• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.420-450
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• 2022

Texas has recently emerged as a phenomenal industrial destination, which attracts headquarters, production facilities, and/or regional centers of global corporations including Tesla and Samsung. Known as "Texit", this trend of corporate investment to Texas has concentrated in highly developed industrial clusters (such as Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio) since the early 2000s. Against this background, this paper examines sectoral and geographical characteristics of those clusters, and investigates associated state initiatives that have been introduced and implemented. As a result, key policy measures in the state are found to be aligned to free-market liberalism, diversified incentives, and regional specialization. Unlike Silicon Valley where Bohemian liberalism engendered vibrant entrepreneurship and innovative start-up formation, it is the strong state government that leads industrial cluster upgrading in Texas, while successfully harnessing lower income taxes and deregulation, affordable land and infrastructure, and quality higher education and human capital as regional assets for attracting inward investment.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.397-419
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• 2022

Smart agriculture has emerged to be a solution to the global food crisis and a new growth engine in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The purpose of this study is to reveal the spatiality of smart agriculture by analyzing smart agriculture policies in major countries and examining how major's agricultural knowledge and experience are expressed in specific agricultural environment. I selected China, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States as representative examples. In the analysis of agricultural policy, the direction, governance and main areas and technologies were focused. As a result, it is found both standardization strategy and the localization strategy work at the same time. Standardization strategies decontextualize technologies and policies from the economic, social, cultural, and ecological contexts of region. The regionalization strategy builds a smart agricultural model for each country with reflecting geographical characteristics. This study could be for facilitating further researches on geographies of agricultural technology and agricultural knowledge production.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.399-416
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• 2016

The main aim of the research attempts to identify value relations appropriated and realized in the coffee frontier of Vietnam by investigating the ways in which it is integrated into coffee global value chains driven by multinational companies, and to provide some implications of the integration of the frontier into sustainable coffee global value chains for creating shared value in Dak Lak, Vietnam. Recently Dak Lak has gone through the transition of value relations from exploitative value chains based upon conventional coffee production into shared value chains relied upon the production of sustainable or certified coffee in Dak Lak. The transition has been expected to result in sustainability in the creation of value by enhancing regional competitive advantages and regional bargaining power in global value chains driven by multinational companies. However, the reality has shown the intensification of hierarchical profits allocation among stakeholders such as farmer, middlemen, and multinational companies in the region. The main reasons for this could be found in two perspectives. Firstly, the formation of exclusive relations among farmers, middlemen, and processors has led to stakeholders to secure market, but resulted in the intensification of hierarchy among them in global value chain, because multinational companies could control indirectly over the farming system through exclusive middlemen. Secondly, social and ecological costs imputed by multinational companies to coffee farmers in the name of creating shared value has deteriorated the economic profits of stakeholders such as farmers and middlemen. As a result, it has led to the configuration of systematically hierarchical and subordinated global value chain in Dak Lak.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.44 no.5
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• pp.634-646
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• 2009

