• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.475-495
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• 2006

This paper is to analyse a changing space of energy flows in Northeast Asia from geopolitical and geoeconomic perspectives that have been recently promoted for energy security of countries in this region. The research is based on an analytical framework in an integration of political ecology and political economy. Because of an ever-increasing input of energy resources for economic growth and of dramatically increasing price of crude oil and recent instability of oil market, South Korea, China and Japan have been deeply concerned with energy security and conducted very actively geopolitical strategies. And hence the space of energy flows in the region is now in a process of dynamic reconfiguration, in which the project for development of oil and natural gas fields in East Siberia and construction of pipelines to transport them can be seen as one of competitive issues among these countries. In spite of worrying about stagflation due to rapid increase of oil price, such geo-strategies for energy security and reconfiguration of space of energy flows seem to keep the accumulation of capital in this region continue with generation of huge privatized oil companies.