This paper identifies two distinct types of inequality affecting the advance of the Korean literacy in opposite ways. Literacy improvement in colonial Korea was checked by the presence of landed elite with pre-colonial origins, but helped by the development of profit-seeking land tenancy...

Using evidence on elite presence, land inequality, literacy, and primary schooling in pre-colonial, colonial, and South Korea, I show that inequality may help or check human capital accumulation depending on the nature of inequality and the type of learning. Little affected by the imposition of...

To investigate the current status of Korea's income distribution, we decompose its income inequality index. Next, we analyze the effects of economic openness on income distribution with two different datasets: international country-level data and Korean industry-level data. Based on the analysis...