• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.2 no.1_2
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• pp.145-167
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• 1999

The aim the this paper is to explore the processes of three Korean consumer electronics chaebols'entries into, and exits from tile EU in the context of European integration and enlargement and at the global, regional(EU), national and local level. Korean FDI in the EU has increased sharply since the late 1980s, while interacting with the processes of European integration and enlargement. In particular, the chaebols'FDI was caused by reactions against the intensification of Euro-trade regulations. As a result, these defensive entries have led such chaebols to create a strategy of ‘defensive Europeanisation’through the formation of forward and backward linkages between chaebols’affiliates and Korean suppliers within the EU. Nonetheless, defensive FDI has given rise to exits through active relocation within and outside the EU, since the ‘late 1980s’due in the main to (1) sensitive reactions against changing EU trade regulations and (2) failures to maintain cost-competitiveness in particular host regions. Along with these trends, chaebols’entries and exits are placed in contingent and paradoxical structures of the global -regional - national-local nexus, which has resulted from the mismatch of different EU policies such as trade, inward investment and regional policies.