• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.51 no.5
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• pp.613-632
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• 2016

The recent diagnosis of the Anthropocene challenges public understanding of nature as a pure and singular entity removed from society, as the diagnosis confirms the earth-changing force of humans. In geography, the nature-society divide has been critically interrogated long before the diagnosis of the Anthropocene, developing several ways of theorizing nature-society relations. This paper introduces a new frontier for such theoretical endeavors: more-than-human geography. Inspired by the material and performative turn in geography and the social sciences around the 2000s, more-than-human geographers have sought to re-engage with the livingness of the world in the study of nature-society relations. Drawing on actor-network theory, non-representational theory (NRT) and vitalism, they have developed innovative ways of thinking about and relating to nature through the key concepts of 'nonhuman agency' and 'affect'. While more-than-human geography has been extensively debated and developed in recent Euro-American scholarship on cultural and economic geography, it has so far received limited attention in Korean geographical studies on nature. This paper aims to address this gap by discussing the key concepts and seminal work of more-than-human geography. I first outline four theoretical strands through which nature-society relations are perceived in geography. I then offer an overview of more-than-human geography, discussing its theoretical foundations and considering ontologies, epistemologies, politics and ethics associated with nature-society relations. Then, I compare more-than-human geography with political ecology, which is the mainstream critical approach in contemporary environmental social sciences. I would argue that more-than-human geography further challenges and develops political ecology through its heightened attention to the affective capacity of nonhumans and the methodological ethos of doing a careful political ecology. I conclude by reflecting on the implications of more-than-human geography for Korean studies on nature-society relations.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.364-388
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• 1995

Even though rarely recognized as a separate approach, the institutional approach in geography is defined as an attempt to seek an explanation of the phenomena of geographical interest through focusing on the effects of institutional structure and actions. It can provide interdisciplinary links with other works and can offer complementary explanations for geographical interests. The concerns for institutions in geography can be found in early studies, the study of the state, the managerial approach, and the regulation approach. The Korean financial systems can provide good examples to apply institutional concepts into creating spatial outcomes, as it has been regarded as a useful tool to promote Korean economic development. Behind the current spatial pattern of financial systems, four different stages of institutional changes are identified in Korea. Each stage has different institutional features reflecting unique spatial implication.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.184-198
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• 2002

Since the mid-1980s there has been an intensive debate on a regional geography in abroad, and its renaissance has been widely expressed. Under the influences of these academic circumstances, many Korean scholars have tried to introduce this trend and at the same time to propose new development lines of the Korean geography with a critical perspective. However, the empirical study of Korean regional geography including area studies is characterized by a quantitative deficit on the one hand and by its peripheral position on the other. The main reasons of this marginalization of Korean regional geography that we can find include a undifferentiated import of new systematic/nomothetic geography in the 1960s and 1970s, a historical interruption with a tradition of old Korean geography, and the practical difficulties of regional geographical approach itself. Now we face with the fundamental changes including globalization/regionalization and an increasing actual demand for the information on different scales of space and place. In order to cope with these challenges, we inevitably need to revitalize various forms and modem characteristics of regional geographical approaches and try to reexamine the basic concepts, methods, and frameworks of regional geography.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.620-632
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• 2004

This paper tries to examine differences between geography classes taught by majored and non-majored teacher and to find problems in the latter case, tv observing four middle school geography classes in Seoul, from April to May 2003. The observation was fecund on (1) organization of a class (2) dialogue between teacher and students (3) strategy of explanation. In addition, the author conducted personal interviews with social studies teachers in the schools where the observations were made. The analyses of the observed classes were made by micro-ethnographic research method. Major findings of the observation and analysis are as follows. First, the transition from one topic to another topic was not smooth in the case of non-majored teacher class. Second, the questions that the non-majored teacher posed in the classroom played less significant role in keeping up the class in an organized fashion than those that the majored teacher posed. Third, the non-majored teacher focused on the concepts, terms and contents appeared in the textbook and simply tried to explain them, whereas the majored teacher demonstrated teaching methods such as comparing and contrasting cases to provide students with a more dynamic and comprehensive understanding on the topic they teamed. Fourth, the non-majored teacher used maps less frequently and less actively than the majored teacher. In addition, although the non-majored teachers are well aware of their problems in the class as a non-majored teacher, they think that the problems are inevitable in a given curriculum structure of social studies in Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.11-25
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• 2010

Green Growth was declared as a national development agenda in 2008. There are many contributing concepts and factors in the process of molding the agenda, such as climate change, sustainable development, globalization, the so-called 747 campaign pledges by President Lee in 2007, and the hunger for economic growth in Asia and the Pacific. Green Growth is rather growth-oriented and pays less attention to environmental conservation and social justice. Green Development would fit better as the name of the agenda, dealing with the weaknesses of Green Growth. Climate change itself is a testing ground for geographic knowledges, whose demand is growing rapidly. The contemporary issue increasingly bears complexity that Earth System Science and Sustainability Science have emerged as a research and applications program. Geography is widely recognized as a portal to these programs, where inter- and trans-disciplinary studies are required. Regional potentials should be evaluated from a holistic view so that proper development goals are chosen. Different development trajectory should be taken, depending on the amount of potential a region bears. Material loop should be closed for environmentally sound regions. Green way of life is essential for low carbon society. In the circumstances of climate change in Korean Peninsula and needing of energy efficiency, geographic insight or imagination is urgent for Green Development.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.1-18
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• 2013

