• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.3-36
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• 1992

"Corporate control by owners" characterizes the current structure of ownership, control and management of big business groups in Korea. It has become an ever more serious obstacle for the Korean economy to end its distinctive "personal capitalism" and to transform the current system into people's capitalism. The current issue, the deconcentration of ownership, through the course of heated debates should be treated from an integrated perspective. That is, the debate should center on the concentration of economic power and it effects on national economy, instead of sticking to the issue of ownership-control issue per se. This paper, by referring to the historical experiences and development paths which advanced countries have already traveled, analyzes the respective aspects of the concentration issue in a rather descriptive and taxonomist manner - market concentration, business diversification, ownership concentration, integrated management of conglomerates, i.e., managing in groups' unit, and the roles of financial institutions. The government policies against the concentration of economic power have so far focused on the size of big business groups and their diversification activities. The two major policy measures are restrictions on cross-ownership and excess capital investment by big business groups, and controls on their credit deals. This paper strongly suggests that the government should change its current priorities in targeting its policies against concentration. The government should reduce the regulations on size and diversification, and focus its policies on substantial dispersion of corporate ownership. The efficacy of government intervention in the management and control of business enterprises seems quite dubious and even anachronistic given the extent of maturity of Korean firms. Therefore, it should be noted that the current regulation-oriented stance taken by the government against the management style of big business groups should be suppressed, as it has assumed some a priori and typical pattern in advance in directing big business groups, such as independent and specialized management in respective firms' unit. This paper, also, raises the need for introducing new regulations on inter-sectoral diversifications between finance, industry and the press.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.213-226
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• 1993

In Korea, the urban studies of geography have mainly dealt with such a series of research as system of urban place and internal structure of urban area. The existing studies have been carried out with ecological approach. Ecologists, now a days, regard organiation and transfor-mation of the urban space as the process of invasion, succession, and segregation. However it is more proper that cities should be considered not as fragmantary objects, as some ecologists insist, but as synthetic ones in social structure. This research, with adopting a case of the renewasl of central area in Seoul, tried to make it clear that the formation and transition of the city is a product of social structure and examined polical and economic logic which exists in variation of urban space in detail. The results of this study are as follows; Urban renewal of central area is closely related with production and reproduction in capitalist society. In urban center, as business activities had increased since 1973 due to decen-tralization of production process, the necessity of reorganizing the land use in existing central area accordingly increased. The urban renewal program of central area in Seoul was inrroduced under such situation. The urban renewal of central area reflecting the capital logic has changed the central area with six hundred year's tradition. From the urban renewal of central area, not only was the central area, which traditionally had been mixed with various fun-ctions, simplified into the unitary area of busi-ness, but also physical landscape changed. As the land lot in renewal area expanded into regular shape, buildings became larger and taller. The program tremendously raised the price of related area. Aiming at these profits caused by the raised price, a great number of capitalists participated in the program. And as the benefit ratio of the manufacture sector continuously dropped with the economic recession, the pro-gram was carried out much more vigorously. That was because the idle capital accumulated during the recession was invested in property sector and was self-proliferated. The urban renewal raised the land value of central area and drove out the people living in this area. The people moved into the whole parts of the city resulting diffused squatter settlements. And the urban changes in central area were results of the policy of municipal authorities, who supported and systematized the changes lawfully and administratively, as well as reali-zation of capital logic. Due to the renewal policies of central area in Seoul, much more renewals by the only capitalists were carried out than those by the people themselves living in that area. The integration of land ownership in the law of urban renewal shows the reason of that. Moreover, the law allows the third deve-loper to participate in the tasks and admits the land expropriation rights. The municipal autho-rities guaranteed the profitability of the tasks through finacial aid, tax benifit, and relaxation of regulations for construction. As examined above, the changes in the land use of urban space have been led not by the ecological process of development of the city itself, but by the restructuring of capitalism and the intervention of the government authorities.