The correct answer is - A. disadvantaged.
South Korea, after the 1953 cease-fire, faced the world for the first time as an independent nation, but the things didn't seemed very bright to begin with. The newly formed country was disadvantaged economically, and that was mainly due to the war from which the economy was terribly affected and drained, as well as the surroundings of the country.
Even though South Korea had an access to the sea, so it was limited in the trade department, it had neighbors with the likes of North Korea with which there was lot of tensions and hatred, Japan with which the relations were terrible, China was a communist country in support of North Korea. So South Korea, at the start, was heavily dependent on foreign help, mainly from the United States, which turned the country's economy into a capitalist one, and slowly but surely modernized and developed as the years went by.
Erosion i believe is the answer