The mountain region in Korea has been known as 70% of total area and most Korean people have recognized Korea as the mountainous country. Those concepts are thought to be mislead by the definition of the Korea Forest Service for the mountain region. According to KFS's definition based on the land-use, the forest and farmland at the low altitude are also included in the mountain region. In this study, firstly, the geomorphological mountain region is extracted according to the definition of Kapos et al. (2000). The rates of mountain region in S. Korea, N. Korea, Korea Peninsular are 31%, 51%, 42% respectively. And the rates between mountain area and non-mountain area in the 300-1000m and 1000-2500m intervals are considerably different due to the existence of plateaus such as high-level plain surfaces. Secondly, using the overlay analysis in GIS, the distribution of mountain areas are compared with that of order-mountains' areas defined by Qui and SON (2010). Even in case of the 5th order, the highest order mountains, the hill & plain and non-mountain areas are included in that mountain area. It is possible to suggest that the definition of the KFS is completely different from the academic, realistic and epistemic definition for mountain area, and the geomorphological definition of mountain area is useful to classify the mountain area according to the its physical properties. Therefore, it would be expected that the definition contributes the development of methodologies on the scientific management of mountain area in future.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.949-969
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to analyze the share of global citizenship education in the 2009 Revised Social Studies (geography area) School Curriculum of the Republic of Korea. I selected the achievement standards of the geography domain in the fifth and sixth grades as the subjects of analysis. The chosen subjects were examined using content analysis: I used KrKwic, a Korean language content analysis tool, to analyze the content and drew a semantic network of the analysis results using UciNet/NetDraw. I found that the geography domain of the 2009 Revised Primary School Curriculum included the concepts of and factors of global citizenship education. However, global citizenship education did not account for a major portion of the curriculum, and the curriculum achievement standards were noticeably nation-state centered. Global citizenship education factors were not closely associated with to other related factors in fact, they even revealed a isolated pattern. These findings suggest that the inclusion of global citizenship education in primary geography education is limited, because the connections between global citizenship education and related contents, such as the environment, sustainable development, conflict, and cooperation, are probably impeded. Globalization accompanies the transformation of territories, identities, and the relations between nation-states and the world, although nation-states continue to play a significant role in the globalized worlds. Therefore global citizenship education, a educational trend focusing on the global community, is particularly important and is required in the geography curriculum of the global era. I expect that the examination undertaken in this study to contribute to future curriculum revisions regarding globalizatin and global citizenship.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.534-553
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• 2011

Analogical thinking is a problem-solving strategy to use a familiar problem (or base analog) to solve a novel problem of the same type (the target problem). The purpose of this study is to provide new insight into geography teaching and learning by connecting cognitive science research on analogical thinking with issues of geography education and suggest that teaching with analogies can be a productive instructional strategy for geography. In this study, using the various examples of analogical thinking used in geography we defined analogical thinking, addressed the theoretical models on analogical transfer, and discussed conditions that make an effective analogical transfer. The major research findings include the following: a) the spatial analogy, indicating skills to find places that may be far apart but have similar locations, and therefore have other similar conditions and/or connections, can provide a useful way to design contents for place learning; b) representational transfer, specifying a common representation for two problems, can play a key role in solving geographic problems requiring data visualization and spatialization processes; and c) either asking learners to compare/analyze similar examples sharing common structure or providing them examples bridging the gap between concrete, real-life phenomena and the ideas and models can contribute to learning in geographic concepts and skills. The spatial analogy requiring both geographic content knowledge and visual/spatial thinking has the potential to become a content-specific problem-solving strategy. We ended with recommendations for future research on analogy that is important in geography education.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.718-742
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• 2014

The capitalist economic process of glocalization and development of transportation and communication technology have led us to the significance of network city as well as concepts of global city, megacity region, etc. Network city theory pursues development of both individual cities and of the region of those cities through strengthening of mutual connectivity among them with specialized industries. On the basis of network city theory, this paper is to analyze specialized industries of cities and connectivity among them in the Youngnam region in S. Korea. It uses the methods of locational quotient, locational Gini coefficient, and shift-share method to analyze specialized industries of cities, and correspondence analysis, global and local Moran's I to examine connectivity among cities. As results, it can be identified that each city in the Youngnam region has its own specialized industries different from each others, but it seems not easy to grasp the overall extent of connectivity among them, partly because of the limitations of applied analysis methods and partly because of a lack of connectivity among cities themselves.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.51 no.5
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• pp.667-690
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• 2016

This paper reviews the evolution process of global production network(GPN) discourse, from its origin to the recent theorization, namely GPN 2.0. In so doing, the discursive formation of global production networks is introduced in comparison with a competing discourse global commodity/value chains, with particular attention to conceptual and analytical lacunae in the latter. This article also outlines how the global production network perspective has become a useful discursive and practical tool that allows the examination of the nexus of global economy, transnational corporations, and regional development. Subsequently, a theoretical dearth in the approach is discussed in reference to key critiques, and in this context Yeung and Coe's recent theorization GPN 2.0, which is centered on casual mechanisms and network configurations is reviewed. This paper suggests that the theory adequately addresses the problem of casuality lacking in its precedented conceptual framework, and that it helps exploring the formation and evolution processes of varied production networks(including intrafirm coordination, interfirm control, strategic partnership, and extrafirm bargaining) in connection with competitive dynamics and risky environments. As a result of the theorization, the difference between GPN and the chain approaches has become more apparent, and the idea of extrafirm bargaining is particularly important in the differentiation. Extrafirm bargaining is seen to be a comprehensive networking form inclusive of such GPN 1.0 analytical concepts as value, embeddeness, and power, and research attentive to, and engaging with, the extrafirm networks is expected to help transcending the chain governance approaches' analytical excess of interfirm linkages and industry-centeredness.