Industrial restructuring and uneven regional development in the 1980s

산업구조조정과 지역불균등발전 : 1980년대

Structural adjustment of industry (or industrial restructuring) seems to be inherent in the process of capitalist economic development, which tends to be proceeded with shifts from one stage to another in order to overcome structural crises generated in each stage. The structural adjustment of industry is necessarily accompanied with regional restructuring, since it is not only projected on spece, but also mediated by space. Such a restructuring necessitates industrial and uneven regional devlopment through which capital can seek excessive profits over the rate of socio-spatial average. The industrial restructuring and uneven regional development in the 1980s in Korea can be seen as a process in which capital attempted with a strong support of the govenment to overcome the crises in the end of 1970s and hence to go on rapid economic growth. In this process, capital, especially monopoly capital concentrated into few conglomerates, pursued both extensive expansion and intensive development of industry simultaneously. In results, the Korean economy could eliminate some of peripheral characters and maturate the Fordist accumulation system. The extensive expansion of the Korean industry in the 1980s was stimulated mainly through the enlargement and adjustment of investment for equipment facilities which was planned to exclude or rationalize traditional light industries on some places, and to continue rapid growth of key heavy-chemical industries, especially of fabricated metal industry, on other places. In this process, keeping mainly the existing developmental axis which polarized the Seoul Metroplitan region and the Southeast region in Korea, the enhancing spatial mobiiity of capital and the further differentiating division of labour enforced a tendency of concentration of all types of industry in the Seoul Metropolitan region, and at the same time provoked the diffusion of some industries over Jeolla and Chungchong regions in a considerable extent. The intensive development of industriai structure in the 1980s was pursued through the strategic encouragement of subcontracting small firms mainly which produced assembling components, the technical enhancement and factory (semi-) automation, and the enrichment of service industries for estate management, finance, distribution and retailing which supported and complemented the production of goods. In this process, enabling capital to extend and elaborate its domination over space through the reorganization of regulating systems, the Fordist division of labour generated a socio-spatial hierarchy in the nation-wide scale that characterized: the Seoul Metropolitan region as an overmaturated (or overarching) Fordist region performing the conceptive functions of management, research and development, in which all types of industry (including service industries) tended to be reconcentrated; Kyungsang region as a maturated Fordist region with excutive branches of large conglomerates and with subcontracting firms around them which produced standardized products through the automized production processes in secialized Fordist industries or rationalized traditional industries; and Jeolla and Chungchong regions as newly devloping Fordist regions with newly migrated branches and some subcontracting small firms-in relatively older Fordist industries or partly rationalized traditional industries. From these analyses, it can be argued that the structural adjustment of the Korean industry in the 1980s, which had carried out both through the extensive expansion and the intensive deveiopment, strengthened further uneven regional development process, even though it appears to have reduced apparently the economic and regional disparity by balancing numerically large and small firms and by extending the Fordist industrial space nation-wideiy. And it seems more persuasive to see that the Korean industrial structure in the 1980s maturated the Fordist system of accumulation, but not yet transformed towards the post-Fordist (or the so-called flexible) accumulation system, even though the Korean economy in the 1990s seems to be under a pressure of restructuring towards the latter system.

1980년대 한국의 산업구조조정과 지역불균등발전은 70년대말 직면한 위기를 극복하 고 총량적 경제성장을 지속시키기 위해 외연적 팽창과 내포적 발전을 동시에 추구했으뎌, 그 결과 한국 경제는 포드주의적 축적체제에서 주변성을 탈각하고 성숙되었다. 산업구조의 외연적 팽창과정에서 자본의 공간적 이동과 분업체계의 확충은 기존의 수도권-동남권의 양 극체제를 일정하게 유지하면서 한편으로 수도권지역에 산업의 재집중과 또 다른 한편으로 새롭게 조성된 호남, 충청권으로의 분산을 촉진시켰다. 산업구조의 내포적 발전과정에서 포 드주의적 분업체계의 심화는 경영관리 및 연구개발의 구상기능을 강화시키고 생산자서비스 를 일정하게 포섭한 독점자본의 본사, 생산공정의 자동화와 제품의 표준화, 규격화로 대량생 산체제를 달성한 대기업의 분공장, 이들 주변에서 값싼 노동력으로 부품생산을 담당하는 영 세하청공장들 간의 사회공간적 위계화를 촉진시키면서, 독점자본에 의한 공간지배를 보다 확대시키고 또한 치밀하게 함으로써 지역불균등발전을 심화시켰다.