This paper critically examines cluster dynamics and development in a multi-scalar approach, criticizing both the argument overemphasizing local networks and endogenous development for regional development and the contention highlighting global networks and the role of global players. We argue that state policies, exogenous and direct, play a significant part in cluster dynamics and development especially in the case of Korea where the state government's strong policies have led to rapid industrialization. We analyze multi-scalar factors, especially the government policies at a national level, in the development paths of the three cases including Ulsan automobile cluster, Daedeok research cluster, and Dongdaemun fashion cluster.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.51-64
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to present a method for quantitative analysis of flooding at the flood plain in an ungauged area using satellite rainfall and global geographic data. For this, flooding of the Tumen/Namyang area in the Duman-gang(Riv.) was simulated and the flood conditions were quantitatively analyzed. The IMERG data, a rainfall data derived from satellite images, was used as rainfall data. The GRM model was applied to the watershed runoff simulation, and the G2D model was applied to the flooding simulation of the Tumen/Namyang area. Flood event caused by Typhoon Lionrock in August 2016 was applied. Recorded peak discharge of the Tumen/Namyang region was used to verify the runoff simulation results. To verify the result of the inundation simulation, the flood situation collected through field survey and satellite image data before and after the flood were used. The peak flow rates by the runoff simulation and flood record were 7,639㎥/s and 7,630㎥/s, respectively, with a relative error of about 0.1%. In the flood simulation, the results were similar to the flooding ranges identified in the survey data and satellite images. And the changes of flooding depth and flooding time in the flood plain in Tumen/Namyang area could also be assessed. The methods and results of this study will be useful for the quantitative assessment of floods in the ungauged areas.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.209-228
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to analyze the changes in trade and industry of Korea and suggest implications from the perspective of global value chains following the spread of COVID-19. To this end, products for prevention of epidemics which is directly related to COVID-19 and IT industries with high GVC participation were analyzed. Due to the spread of COVID-19, the variation in import and export of products for prevention of epidemics was large. In the case of masks, import and export of final goods changed drastically, but the change in intermediate goods was not significant relatively. Korea's IT industry has been differentiated according to major trading partners amid overall changes in GVCs which is summarized as higher forward participation and lower backward participation. While no particular change resulted from COVID-19 has yet been made directly, the need for diversification strategies should be taken into account at a time when the production links with China and Vietnam are close and the dependence on trade with these countries is high. The COVID-19 is still in progress, requiring corporate strategies and policy efforts to respond to changes in GVCs in the post-COVID-19 era.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.121-136
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• 2017

In this paper, using trade data of 57 HS 4 digit based agricultural and food(agro-food) products among 47 countries during 2005 to 2014, the international competitiveness and trade structure have been analyzed from the context of global networks employing the methods of social network analysis. Firstly, the differences in the network structure by agricultural products have been revealed. The number of disconnected groups was significantly lager in order of vegetables, fruits and processed foods. Secondly, the differences in the community structure by agricultural and food products have been also revealed. That is to say, for some commodities, the community structure has been changed dynamically, on the other hand, there are some agricultural products that have not changed its community structure despite the increasing trends of trade volume. Thirdly, even though the international competitiveness of Korea's agricultural products was still very limited in the sense that only 26 items have been included in the top3 network of 57 agricultural products, there has been possibilities of the increasing patterns of the competitiveness.

• 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 Korean Geographical Society
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.56-76
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to clarify the global commodity chains of the grafted cactus of Umseong region. The major findings of this study are as follows. Buying materials for cultivating the grafted cactus is based on the intra-Umseong local network. In addition, exporting grafted cactus using cheaper labor force means spatial division of labor from semi-periphery region to core region in terms of Wallerstein's world system theory. It is thought that buyer-driven commodity chains of farm products profit by division of labor caused by a sales network of the grafted cactus. And such situation means that high quality of the grafted cactus in Umseong maintains the spatial continuity by commodity chains.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.147-159
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• 2014

The present study was aimed to estimate the rational bubble by using the state space model and Kalman filter, of the national, capital, non-capital, Gangnam, and Gangbuk regions housing sales price from November 2003 to August 2013, for the whole period, and before and after the global financial crisis. For the whole period, Gangnam marked the highest rational bubble of 25.4%, followed by Gangbuk 21.3%, capital region 20.1%, whole country 18.9%, and non-capital region 14.3%. Prior to the global financial crisis, Gangnam showed 26.7% of bubble, which is approximately 7.4% higher than Gangbuk with 19.3%. On the other hand, after the global financial crisis, the bubble has collapsed a lot with Gangnam 13.2% and Gangbuk 10.7%; however, the non-capital region showed rather an increase of about 15% from 4.2% before the crisis to 9.0% after the crisis. The main cause of this is that the trading price has declined but the rents have risen in the capital region including Gangnam and Gangbuk, while the transaction price has gone up in non-capital region due to various positive signs like the moving of public institutions.