• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.56-76
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to clarify the global commodity chains of the grafted cactus of Umseong region. The major findings of this study are as follows. Buying materials for cultivating the grafted cactus is based on the intra-Umseong local network. In addition, exporting grafted cactus using cheaper labor force means spatial division of labor from semi-periphery region to core region in terms of Wallerstein's world system theory. It is thought that buyer-driven commodity chains of farm products profit by division of labor caused by a sales network of the grafted cactus. And such situation means that high quality of the grafted cactus in Umseong maintains the spatial continuity by commodity chains.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.377-401
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• 1994

This study examines the impact of national economic restructuring on regional development patterns. Korea's development over the last decade has been characterized by a rapid economic restructuring towards the information economy. This economic restructuring has had significant impacts on regional development patterns. The most remarkable feature is a clear coreperiphery disparity in terms of levels of informatization. Seoul showed an extraordinarily high level of informatization. The process of regional development in the information era is marked by an intensified spatial division of labor, which articulates with the pre-existing pattern of regional disparity. Information infrastructrue improvements for regional development do not necessarily result in reductions in regional unevenness. There is an urgent need to develop the integrated regional informatization strategy.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.81-112
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• 1998

This study reviews the industrialization process of the United States-Mexico Borderlands and the economic relations between the U.S. and Mexico and examines their impact on the borderlands. Main factor in the industrialization of the borderlands was the U.S. investment on the maquiladora program of Mexico since 1965. It contributed to the increase in employment and population of borderlands and the development of service industries. Low wage level of Mexico induced not only standardized labor-intensive industries but also the high-tech automated industries because they still use a lot of labor in manufacturing and assembly process, while the functions of management. R & D, and distribution remained in the U.S. This is a typical case of international division of labor and satellite industrial district. The rules of origin in NAFTA, however forced branch Plants of multinational companies to form the local linkages between firms.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.217-231
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• 2021

This study was conducted to identify the regional specialization that occurred during industrialization of agriculture. It examined patterns in oriental melons as one of the produce leading the development of the domestic protected horticulture sector. Oriental melons have been cultivated indoors for a long time. Seongju-gun, Gyeongsangbuk-do is specializing in oriental melon cultivation through increasingly intensive production and spatial concentration and is now the largest oriental melon production area in South Korea. This paper first discusses the production intensification and spatial concentration of oriental melon cultivation at the national level and then examines the specialization of oriental melon cultivation in Seongju-gun in terms of land use, cultivation facilities and related technologies, and the division of labor. This examination was based on relevant statistics and in-depth interviews with main actors from the area.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.576-598
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• 2016

This paper is to reconsider some characteristics of philosophical discussion on alienation, especially focusing on Lefebvre's concept of alienation, and then to conceptualize a number of features of alienation in both industrial and postindustrial capitalist cities. The construction and development of modern city in industrial capitalism has brought about alienation from nature and from land(i.e. means of production), and in these contexts, has generated alienated labour of urban labourers, which has been deepened through development of modern technologies and divisions of labour. The transformation from industrial to postindustrial society can be seen not as alleviating but as further intensifying and expanding process of alienation. Urban alienation in postindustrial society has been spatially and temporally extended through processes of glocalization and of financialization with the development of credit system. It also has been widened to fields of consumption and leisure and to spheres of non-material production, and has get more deeply involved in capital circulation through built environment and landscape(or spectacles) of cities. Finally this paper is to re-examine briefly theoretical discussions on dealienation in order to conceptualize the just city for dealienation of labour and of urban space, in particular considering the concept of 'the right to the city' as practical strategy of urban dealienation, and to suggest further three kinds of justice for the just city, that is, justice for distribution, for production and for recognition.

• 한국사회정책
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.141-172
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• 2016

This study examines the employment conditions and labour experience of elementary after-school care teachers in South Korea. Based on the empirical data collected through in-depth interviews with after-school care teachers in Gwangju Metropolitan City, the study considers multifaceted problems faced by after-school care teachers in their workplace. The after-school care class is part of educational policies initiated and rapidly expanded by the Ministry of Education, resulting in the substantial increase of non-regular school workers. The irregularization of after-school care teachers illustrates that the common problems faced by female non-regular workers, such as social discrimination, exclusion and inequality, are also transplanted into the typical public sector. In the case of Gwangju Metropolitan City, during the past two years there have been evident increases both in under 15-hour short time contract care teachers and outsourcing of care classes. Temporary part-time contract care teachers suffer relentless job insecurity and experience poor working conditions, exclusion and discrimination within the workplace and labour alienation. In order to minimize the organized resistance of care teachers, school authorities implicitly individualize and isolate care teachers through hierarchization, the division of labour and the spatial division of classes between indefinite and temporary contract teachers.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.137-165
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• 1994

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.