• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.42 no.1 s.118
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• pp.41-62
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• 2007

This paper aims to interpret the changes of the regional inequality between Seoul Metropolitan Area(SMA) and Non-SMA after 1981 on the regulationist approaches that examine institution changes and power dynamics that motivate regional disparities in South Korea. Despite the restrict laws and aims that alms to reduce the concentration into SMA before 1988, the acts were not executed effectively due to the structural selectivity of the bureaucratic authoritarian state of those years. Thus, the regional concentration phenomena of SMA was intensified in the 1980s. However, the democratization in 1987 invoked Non-SMA regions to claim their regional development and it also forced the state to mediate the conflicting interests between the regional agents protesting the SMA concentration and the Capital agents supporting the SMA deregulation. From the early 1990s. the state launched a series of national strategies and policies to diminish regional inequality. They included execution of the existing acts mitigating SMA concentration and construction of industrial complexes in the underdeveloped areas of Non-SMA. Thus, the equalizing polities led the reduction of the concentration of SMA from 1989 to 1997. However, the financial crisis of Korea in 1997 intensified the claims of the Capital agents to deregulate the SMA control. The circumstance also forced the state towards the Capital side that request the deregulation of SMA control. As the result, the regional disparity between SMA and Non-SMA has been enlarged again since 1998.