• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.137-165
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• 1994

Structural adjustment of industry (or industrial restructuring) seems to be inherent in the process of capitalist economic development, which tends to be proceeded with shifts from one stage to another in order to overcome structural crises generated in each stage. The structural adjustment of industry is necessarily accompanied with regional restructuring, since it is not only projected on spece, but also mediated by space. Such a restructuring necessitates industrial and uneven regional devlopment through which capital can seek excessive profits over the rate of socio-spatial average. The industrial restructuring and uneven regional development in the 1980s in Korea can be seen as a process in which capital attempted with a strong support of the govenment to overcome the crises in the end of 1970s and hence to go on rapid economic growth. In this process, capital, especially monopoly capital concentrated into few conglomerates, pursued both extensive expansion and intensive development of industry simultaneously. In results, the Korean economy could eliminate some of peripheral characters and maturate the Fordist accumulation system. The extensive expansion of the Korean industry in the 1980s was stimulated mainly through the enlargement and adjustment of investment for equipment facilities which was planned to exclude or rationalize traditional light industries on some places, and to continue rapid growth of key heavy-chemical industries, especially of fabricated metal industry, on other places. In this process, keeping mainly the existing developmental axis which polarized the Seoul Metroplitan region and the Southeast region in Korea, the enhancing spatial mobiiity of capital and the further differentiating division of labour enforced a tendency of concentration of all types of industry in the Seoul Metropolitan region, and at the same time provoked the diffusion of some industries over Jeolla and Chungchong regions in a considerable extent. The intensive development of industriai structure in the 1980s was pursued through the strategic encouragement of subcontracting small firms mainly which produced assembling components, the technical enhancement and factory (semi-) automation, and the enrichment of service industries for estate management, finance, distribution and retailing which supported and complemented the production of goods. In this process, enabling capital to extend and elaborate its domination over space through the reorganization of regulating systems, the Fordist division of labour generated a socio-spatial hierarchy in the nation-wide scale that characterized: the Seoul Metropolitan region as an overmaturated (or overarching) Fordist region performing the conceptive functions of management, research and development, in which all types of industry (including service industries) tended to be reconcentrated; Kyungsang region as a maturated Fordist region with excutive branches of large conglomerates and with subcontracting firms around them which produced standardized products through the automized production processes in secialized Fordist industries or rationalized traditional industries; and Jeolla and Chungchong regions as newly devloping Fordist regions with newly migrated branches and some subcontracting small firms-in relatively older Fordist industries or partly rationalized traditional industries. From these analyses, it can be argued that the structural adjustment of the Korean industry in the 1980s, which had carried out both through the extensive expansion and the intensive deveiopment, strengthened further uneven regional development process, even though it appears to have reduced apparently the economic and regional disparity by balancing numerically large and small firms and by extending the Fordist industrial space nation-wideiy. And it seems more persuasive to see that the Korean industrial structure in the 1980s maturated the Fordist system of accumulation, but not yet transformed towards the post-Fordist (or the so-called flexible) accumulation system, even though the Korean economy in the 1990s seems to be under a pressure of restructuring towards the latter system.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.40 no.4 s.109
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• pp.402-415
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• 2005

This study inquired the features of restructuring of shipbuilding industry and structure of community cooperation. The Sinhyeon-eup region has experienced rapid changes as a large shipyard location. Prior to Korea, Japan has developed the cooperation of company-community-residents relationships and the reorganization of location systems through division and accumulation system. The restructuring of shipbuilding industry in Korea have focused on the improvement of business environment. So they have not been efficiently settled in the accumulation and the cooperation structure between company and region. Japan established the organic cooperation structure of company and community before the large restructuring, while the shipbuilding industry city of our country commenced it with the crisis of community by the restructuring. In the Sinhyeon-eup region, The connecting ring among the production sections of a core company in center is established. However the structure of community cooperation is weak. The structure of community cooperation as local governance consist of company, pubic institution, local residents, and regional expert. This structure can be a rational channel in which it can not only strengthen the cohesion of the community, but also solve the present questions of the industrial city.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.358-376
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• 2011

This study investigated the agglomeration process of the towel industry in the Daejeon and Chungcheong regions, which are located in the mid-western part of South Korea, focusing in particular on industrial restructuring. Moreover, it aimed to identify the spatial features of the towel industry by analyzing the subcontracting linkages and to discover the implications of such linkages on government policy. The towel industry in the Daejeon and Chungcheong regions began to grow from the end of the Korean War when textile technicians from North Korea settled down in this area, spreading their techniques and know-how within the region. Later, in the 1980s, the industry underwent restructuring when companies within the region strengthened their linkages through corporate specialization based on the concept of social division of labor. Accordingly, the industrial linkages and linkage spaces, as well as characteristics of the industry, should all be considered to develop and implement policies for the regions of the towel industry.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.160-197
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• 1996

