A Geopolitical Economy of Heavy Industrialization and Second Tier City Growth in South Korea
Evidence from the 'Four Core Plants Plan
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2370487 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Young-Jin Choi (Seoul National University, South Korea), Young‐Jin Choi (0000-0002-8466-4132, Seoul National University, corresponding author), J Glassman (0009-0008-9294-7643, University of British Columbia) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 44 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 405-420 |
| Publication date | 2018-05-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Critical Sociology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0896-9205 • E-ISSN: 1569-1632 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0896920517695868 |
| OpenAlex | W2605093881 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
| References cited | 14 |
In this article, we examine heavy industrialization and second tier urbanization in South Korea during the 1970s from a geopolitical economic perspective. We highlight the crucial, spatially complex geopolitical process of forming transnational class alliances, embedded in Cold War geopolitics, which has been neglected within state-centric developmental state theories and approaches to urbanization. Specifically, we trace the changes in the state's original developmental plan for promoting the machinery industry in the southeast region during the 1960s and 1970s. We show how Hyundai, one of the most dominant chaebols, grew to exercise decisive influence over the state's developmental strategy and became a powerhouse in the Korean economy, particularly in the city of Ulsan. Based on a case study of the Four Core Plants Plan, we show that the success of Hyundai was not an outcome of the effectiveness of the state's developmental policy but was, ironically, due to the failure of the government's original plan. The successful substitution of Hyundai's own strategy for the state's plan, which contributed enormously to the growth of Ulsan, would have been impossible without Hyundai's enrollment into the transnational geopolitical economic alliance spurred by US military projects in Asia
Alliance · Development economics · Developmental state · Economic geography · Economic growth · Economic system · Economics · Economy · Geopolitics · Industrialisation · Political science · Politics · Urbanization · Asian Industrial and Economic Development · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Japanese History and Culture
| Citations per year | 0.78 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2017 - 2026 (10) |
| Highly cited | No |