• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.640-656
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• 2005

A chronic depression in the Korean economy, which depends mostly on imported oil, has been attributed partly to rising crude oil prices recently. Against the backdrop of these realities in Korea, Azerbaijan in the Caspian region, with vast oil and gas deposits, has been greeted enviously by some Koreans. Many transition economies, especially on the Caspian region trumpeted by the oil boom, however, are rich in natural resources, but the benefits of those resources are appropriated by the local elite in collusion with foreign companies. Azerbaijan, in particular, is dominated by a series of internal and external patronage networks. Foreign capital nourishes those networks surrounding President Aliev. Thus, the case of Azerbaijan shows that resource rents in the transition economies sometimes do not help in improving the living conditions of ordinary people. Rather rich resource rents turn out to be a major impediment to the emerging development of the transition economy, lessening the incentives to reform in the country. The result was the possibility of the so-called Dutch Disease, in which disproportionate growth in a certain energy sector tends to crowd out investment in other sectors of the economy.