important commodities are compared with those of Gross Domestic Production (GDP) and Economic Growth Rate (EGR) to evaluate how the IRDS contributed to the GDP and EGR. The major results revealed are as follows: Among the 12 commodities, the domestic output of 8 commodities appeared to have grown with steady upward trends: they are ores of lead, zinc and tungsten, limestone (cement), kaolin, talc, pyrophyllite and anthracite coal. Two commodities, ores of iron and copper, continued with unchanging or slightly declining trends and varied fluctuations, in spite of their cardinal importance to the heavy industry and strategy of Korea. The remaining two, graphite and manganese ore, have gradualy declined in domestic output in which the former has still enough resource potential but the latter has not and virtually ceased its domestic output. Trade patterns for mineral commodities in the Republic of Korea during the last two decades have changed greatly, being marked by a shift from mineral-exporting to mineral importing, mainly because of increasing consumption of mineral raw materials for industrialization rather than beceuse of decreasing output of domestic mineral commodities in quantity. In terms of trade patterns, the 12 commodities concerned in this study can be classified into the following four groups. The 1st group - ores of lead and tungsten have only been exported without imports. The 2nd group - amorphous graphite, and pyrophyllite have mainly been exported but partly been imported. The 3rd group - kaolin, talc and crystalline graphite have equally been exported and imported, but quantity of imports have rapidly been increased with time. The 4th group - ores of iron, manganese and zinc have shifted from exports to imports during the industrialization, particularly owing to the initiation of iron and steel making by the Pohang Iron and Steel Company in the middle 1970' s and the new establishment of the Onsan Zinc Refinery in the late 1970' s. All of the 12 commodities under considerations were far above 100% in self-sufficiency rate before or in the early 1960' s. Recently, however, most of them have been declined to below 100% except for those of limestone (cement) and pyrophyllite. It is particularly serious to identify that the self-sufficiency rates of the three important metallic minerals, iron, copper and manganese ores in 1982 appeared to be 5.1%, 0.5%, and 0.01%, respectively. The average self-sufficiency rate of the total domestic minerals produced in 1982 was 14.4% (in value) for that year. Mining industry appeared to be extremely high in its intermediate demand rate whereas its intermediate input rate to be quite low indicating that mineral raw materials have been exerted strong forward linkage effects upon the other industries rather than backward linkage effects. In comparing the curves of increasing rates of demand-supply of several major minerals - iron ore, manganese ore, copper ore, limestone (cement), kaolin, and anthracite coal - with those of Gross Domestic Production and Economic Growth Rate drawn on every graph, it is clearly shown that the curves of increasing rates of demand-supply comprise around 6 to 7 periods of cycles which roughly harmonious with those of the curves of GDP and EGR, except for the curve of anthracite coal of which the configuration seems to have resulted from the (artificial) government's mineral policy rather than from economic free market mechanism. The harmonic feature of these curves well suggests that the increasing rates of demand-supply of major minerals have been significantly contributed to the GDP and EGR. In addition, the wider amplitudes of the iron, manganese and copper curves than those of the limestone (cement) and kaolin curves indicate that the contribution of the former, metallic commodities, has been greater than that of the latter, non-metallic commodities.