• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.120-145
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• 2001

Environmental risk is one of major risks in contemporary society which is often conceptualized in terms of 'risk society'. The crisis which retains such environmental risk can be characterized by 'technical hazards', rather than natural hazards in traditional societies, because of potentiality of technical control over its generation and managing process. Environmental crisis tends to be recurred due to certain limitations of response of both government and civil society. Moreover, it can be argued that generation of environmental crisis and limitations of its managing process are inherent in problematic structures in contemporary society, especially in its 4 basic elements and their characters; that is, capitalist market economy which promotes increasing profits and decreasing cost; bureaucratic representative politics which has brought about concentration of power and evasion of responsibility, instrumental science and technology which leads to blind belief on scientific knowledge and its uncertainty; and finally individualistic way of life with exclusive and passive response to crisis. This paper aims to consider the generation and managing process of environmental crisis in terms of these 4 basic elements, with comparative studies on empirical cases of the water crisis by Phenol pollution in Taegu in 1991 and the water crisis by parasites contamination in Sydney in 1998.