• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.297-317
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• 1994

This study demonstrates the changes in the spatial organization of Korea by the construction of Seoul-Pusan railroad. This Seoul-Pusan line, which is the most important one in Korea was constructed in 1905. The original plan of the line was selected to cross the main traditional roads to control the entire Korean peninsular and to mobilize the Korean commercial potentials. It was the line to exploit the staples and to expand the Japanese market in Korea. In accordance with the contracts between Japan and Korean government, Korean government had to supply the lands for railroad, office, and service facilities. That was one of the important reasons that Korean government had been broken down. The main findings of this study are as follows: 1. The Seoul-Pusan railroad line was constructed Japanese colonial policy which emphasized three main purposes; the first was to reorganize the economic space and to collapse the traditional Korean markets for Japanese ruling, and the second was to find out the military supply routes, and the third was to search for the transcontinental line for China and Siberia. As the results, the old Korean pedestrian routes, which were the Eastern, the mid, the westren, and the Samnam route lost their functions. 2. Japanese requested for Korean government usually ten times of wider space for the site of stations than the needed one. The land was expropriated, and constructed the new centers aparted from the original Korean towns. In this process Japanese got the most developmental and windfall profits. The newly constructed centers were for Japanese immigration and the town service facilities which would be used to control the Korean financial market. At last, they easily converted the Korean spatial economy into Japanese colonial one, which made to reinforce the sphere of Seoul-Pusan line. 3. Japanese planned the stations as the central points in Korea. So the railroad stations were located apart from the centers of towns, to avoid the Korean resistances, and to maximize their profits. The mean distance from staiton to 'the town center is about 1km while the Japanese case is 0.6km. 4. The pattern of present Korean railroads is not the 'X type'. Because the Honam line is not the trunk one. So, we could call the Korean railroad pattern as the 'Ip(Chinese character 入) type' . The operational effects of Seoul-Pusan line brought out the concentration of the national economy to this line as Japanese planned. And the polorization had occurred between this line and the other parts of Korea. For twenty years (1910-1930), the transported freights were increased about 5 times. In 1930, the total freight of Seoul-Pusan line became 2, 010, 444 metric tons. If we examine this process, the underconstructing Seoul-Pusan express electric railroad should avoid adjacent this line to reduce the regional and ecological imbalance. 5. The forms of centers on the Seoul-Pusan line were classified into six types in relation to station, town center, and built-up area; the compact (integrated) type, the elongated one, the splited (independent) one, the absorbed one, the consolidated one, and the declined one. All types of these towns might be developed in accordance with the centrality, railroad function, and the other transportational functions. 6. The Seoul-Pusan line plays the most important role among Korean railroads but the ratio of passenger and freight become lower because the effiects of other inaugurated railoads the different transportation modes such as trucks and cars would be got more merits in competition. 7. The results of cluster analyses on the cities of railroad stations showed the rudimentary urban systems in 1910 and 1930. In 1930, the cities were classified into three groups; the group of small cites, the intermediate (developing) city-group, and the special city-group. In 1930s the spatial organization and urban system of Korea were similar to the present ones. We call appreciate that these were the effects of the Seoul-Pusan line.