Rebuilding the post-colonial economy was a challenge. The
Japanese had developed the Korean economy to function as part of a cohesive
empire that included Japan and Manchuria -- it wasn't intended to be
self-sustaining.
Under colonial rule, the Japanese filled most of the high-ranking positions in Korean industry, meaning the newly independent Korea faced a shortage of skilled labor. The north-south divide that had emerged in 1945 made things trickier still: most of Korea's heavy industry was in the north, and what industry there was in the south was still dependent on the electricity created by power plants near the Korea-China border. By 1947, two years after the Americans and Russians arrived on the peninsula, only half of the South Korean labor force of 10 million was employed. At the same time, the population of Seoul was booming, with Koreans abroad returning from Japan and refugees already beginning to flood in from the north, which remained under Soviet occupation.
Courtesy of koreaBANG
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