• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.211-222
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• 2007

This paper aims to evaluate the new regional development policy which is entirely focused on the lagging rural regions in Korea. The new regional development, called the shin-hwal-ryuk policy is to reflect the radical change in the idea and philosophy of rural development. Although traditional rural development policies were top-down-based and physical infrastructure-centered, the new rural development policy idea is based on bottom-up and soft infrastructure which is related to the promotion of regional innovation capacities. However, it is revealed that the new rural policy involves a variety of problems in the process of establishing and making progress the policy plan in a local level. In the operating process of the policy plan, the central government has shown too quick-tempered for achieving visible outcomes, while many of local government suffer from the lacks of professional capabilities to carry out the plan. I see that as a result of the mixture of these problems the new policy is regarded as 'passively localized process' by the central government rather than 'actively localizing process' by the region for building regional innovation capacity.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.360-377
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• 2016

Since after the 1986 economic reform policy(Doi Moi), the central highland in Vietnam has transformed into one of the largest coffee producing areas. The transformation had been supported by mass migration of ethnic Kinhs from the coastal lowland. It did not take long for the Kinh migrants to be the ethnic majority in the region. Meanwhile the growth of coffee industry entailed in socio-economic disparity, specially between Kinh migrants and native ethnic minorities. The disparity has becomed obvious not only between coffee farming Kinhs and non-coffee farming ethnic minorities but also between coffee farming Kinhs and ehtnic minorities. The previous literatures highlight the lack of human and social capital and the lagging modernization in ethnic minority societies. However, they fall short in showing the explicit processes why ethnic minority coffee farmers earn less than ethnic majority counterparts. With a case study of Dak Lak province, this research attempts to show the reason why there is income gap between Kinh and ethnic minority Ede coffee farmers by comparing their ways of producing coffee and selling their products. The results show that Ede's land productivity is significantly lower than Kinh's. It is because Ede farmers use less fertilizer due to the shortage of the capital. Also they often get into debt for coffee production and should pay it back right after the harvest. It deprives them of chance to raise earning by selling the coffee beans at a higher price.