• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.131-149
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• 2002

Geography has been defined traditionally as a discipline on regions, that is, as chorography, which means regional geography. Regional geography, which once withered up with the development of positivist geography, has gained recently its vitality. In particular, as social theories have been introduced actively into geography since the 1980s, new methodologies for regional geography have been suggested through a series of debates, for example, on spatiality, locality, restructuring, and post-modernism, though there remain still some important conceptual issues which have not yet settled down. On the other hand. new regional geography has made its development and significance for regional development in the age of the so-called globalization in the reality. That is, new regional geography has been required for a systematic conceptualization of region and for a theoretical consideration on the dynamic change of regions in the process of globalization. Furthermore, an emphasis can be given to geography education for new regional geography in order to understand new strategies for regional development.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.150-160
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• 2002

The purpose of this study is to introduce the new regional geography approaches that have been lively discussed in English speaking countries since 1980s. The discussion of the new regional geography is based on intellectual interchange between geographers and social theorists. The new regional geographers regard a space as a more active thing. A space is not a merely passive container. It is not a outer settings, but a essential dimention of the human being. The new regional geography has been discussed in four perspectives: structuration theory perspective, spatial division of lavour theory perspective, world-systems theory perspective, and post-poststructuralism perspective. The new regional approaches well provide a new direction to regional studies. However, it is so abstracted in concepts for the empirical examinations that it is necessary to introduce a meso-level of concept.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.189-201
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• 2006

The aim of this paper is to examine the development of regional geography (including regional studies) in Germany since 1945 in the context of its traditions and changes. From 1945 to the end of 1960s, in spite of many hies of renovation regional geography has faced critics and fall into a serious crisis. After the 1970s many geographers intensively have searched for the new conception and broadly accepting methodological way of regional geography, and in the advent of 1980s regional geography is regarded as a special form of collecting and presenting spatial informations in terms of the addressee. But in the after-era of german unification and through the new establishment of the Institut for the Regional Geography in Leipzig, a discussion on the research aim and future of regional geography was resumed, and its future direction is open.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.1-24
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• 2016

This paper is to consider trends and issues of regional research in major sub-fields of human geography in Korea, following the previous one which dealt with contexts and general trends of new regional geography in Korea since the 2000s. They include historical and cultural geography on place and landscape, economic geography on industrial districts or agglomerated regions (i.e. clusters) and urban (and social) geography on urban networks and differentiation. Even though researchers in sub-fields have used different terms and concepts to identify region, they are in common to relate specificities of region to general processes such as (de)modernization, (de)industrialization, and globalization, to understand region as social and discursive constitution as well as substantive reality, and to give more attention to socio-spatial networks and relationality than territoriality of regions. These common points seem to reflect the emerging trend of new regional geography, and to get rid of existing traditional concept of region. It is suggested that major tasks for conceptualization of region in future research are to overcome dichotomy of speciality and generality, of substantive reality and discursive constitution, and of territoriality and relationality, and that important issues for empirical research on region include regional synthesis from new perspectives, uneven regional development as relational process in and between regions, and producing practice for alternative regions.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.115-134
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• 1997

We now live in the new era of globalization which implies the functional integration or increase of inter-dependency between internationally dispersed economic activities. As globalization impacts our various activities and daily lives, social sciences, including, geography, attempt to approach social phenomena from a global perspective. From this point of view. new regional geography, which has been articulated in recent social theory since the 1980s, also must adjust to these new world realities. This paper aims to search for a suitable methodology or approach to area study or regional geography in the era of globalization and to suggest the field of area study that Korean geographers should be concerned with in the future. This paper has reviewed the existing various methodologies of regional geography such as the ecological approach, the landscape approach. the areal differentiation approach, the system approach, the structuration theory, the spatial division of labour, and the world-system, which have deviced in the traditional and new regional geography. Peter Taylor's regional geography of world systems among them has an appropriate rationale of area study in the globalization era, because world-systems theory explains well globalization. However the regional geography of world-systems must be revised to become more suitable to the area-study approach in the globalization era. Firstly, the regional geography of world-systems explains that regions(historical regions) are made by general mechanisms of the capitalist world-economy that operate through social, economic, and political agents within regions such as individuals, households, social classes, economic enterprises, states, political movements, and many other organizations. But these mechanisms can also act through other regional agents of geographical location, natural conditions, and cultural characteristics. Therefore, the generating process of regions needs to be explained by locational, natural, and cultural elements in addition to social, economic, and political elements within regions. Secondly, Taylor's world-systems approach does not express composite characteristics of regions, because it focuses on the economic characteristics or position of regions within the world-economy. Regions incorporated into world-economy systems are not only changed economically, but also changed spatially, socially, culturally, and politically. Hence the world-systems approach must try to analyze these composite characteristics and their change of regions. Thirdly, The world-system approach proposed that the geography of regions within world-systems could be divided and analyzed as three regional types at the geographical scale such as international regions, state regions, and intra-state regions. However such a regionalization is usually not identified distinctly, because the geographical range of regions in world-systems shaped by economic boundaries of the general mechanisms of the world-economy is fluid and also occasionally overlaps with other political regions. Hence I propose that the world-systems approach should choose political boundaries of states and local autonomies in addition to economic boundaries for objective regionalization and systematic areal study. The revised regional geography of world-systems that I have suggested in this paper can be more effectively and properly applied to regional geography or area study in the globalization era. Globalization intensifies competition between states and also between local autonomies in the world. Therefore we must make efforts to study such areas or regions through the revised regional geography of world-system.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.357-378
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• 2014

