• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.140-157
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• 2012

Most of global citizens in the globalization era want to live peacefully in the symbiotic relationship among each region or locality with its identity. From this perspective, the new regionalist models of development such as new industrial districts, industrial clusters, regional innovation systems, and global city-regions isn't helpful to most of regions because they were developed to increase the global competitiveness of industrial region from a few advanced industrial areas. This study attempts to develop 'regional differential development' as an alternative regional development theory. This theory puts emphasis on the truth that the difference or differential industry between regions in the real world connotes two essential values of development like the symbiosis of global citizens and the regional identity. Regional differential development seeks the development of regional differential industry on the basis of geographical elements with differential advantage, and hence it reviews significantly geographical elements including location, natural environment(landform, soil, climate, etc.), natural resources, population, transportation, culture, and landscape which appear substantially differently among regions. And to realize regional differential development successfully, it is crucial that actors(government, company, related institutions, and regional residents) actively participate and play each complementary role in the relationship of cooperation and conflict. Further study needs to secure the universal validity of this theory through many empirical studies.