Vanguards of the rural technical revolution: tractors and industrial development in the two Koreas during the Cold War

In 1958 North Korea became a rare case of a developing country manufacturing its own tractors. Moreover, in the context of decolonization, the Cold War, and the Non-Aligned Movement, North Korea gifted them in large numbers to its growing number of allies in the global South. While North Korea built a highly mechanized agricultural sector based on large collective farms, farming in South Korea remained private, small-scale, and unmechanized. However, North Korea’s agricultural system met serious crisis in the 1990s, while South Korea emerged as an advanced capitalist economy with its own tractor industry, but one geared towards the global market rather than domestic mechanization. The story of Korean tractors provides a useful lens for better understanding the respective development trajectories of the two republics, and the consequences of the different ways each were integrated into global transfers of energy, technology, labour, and financial capital during the Cold War.