The concern on new regional geography in Korea has emerged in the 1990s under the influence of paradigm shift of Western geography, that is, the withering of positivist geography and the introduction of grand social theories into geography. New regional geography in Korea also seems to have developed in the rapidly changing process of glocalization of capitalism which has accompanied with the transformation toward post-Fordism with high-tech innovation, development of transportation and communication technology with time-space compression, and increasing social and cultural mobility with change of identity. But it can be pointed out that discussion on methodology for regional geography in Korea has been shrunken since the mid 2000s, and there has been relatively little empirical research with synthetic approach to region. But more concern on methodology in terms of place, territory, network, scale, etc. rather than the concept of region itself has increased, and empirical researches on regions in specific fields of human geography have been promoted. It is argued that the traditional distinction between synthetic and analytic approaches seems no longer significant. But geographers need to extend the concept of region in relation to other diverse spatial concepts, and to purse simultaneously structural analysis on glocalization process and practical strategies responding positively to the process.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.1-18
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• 2005

Since the emerging period in !be Greek era, geography bas been defined as an empirical science in which travel and field trip bas been regarded as its major method for acquiring geographical knowledge or discovering geographical facts on the earth surface. In the contemporary geography, however, this kind of empiricism has been reduced to logical positivism which pursues rigid geographical laws, while diverse implications for empiricism (especially, that implied in the mythic imagination) have been ignored. On the other hand, recently a lot of books on trip for exploring regional cultural environments from the local to the global level have been poured out from outside of geography, and place-marketing has gained some attraction as a new method or strategy for regional development This paper is to consider diverse methodological implications of experience through geographical exploration especially hath from the standpoint of empirical geography and of humanistic geography, and the look on methodologically importance and limitations of place-marketing for regional development In conclusions, it is emphasized that those methodologies should be put together for a genuine exploration of regional cultural environment, and that place-marketing should be understood as a movement for rediscovering regional identity.

• 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 association of regional geographers
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.103-116
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• 1995

The purpose of this paper is to explore a brief review of trends in existing geographical research on music and to analyze music by the 5 themes of geography and to explore a variety of classroom techniques which examine song lyrics for their geographic content. The results of this paper are summarized as followed : Firstly, the trends in geographical research on music can be classified into five areas, the first is on spatial diffusion in music, the second on spatial diffusion in music, the third on regional division in music, the fourth on regional characteristics in music, the fifth on pedagogical tools in the teaching of geography. Secondly, music holds numerous possibilities for regional geographical study. The lyrics of music are littered with geographical term through which song writers impart image of culture, the distinct geographical nature of music lyrics gives rise to many geographical question, also, music lyrics gives place its special character. The results of analyses by the 5 themes of geography indicate that music are useful to learning of regional geography. The application of music to learning regional geography attracts much attentions. In the respect of importance of learning new regional geography, and in the respect of adapting globalization have to be focused on this subject.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.329-345
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• 1996

The purposes of this study are to review research trends of applied geography field, to retrospect geographical works done by Korean geographers in applied geography, and to prospect the future of applied geography. We are in the period where societal problems such as energy, transportation, pollution, environment, health care, and many others, require careful consideration and need throughout strategies for solution. Most societal problems have some geographical dimensions. Because these problems are geographic in nature, there is an obvious implication that geography as a discipline has something to offer in their solutions. In fact, most geographic problems are best presented and analyzed through the applications of geographic theories, concepts and tools. Applied geography is a branch of general geography. It relies on the scientific methods and uses the principles and methods of pure geography. However applied geography is different in that it analyzes and evaluates real world action and planning and seeks to implement and manipulate environmental and spatial realities. Thus, geographic theories and other social theories that have geographic dimensions are fundamental to applied geography. Applied geography has a short history as theme in Korean geography. During the last two decades. Korea achieved remarkable economic growth. We have also encountered widening regional disparity, housing shortage of larger cities, transportation congestion, environmental pollution and many other problems. Applied geographers have tried to analyze and solve such spatial problems during the last 30 years. The research trend of Korean applied geography can be subdivided into 5 categories: (1) land use analysis and efficient utilization, (2) national physical development and planning. (3) regional development and regional planning, (4) tourism and location-allocation, transportation planning. Still the overconcentration of Seoul metropolitan region and unbalanced regional development are perceived to be the serious spatial problems which may induce more works to solve these problems. In Korea new emphasis has to be given to some professional training and experimental learning, including methodology, field techniques data management, statistical analysis, cartography, GIS, and other tools, as applicable and beneficial to problem solving in real world. The growth of applied geography depends on new insights and purposed solutions of future applied geographers in Korea. Applied geographers will contribute to the creation of future Korean geographies.