The purpose of this study is to review research trends and issues of economic geography in Korea for the last fifty years by sub-fields of agricultural geography, industrial geography, commercial and service geography, and transportation geography. Research in Korean economic geography has progressed significantly in terms of the scope and the number of papers published during the last a half a century. Agricultural geography was a leading field of economic geography in Korea before mid-1970s. Since the mid-1970s, however, agricultural geography has turned over the leading role in economic geography to industrial geography. Classification and structure of agricultural region has been the most popular research theme in Korea, even though diverse topics has been dealt in the research of agricultulal geography in Korea during the last fifty years. In recent years, emphasis is given to study on the dynamics of agricultural region and regional differentiation of part-time farming. It is suggested that the future issues of research in agricultural geography in Korea are agricultural restructuring and changes in agricultural space under the WTO system, changes in rural area and agricultural region with the progress of informatization, changes in agricultural structures and rural society by the increase of part-time farming, governments agricultulal policy and its impacts, competitive advantages of Korean agricultulal products, and environmental impacts of agricultural restructuring. Research in industrial geography has remarkably progressed since the 1980s. Locational changes, regional industrial structure and formation of industrial region were the major topics of interest in the research of industrial geography in Korea before 1980. Since the early 1980s, in addition to the topics which were interested in before 1980, changes of industrial organization and industrial location, changes of production systems and industrial space development of high technology industries and science parks, industrial restructuring and regional economy, foreign direct investments, industrial linkages and industrial districts, and industrial policy and regional development have been the major research themes of industrial geography in Korea. Considerable number of papers has been published both in Korean journals and in foreign journals during this period. Considering global changes in the organization of industrial space, future research should be more focused on firms strategy for regaining competitive advantages, local and global perspectives of industry, industry and environmental changes, in addition to the topics which have been dealt in recent years. Research in commercial and service geography and transportation geography was negligible in Korea before the late 1970s. These two sub-fields in economic geography have begun to develop since 1980s. Periodic markets, structure of commercial area, and distribution of products were the major topics of interest in the 1980s in the commercial and service geography in Korea. In the 1990s, however reserch in producer services has been active with growth of producer services in Korean economy. It is suggested that regional changes with progress of informatization and technology, changes of international trade and regional changes, development of efficient distribution system, role of producer services in regional development, and network of producer services are the major issues to be studied in the future in the field of commercial and service geography in Korea. Commuting, distribution of products, and transportation networks have been the major topics of research in transportation geography in Korea. Diverse quantitative techniques have been applied in the most of the researches in transportation geography. It is required that future studies in transportation geography should also focus on societal and behavioral issues, policy issues regional impacts of new transportation facilities, an analysis of transportation system at the global or international level. Since the 1980s economic geography in Korea has considerably progressed with publication of papers and books. The progress can be regarded as successful in quantitative aspect, but not in quantitative aspects. For the development of Korean economic geography in both quantitative and qualitative aspects, it is necessary to promote international collaborative researches and interdisciplinary cooperations. Attention should also be given to the research on changes in competitive advantages and economic restructuring, changes of economic space with the development of high technology and the progress of informatization. economic development and culture. and foreign regional studies.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.597-612
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• 2013

The purpose of this paper is to examine the building process of industrial competitiveness of the Korean cosmetics industry in the global production network. For this study, cosmetics industry in Korea is selected as a research subject. Secondary data and the Korea Health Industry Statistics are analyzed to examine the overall changes of the cosmetics firms under the changes of global economy overtime. In-depth interviews of the case firms are also conducted to understand the old and new corporate strategies which locate with the sustainability and competitive advantages under an uncertain environment. As a result of the restructuring processes, the Korea cosmetics industry has upgraded its position as an innovative power in the world cosmetics industry. In addition, during the restructuring processes, cosmetics industry is overwhelmingly concentrated in the Capital Region, reflecting intensification of agglomeration economies.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.11-32
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• 1998

Globalization of economy has a significant impact on the organization of economic Space. This paper examines the concepts of globalization and localization, major trends of the changes in the organization of economic space in the Pacific rim, and the major processes of the changes. Intra-regional trade and foreign direct investments have increased considerably in the Pacific region with the progress of globalization during the last decade. Due to the Progress of globalization of economy in the Pacific rim, some growth triangles have extended their agglomeration area beyond the national boundaries and several new industrial districts have developed. The reorganization of the economic space in the Pacific rim has been resulted from industrial restructuring of NIEs, spatial division of labor along the commodity chains, and the formation of industrial networks within the region. The ‘cooperative network strategy’has been suggested to minimize the negative effects of glocalization and for the sustainable development in the Pacific rim.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.17-34
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• 2001

