• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.42 no.2 s.119
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• pp.196-217
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• 2007

During the last decade, Los Angeles Koreatown experienced unprecedented changes transforming it from an immigrant ethnic enclave into a transnational economic space. Alongside of the city government's redevelopment plans and local Korean Americans' grass-root efforts to regenerate Koreatown, transnational Korean actors have aggressively invested in property as well as business sectors. However, despite these multi-scaled geographic transitions, Koreatown remains one of the poorest and most crime-infested inner-city communities in the City of Los Angeles. This paper, based on a 'place-based' bottom-up approach, investigates contradictory geographies of Koreatown in which multi-scaled network of hegemonic transnational, urban and local development actors has developed representational, unlived economies. This research points out that the recent urban regeneration of Koreatown has not only excluded but also exploited local community members such as transnational Korean/Latino workers in the area. This paper conclusively suggests that the sustainable future of Koreatown's development would stem from place-based community consciousness that crisscrosses racial and ethnic boundaries.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.52-75
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• 2021

The current Korean labour movement is at an impasse that is partly sustained by the idea of "strong" transnational corporations (TNCs) versus "weak" labour, and this perception is based on the "global-local dichotomy," wherein TNCs are depicted as abstract and structured entities operating at the global scale and workers are represented as having a concrete and weak presence within the local sphere. As an alternative perspective to break this "global" capital vs. "local" labour dichotomy, I focus on labour geography, which assumes that labour is not simply a factor of production but a sentient spatial actor that (un-)intentionally produces the landscape of capitalism. Borrowing insights from the multi-scalar perspective, this paper aims to understand the actual methods in which workers utilize spatial strategies through an empirical case study of the Nestlé Korea labour union strike in 2003. Based on this case study, this paper claims that workers are both capable of employing coordinated multi-scalar practices and can be more influential to the economic geographies of TNCs. Additionally, it suggests that workers' scalar practices are actually more complicated and multi-directional as a result of their complex and dynamic interactions with political, economic and cultural forces and actors at diverse geographical scales.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.1-27
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• 2014

This paper aims at exploring the multi-scalar processes through which the Gumi Industrial Complex was developed in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. Existing studies, influenced by the "Developmental State Thesis", tend to see the industrialization processes of South Korea either by focusing on the socio-politico-economic processes at the national scale or in terms of the plan rationality of the national bureaucrats. This paper, however, denies this perspective on the basis of the strategic relational approach to the state and the multi-scalar perspective. In particular, it argues that the state actions for national industrialization have been the outcome of complex interactions, conflicts and negotiations among social forces, acting in and through the state, and at diverse geographical scales. This paper attempts to empirically prove this argument on the basis of a case study on the construction processes of Gumi Industrial Complex. The development of Gumi Industrial Complex cannot be solely explained in terms of either the plan rationality of the national bureaucrats or the political motivation related to the fact that Gumi was the hometown of President Park Jung-Hee. This paper argues that the development of Gumi Industrial Complex was heavily influenced by the role of the following actors; place-dependent local actors in Gumi and the multi-scalar agents, such as the Korean-Japanese businessmen and the national parliament members elected in the Gumi electoral district.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.49 no.2
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• pp.113-138
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• 2014

Despite the growing numbers of regional problems (e.g. conflicts between the state and localities, inter-local conflicts, etc.) associated with the state-led developmental projects, the Korean social sciences have been unable to offer satisfying explanations and solutions to the regional problems. This is mainly because the existing works, which have been taken captured by the assumptions of "methodological nationalism", significantly lack the socio-spatial understandings of the state actions and the relations between the state and localities, thereby seeing the issues of regional development mainly in terms of either the economic efficiency defined at the national scale, or the plan rationality of the national bureaucrats. With this problem orientation in mind, this paper aims to explore the ways in which the state and localities are interacting, conflicting and negotiating with one another through the mediation of the state-led developmental projects. Focusing on the developmental processes of Masan Export Processing Zone from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, it examines the multi-scalar processes through which the state-led industrial complex developmental processes have been influenced by the complex and dynamic interactions among social forces and actors acting at diverse geographical scales (e.g. the global, national, local, urban, etc.). This analysis shows that the regional policies of the Korean developmental state were more heavily influenced by the interactions, contestations, and collaborations among social forces and actors, acting in and through the state, at various geographical scales, rather than by the economic and techno-bureaucratic rationality.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.49 no.2
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• pp.139-159
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• 2014

This study problematizes the dominance of developmental state theory and its negative influences in the field of Korean studies, in particular, dealing with the industrialization during the developmental era, 1960s~70s. As is generally known, the theory has been in a position of unchallenged authority on the industrialization experience of East Asian countries, including South Korea. However, at the same time, it has also misled us into overlooking strategic relations that had articulated the state forms at multiple scales. This study aims to reconstruct the historical contexts by the theorizing prompted by recent work on state space. I shed light on the multiscalar strategic relations that had shaped the Ulsan refinery plant as a representative state space of the South Korean industrialization during two decades after liberation. Specifically, the study illustrates the features and roles of Cold War networks and multiscalar agnets such as Nam Goong-Yeon. By identifying the plant as a result of sequential articulations between Ulsan and other scales, this study concludes by suggesting to reframing the strategic relational spaces, beyond the view of methodological nationalism, in the perspective of multiscalar approach.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.49 no.2
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• pp.178-199
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• 2014

Changwon Industrial Complex is commonly framed as the best example of strong initiative of the Korean developmental state. And this explanation has been given in the theoretical frame of 'neo-Weberian accounts' i.e., strongly 'national-territorial' and state-centric terms of the predominant. I argue that a geopolitical economy approach focusing on the historical background of the development of Changwon Industrial Complex will shed light on crucial sociospatial dimensions of the Korean developmental state's industrial complex success. I examine, in particular, the multi-scalar processes through which the changes of the industrial complex building plans for the promotion of machine industry in 1960's have been influenced by the complex and dynamic interactions among social actors acting at diverse geographical scales. I show that the formation of the industrial complex in Korea was more heavily influenced by the interactions, contestations, and collaborations among social actors, acting in and through the state, rather than by the state initiative.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.420-436
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• 2014

Regional communities have recently tried to change themselves in order to cope with rapidly changing circumstances. Giving attention to their strategic responses as well as consequences as a result of their countermeasures, this study attempts to suggest a theoretical framework to analyze the process of locality reconstruction in a dynamic and comprehensive way. To achieve this purpose, after figuring out the previous studies' methodological and theoretical limitations, we suggest that locality should be understood as a outcome of the mutual interactions between local, state, and global scale networks.