'Made In Korea': From Squid to Semiconductors

Korea's exports began in 1948, when the Aengdo-hwan, the country's first Korean-flagged ship, set sail for Hong Kong loaded with agar and dried seafood.
At the time, Korea exported minerals, fish and seaweed to neighboring countries such as China and Japan.
Right after the Korean War, the country had no technology to speak of, so it mainly exported primary products obtained from nature, even pig bristles used to make brushes.
During this period, the Sambaek ("three whites") industries developed, using aid goods that various countries had sent to Korea free of charge to help it recover from the damage of the war.
These industries processed aid goods to produce flour (milling), sugar (refining) and cotton textiles (cotton spinning), and got their name because all of their products were white.
The economic development strategy the government adopted at the time was an import substitution industrialization strategy.
An import substitution industrialization strategy refers to a strategy in which latecomer countries pursuing industrialization produce at home the manufactured goods they used to import from other countries, nurturing domestic industries and pursuing economic growth.
It was a strategy mainly pursued by latecomer countries that had fallen behind in competition with the early industrialized nations, and Korea, which lacked resources, capital and technology alike, also pursued economic development through import substitution.
However, foreign aid, which had helped industrial development, began to decline from 1957, and the domestic market was small, so there were limits to achieving rapid and sustained economic growth through the import substitution industrialization strategy.
Therefore, in order to secure the foreign currency needed to import products such as the machinery and equipment required for production, the country ultimately had to foster export industries.