Uses of the Little Ice Age Theory in the Korean Academia of Korean History

Abstract

With emphasis on the question of why the 1600s and 1700s, well known as the age of chronic natural disasters caused by the Little Ice Age in Korean history, did not witness a decrease in population or a steady decline in the rate of population growth but rather underwent a rapid increase of population, this review article examines the preexisting studies that employed the Little Ice Age theory to explain the socioeconomic crisis in the late Joseon dynasty. In a premodern society, population growth is generally a byproduct of either a long-term increase in agricultural productivity or a steady influx of wealth through international trade. When such an economic growth is prolonged, a sort of population pressure takes place. If a society fails to breakthrough population pressure with either a new economic power or a new land for outmigration, it could stop economic growing or fall into poverty as we can see the case of nineteenth-century Qing China. During the so-called Little Ice Age in Korea, covering from the turn of the 1600s to the mid-1700s, let alone China and Japan, population grew remarkably in spite of chronic natural disaster and great famine, suggesting that the impact of the Little Ice Age on Korean society in a long term view was somewhat exaggerated. In this review article I challenge the current uses of the Little Ice Age theory in Korean academia of history.