Exporting Urban Korea?

Abstract

A detailed examination of the "Korean development model" from its urban dimension, evaluating its sociopolitical contexts and implications for international development cooperation.There is an increasing tendency to use the development experience of Asian countries as a reference point for other countries in the Global South. Korea's condensed urbanization and industrialization, accompanied by the expansion of new cities and industrial complexes across the country, have become one such model, even if the fruits of such development may not have been equitably shared across geographies and generations. The chapters in this book critically reassess the Korean urban development experience from regional policy to new town development, demonstrating how these policy experiences were deeply rooted in Korea's socioeconomic environment and discussing what can be learned from them when applying them in other developmental contexts. This book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers in the field of urban studies and developmental studies in general, and Korea's (urban) development experience in particular.

A Collaborative Trans-Regional R&D Strategy for the South Korea Green New Deal to Achieve Future Mobility

“…Rising inequality within countries-that is, between prosperous metropolitan regions and less prosperous regions, and between core areas and peripheral areas-has become not only an economic problem but also a source of social and political instability in most developed and developing nations [12][13][14][15]. Korea is among the most geographically heterogeneous countries, where negative externalities have arisen from a heavily concentrated population in a single region and a drain of talents and resources from elsewhere, generating strong regional inequality [16,17]. The capital region (hereafter CR), defined as the jurisdiction of Seoul, Incheon, and Gyeonggi Province, contributes almost half of the national gross domestic product (GDP) (51.8%) and accounts for a similar share of the national population (50%), with Seoul alone representing 22.2% of the national GDP and 18.8% of the national population in 2019 [18].…”

“…Moreover, public R&D, which should rectify the imbalance in private R&D investment, is also concentrated in Seoul and Daejeon (more than 80% [18]). However, the concentration of core technical personnel in the CR of Korea is even more serious than the imbalance of R&D investment, with the technological workforce continually concentrating in this region over the last 10 years [1,16].…”