This paper is to analyze how firms in a large firm-led industrial city have carried out the restructuring in the face of radical shifts, with focus on the strategy and the restructuring of firms in Ulsan, a typical industrial district in Korea that is specialized in heavy & chemical industry. It has been well known that the local economy has been led by a small number of large firms, including affiliates of chaebol, and its industrial structure has also been characterised as a clear dichotomy between large firms as a customer and small and medium-size firms as a supplier, which can be called not horizontal but vertical relations. It can identify some tendencies, however, that local companies have been rather dynamically changing in response to increasingly turbulent environment since the Asian crisis. Some are radical, but some incremental. These can be summarized in four distinctive but interlinked ways. First, more than half of local companies surveyed have attempted to change their production systems, mainly from the fordist mass production towards the flexible mass production, seeking both economies of scale and scope. Second, local firms have vigorously continued to reorganize the boundary of the production and the organization, by specializing products and focusing on the core competence in order to save costs and cope with radically changing customer demands in a flexible way. Third, there have been various strategies for the organizational innovation such as the introduction of team organization, the boundary blurring between the managerial and production workers and the intra-firm spin-offs, so as to improve managerial efficiency and competence in the use of internal labour market. Finally, they have tried to be more sensitive to the market and customers. These tendencies seem to be increasingly critical to sustain their competitiveness. To do so, they tend to focus increasingly not only on the competing via the product quality rather than through price, but also to seek to diversify the market and customer firms beyond national boundary.

• Asian Journal of Innovation and Policy
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.75-100
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• 2023

Over the past few decades, globalization has been shifting economic power upward to transnational actors on the one hand, and downward to subnational or regional spaces on the other. This phenomenon has resulted in the centrality of territorially delimited subnational regions acting as critical loci of economic governance within a complex and globally distributed value chain of trade and service flows. Within this broader context of industrial restructuring are economic regions that span national borders in their collective assets. The paper focuses on investigating the economic competitiveness and productivity of cross-border (or binational) economic regions. Using the conceptual framework of economic clusters, an econometric model that measures proxies of geographic proximity of firms in the life sciences cluster, and a new binational economic model, the paper examines the key characteristics, potentials and constraints of economic competitiveness and productivity in a cross-border region comprising counties in Western New York and regional municipalities in Southern Ontario. The findings demonstrate the direct and indirect benefits of closer cross-border economic cooperation. The paper then concludes with some policy observations about leveraging cross-border economic clusters for strategic industrial cooperation.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.7
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• pp.463-485
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• 2001

Recently junior colleges in Korea have been working to meet changes in industrial and educational surroundings by establishing new departments, integrating and abolishing existing ones, or adjusting departmental quotas. These endeavors need to be based on an analysis of industrial policies, both national and international, and of the industrial trend of the region in which the particular college is located. They also need to take into consideration change in educational policies and the direction of the college's specialization. This study aims to provide some foundation materials for these endeavors. As a result, it has considered changes in industrial and educational surroundings and analyzed the whole spectrum of departments existing at Korean junior colleges, with a focus on business-related ones. In the course it has taken a look at the division system, presently a hot issue regarding the restructuring of the colleges. To summarize, each college offers departments, having taken into consideration its regional, industrial, and educational environments. The result of this study may be utilized by colleges when they establish new departments, integrate and abolish existing ones, and adjust departmental quotas. When they utilize the result, the colleges are advised to consider changes in the structure of industries and manpower, those in educational policies, and the direction of their specialization.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.187-207
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• 2002

This study investigates the wage determination process of regional labor markets in order to understand the regional dimension of labor market processes in Korean metropolitan cities. Since the financial crisis in late 1997, the interplay between labor market restructuring such as unemployment and skill polarization and income disparity has been shaped by the labor market process in the metropolitan cities. This is also closely related to the fact that both industrial restructuring and expanding information technologies in the metropolitan region have reshaped the labor demand structure and finally resulted in structural unemployment due to skill mismatch and spatial mismatch and wage inequality across different occupations. In addition, since wage determination process clearly has a regional dimension, wage determination and its influence on income profile in a certain regional labor market need to be understood by investigating its labor market characteristics including labor supply and demand structure, industrial changes, changing unemployment, etc. This is why labor market policy as a regional policy needs to be redefined and it can be much enhanced by geographical investigation on regional labor market.