• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.486-505
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• 2011

The Korean miracle of economic growth or development has been quite well known across the world up to now, while being subject to theorization of its model. Compared with this, however, it is quite surprising to see how little about the spatial aspect of Korean development has been exposed in the field of development studies. In fact, for Korea, competent regional policy has turned out to be an important success factor for the spatial upgrading of a low-tech growth regime into a hi-tech one. This paper dissects Korea's regional policy experiences in three aspects from which it draws up a three-tier lesson. The first aspect is the conventional (overall) regional spatial upgrading policy of a developmental regime put in place since the 1960s onwards. The second is the new regional policy tailored to the regionalization of technological and industrial diffusion for new knowledge-based economy. The third is the prospective regional policy for the future advancement of the Korean economy.