• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.728-744
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• 2007

In East Asia, regional identity can be expected to obtain popular consent more successfully when it is firmly based on historical-geographical reality. This study is an attempt to apply a broadened concept of place to the identification of East Asia as a cultural region. Cultural mixture within places at various scales, rather than cultural integration across those places, would give greater coherence to East Asia as a cultural region. This cultural mixture varies from one place to another, depending on the relative position in power relations. It could appear in the form of either domination or resistance, and even entanglement. The concept of a "mountain as a contested place" is proposed as an experimental effort to search for the basis for cultural identity within East Asia. This concept of place should be extended to the individual studies of such spatial units as houses, gardens, villages and cities. These individual studies, if accumulated, would result in improved theories of East Asia as a region that has a distinct cultural identity in historical-geographical terms.