• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.239-253
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• 2008

This paper aims to explore the viability of a rural-industrial complex neighbouring in the metropolitan area and suggest policy implications for the restructuring of the rural industrial complex. In particular, the paper focuses on the location and management practices of the firms operating in the industrial complex. Research shows that the key elements of the viability of the rural industrial complex in Koryung-Gun are the geographical and relational proximities to the metropolitan city of Daegu and the decentralization of urban industries towards rural areas neighbouring in the large city as a result of the deterioration of location conditions in the large city. It is revealed that the major pull factors of location are 'availability of cheap industrial sites', 'agglomeration in a specialized industry' and 'proximity to major customers and suppliers' rather than 'availability of labour pool'. However, it shows that 'weak university-industry linkages' and 'insufficiency of cooperation culture' are the major limitations to attracting firms. In the context of pub1ic policy, the author argues that the restructuring of the rural industrial complex should be sought to promote social infrastructures centered on networks and learning rather than firm centered financial and tax incentives.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.601-615
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• 2007

Many Korean migrants in Japan have established small businesses using their ethnic networks as they were discriminated and excluded from Japanese society and labour market. The aim of this study is to explore the changes in characteristics of Korean migrants' businesses by generation, focusing on the role of co-ethnic relationships including ethnic networks and resources on their businesses. This study analyzed Korean migrants' dependence of the ethnic resources to understand the relationship between the ethnic. When Koreans first moved to Japan, laborers amounted the most, but the number of the professionals and the small business owners has increased gradually. This change was influenced by the change of generation and the improvement of education, as well as recognition of Japanese society and the change of policies toward Korean migrants in Japan. In early times when the number of small business owners started to increase, many cases such as a business, an employment, the use of Korean banks used to depend on ethnic resources. Also there were many businesses of which main customers were Koreans. However, the dependence of the ethnic resources has become diverse as the structure of the occupation has changed. The maintenance or exclusion of co-ethnic relationship depends on the structure of society and economy, and its result affect the relationship between Korean migrants in Japan and Japanese.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.49 no.3
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• pp.390-404
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• 2014

This study analysed the job-housing balance using the number of employees and workers data, and investigated the relationship between job-housing ratio and commuting trip in the Seoul metropolitan area. Between 2005-2010, in the central business district which functioned as urban center, the number of employees were reduced and population growth slowed. Meanwhile, the suburbanization of employment and population has advanced as the employment and population moved from Seoul to Gyeonggi-do. As the increasement of workers compared to the employees became prominent, the excess workers increased significantly. The size of excess workers acted as a factor which reduced the job-housing ratio. Job-housing imbalance worsened in Gyeonggi-do especially. While in many regions, job-housing imbalance improved in clerical, sales, and professional job sectors, but in some regions, the job-housing imbalance worsened in simple labor job and service job sectors. The number of jobs which job-housing imbalance was eased increased in the employment center. The more the job-housing ratio is high, the lower the degree of self-sufficiency of commuting trip and the proportion of internal commuters. In business centers where the number of employees exceed the number of workers, the job-housing ratio and the proportion of commuting trips coming from other regions showed decreasing trend together. The results bear important implications for regional labour market plans considering the spatial mismatch between jobs and housing.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.330-342
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• 2016

The aim of this article is to explore some issues on the uneven regional development in the Republic of Korea. Along with this, case studies on the United Kingdom and Italy are conducted in terms of their wealth, inequality and regional development. In the period of 1995~2003, the UK experienced the intensified uneven regional development and continuous increase of its index due in the main to the delayed revitalization of industrial decline regions, neo-liberalistic local labour market and industrial policies, and institutional instability of regional policies. In the case of Italy, it seemed to experience relatively stable regional convergence. However, this was caused by the continuous decline of major metropolitan areas such as large cities, Milan, Turin, Genoa, to name but a few. The Republic of Korea experienced 'economic growth with spatial and social disparities.' Since 2003 the uneven regional development has intensified. Towards regional convergence, new engines of regional development, the investment in the specialization of small and medium cities, and supportive policies for industrial restructuring regions are required.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.17-34
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• 2001

This paper is to analyze how firms in a large firm-led industrial city have carried out the restructuring in the face of radical shifts, with focus on the strategy and the restructuring of firms in Ulsan, a typical industrial district in Korea that is specialized in heavy & chemical industry. It has been well known that the local economy has been led by a small number of large firms, including affiliates of chaebol, and its industrial structure has also been characterised as a clear dichotomy between large firms as a customer and small and medium-size firms as a supplier, which can be called not horizontal but vertical relations. It can identify some tendencies, however, that local companies have been rather dynamically changing in response to increasingly turbulent environment since the Asian crisis. Some are radical, but some incremental. These can be summarized in four distinctive but interlinked ways. First, more than half of local companies surveyed have attempted to change their production systems, mainly from the fordist mass production towards the flexible mass production, seeking both economies of scale and scope. Second, local firms have vigorously continued to reorganize the boundary of the production and the organization, by specializing products and focusing on the core competence in order to save costs and cope with radically changing customer demands in a flexible way. Third, there have been various strategies for the organizational innovation such as the introduction of team organization, the boundary blurring between the managerial and production workers and the intra-firm spin-offs, so as to improve managerial efficiency and competence in the use of internal labour market. Finally, they have tried to be more sensitive to the market and customers. These tendencies seem to be increasingly critical to sustain their competitiveness. To do so, they tend to focus increasingly not only on the competing via the product quality rather than through price, but also to seek to diversify the market and customer firms beyond national boundary.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.46-64
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• 1994

