• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
• /
• v.31 no.3
• /
• pp.489-507
• /
• 1996

The purpose of this study is to examine the increasing number of unregistered manufacturing plants and related problems, and to recommend alternative solutions to the problems. Data are obtained from a field survey of randomly selected small scale manufacturing plants in Seoul and its suburban cities. A total number or respondents are 533, and 416 of them are unregistered plants. The Capital Regional Planning has had a goal during last three decades to lead a balanced regional economic development by restriction manufacturing plants in the Capital Region and by encouraging them in other regions in the nation. It was 1984 when a comprehensive planning was established to achieve this goal. Sets of various regulations, by-laws and codes have been implemented to regulate manu-facturing activities in the Capital Region to achieve the goal. The region is divided into three sub-regions, and a different degree of regulations is applied to each sub-region. Only a certain types of industries are allowed in a particular sub-region. For instance, a plant manufacturing high-technology products could be allowed in the most urbanized sub-region. All manu-facturing plant in the Capital Region which has ares size of larger than 200"\;"$m^2$ is compulsory to register to the local government office. In practice, however, it is not common or sometimes almost impossible to get approval for many applicant manufacturers because of strict regulations. There have been increasing number of plants in the Capital Region during last several decades, despite the strict regulations. Many of those newly established plants are without formal registration at the local administration office. howerver. These are so called 'unregisterd' plants. Surveyed data and many government official data show that many of unregistered plants have been established in recent years. which indicate that current regulations are no longer effective. The number of unregistered plants are increasing tin the Capital Region because of many locational advantages in the region for plants, particularly those in small scale. Unregistered plants are the source of many problems, such as local water pollution or noise pollution in residential areas. There are also many administration problems, bed\cause they are not registered. The central government has attempted to cure the problems of unregistered plants. For example, the government allowed a unregistered plant to remain at present site for three ydars, if it met certain conditions in three years. However, this program was unsuccessful because many of those plants were not able to meet the concitions. Three times the government renewed the term for those which did not meet conditions since 1989, but it was afraid to be without success. There are many evidences that current policies to control manufacturing plants are not effective. The Capital Region must face mounting problems if ploicies are not reformed soon. This study suggests that the policy of the Capital Regional Planning has to be reoriented to provide more favorable policies for manufacturing plants in the Capital Region than current regulations which is aimed to restrict manufacturing activities. It is time to improve many existing problems in the region through reforms and of current regulations to foster unregistered plants. This study also proposes many smaller-area sub-divisions instead of current three large area sub-regions which is too broad to apply single kind of regulation, or codes. Flexible regulations and codes can be applied to such a small-area sub-divivisions based on location and industrial characteristics of the individual sub-divisions. It is necessary to provide decent industrial environment in the Capital Region, which is best equipped to provide many favorable industrial locational factors in the nation, thus this nation can be further prepared to compete in an inter-national market at an era of globalization in manufacturing.