Among every civilized people salt has been recognized as an essential foodstuff to the human society without which even man's survivor is unthinkable. The cultural-anthropological meaning of salt is estimated highly as well, and in geographical perspective salt itself symbolize regional interrelationship. Playing a decisive role in freeing innermost settlement from isolation, salt aiso made a contribution to expanding human habitats. This study tries to reconstruct historica geography of 18th and 19th century surrounding traditional salt-roasting (chayeom). The Joolpo Inlet area which is located on the mid-western coast in Honem Region is selected for study area. Established on the basis of optimum physical geographical conditions such as topography, climate and vegetation, salt-making of Joolpo Inlet area was run dynamically with the sudden turn of events in the 18-19th century which was chacterized as an age of transition from medieval society to modern one. In this paper the writer attempts to clarify mainly following three points: physical conditions and socio-economic background leading to the initiation and later development of roasting of salt in Joolpo Bay; distribution of saltworks; methods of saltmaking. Main points drawn from these analyses can be summarized as follows: of iron pan and cow-drawn tools rendered labour-saving and output growth. 1, Saltworks of Joolpo Inlet area in the 18-19th century were distributed evenly over Kobu, Puan, Mujang and Heungduck counties among which Kobu's was located in Puanmyon - a sort of exclave. All saltworks belonging to above four counties were clasified as most lucrative ones in Honam Region on government archives. In particular, Gumdang saltwork which belongs to Mujang county is noteworthy in that it was first introduced by one Paekje priest in 6th century and therefore it provides a clue to examine the history of salt-roasting of Joolpo Inlet area. In light of the fact that temple or monastery economy, regardless of East and West, has been closely connected with traditional industry, the case of Gumdang is not unusual. 2. The process of saltmaking follows this order: harrowing of salt field exposed to solar heat; construction of saltern mound with saline earth; acquiring of brine by leaching saline earth; roasting of salt. Salterns (saltworks) are consisted with various salt making facilities such as roasting shed, saltern mound, salt field, salt well) salt pit or brine pit) and seawater reservoir. Among them roasting shed which is constructed chiefly with hundreds of pieces of pine tree as a frame and with straw as roof and wall is customarily considered as an unit of saltwork. And inside it is saltpan made of two kinds of materials, that is iron pan or plaster pan. The area attached to one unit of roasting shed is approximately 1 ha, and that of saltern mound is a tenth of it.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.148-162
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• 1993

There is much speculation that modern capi-talist society is undergoing fundamental and qualitative chnge towards flexible specialization. The purpose of this study is to examine this hypothesis. This paper focusses on: the idea of flexible specialization; the significance of this transition; industrial district; and the implicati-ons of this new production system for Korean industrial space. Main arguments of this study are as follows: First, as all different groups of researchers apply the idea of flexible specialization according to their own specifications, the current debate on this topic is not much fruitful. Not surpri-singly, the concept of flexible specialization has overlapped with subocontracting. This intergration of subcontracting into flexible specialization systems, however, is inappropriate because the two concepts have different historical contexts. The other cause of this controversy is its inherent weekness, conceptual ambiguity. Thus, today's flexibility becomes tomorrow's rigidity. Secondly, transition towards flexible speciali-zation has only been partially achieved even in advanced capitalist countries. The application of dualistic explanatory framework, such as rigidity versus flexibiity, mass production versus small-lot multi-product production, and de-skilling versus re-skilling, has resulted in great exaggeration of the transformation, from Fordism to post-Fordism. There is no intermediary part between two places. Considering that the workers allocated to the Fordist mass production assembly line are not as large as one might imagine, the shift from mass to flexible production has only limited implications for the transformation of capitalist economy. Thirdly, 'industrial district' contorversy has contributed to highlighting the importance of small firms and areas as production space. The agglomeration of small firms in specific areas is common in Korea, but it is quite different from the industrial district based on flexible specialization. The Korean phenomenon stems from close interactions with its major parent firm rather than interactions between flexible, specialized, autonomous and technology-intensive smll firms. Most Korean subcontractors are still low-skilled, labour-intensive, and heavily dependent on their mojor parent firms. Thus, the assertion that the Seoul Metropolitan Area adopts flexible specialization has no base. Fourthly, the main concern of flexible speciali zation is small firms. However, the corporate organization that needs product diversification and technological specialization is oligopolistic large corporations typified by multinational corporations. It is because of this that most of these organizations are adoptiong Fordist mass production methods. The problem of product diversification will be resolved naturally if economic internationalization progresses further. What is more important for business success is the quality and price competitiveness of firms rather than product diversification. Lastly, in order to dispel further misunderst-anding on this issue, it is imparative that the conceptual ambiguity is resolved most urgently. This study recommends adoption of more speci-fied and direct terminology (such as, factory automation, computer design, out-sourcing, the exploitation of part-time labor, job redesign) rather than that of ideological ones (such as, Taylorism, Fordism, neo-Taylorism, neo-Fordism, post-fordism, flexible specialization, peripheral post-Fordism). As the debates on this topic just started, we still have long way to go until consensus is reached.