Fracturing Hegemony: Regionalism and State Rescaling in South Korea, 1961–71

Fracturing Hegemony: Regionalism andState Rescaling in South Korea, 1961–71

DONG-WAN GIMM

AbstractThis study is informed by the theorizing prompted by recent work on state rescaling. Iaim to examine the interaction between the top-down and bottom-up rescaling processesthat took place in the South Korean developmental state during the late 1960s and early1970s. I focus on a regionalism that both built a regional scale and influenced thehegemonic crisis of the ruling regime. Specifically, the study illustrates the features ofstate space that were shaped during the developmental era and the factors that allowstate space to be stable and coherent. By dealing with these questions, I provide apossible interpretation of why and how regionalism was a crucial factor in thehegemonic crisis of the 1960s and generated a rescaling of state space. What makes thisstudy significant is not merely the fact that this space is located in East Asia. It couldalso, more generally, open up an alternative perspective on state rescaling during theearly stages of state-led industrialization.

IntroductionRecent work on state rescaling has been a persuasive alternative both to the hyper-globalist perspective and the fetishism of the local, and has contributed to areconsideration of the nation-state as a major analytic category. It has also deepenedsocial science’s theoretical understanding of state spatiality insofar as it is demarcatedby and corresponds with state power. As more research on state rescaling has beenconducted, however, it has come in for criticism from several perspectives. Cox(2009), a representative critic, points out three limitations: (1) Euro-centricity — theliterature on state rescaling has been dominated by European states; (2) a top-downapproach — state rescaling is frequently depicted as a process that is necessarilycentrally initiated; and (3) periodization — state space and its rescaling have usuallybeen examined with provisos associated with periodization, such as ‘along with’ or‘after’ globalization.

As far as these limitations are concerned, geographic coverage seems to have beenconsiderably broadened in recent years, from Western Europe to non-European countries(see Chung, 2007; Sonn, 2010; Tsukamoto, 2012). The tendency for research to beweighted toward a top-down approach has also begun to change, through, for example,the emphasis on interscalar tensions between the national and local scales (Park, 2008)or regionalist discursive practices with regard to hegemonic projects (Oosterlynck,2010). Likewise, the periodization problem is now being tackled, even though it has been

The author would like to thank the IJURR referees for their constructive comments, which improved thepresentation of this paper. This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of KoreaGrant funded by the Korean Government (NRF-2011-330-B00209).

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getting less attention than the other two. Notwithstanding these changes, however,significant research questions on a range of spatio-temporal matrices of actualnation-states remain unanswered, not least because they could meaningfully vary acrosstemporal and spatial horizons and in the forms of combination and tension involvedbetween top-down and bottom-up processes.

With these problem orientations, my aim in this article is to elucidate the rescaling ofthe South Korean developmental state during the 1960s and the early 1970s, focusing ona regionalism that built a regional scale and influenced the hegemonic crisis of the rulingregime. The importance of this study lies not merely in the fact that this temporal spaceis located in East Asia. It could also open up an alternative perspective on state rescalingin the early stages of state-led industrialization. A few major urban areas experiencedexplosive population growth and rapid industrialization, while predominantly rural areaswere excluded from the spatial production of the developmental state, especially fromindustrialization and its so-called ‘modernization of the fatherland’. Specifically, thisstudy targets two research questions. First, what features of state space were shapedduring the first phase of the ‘Great Transformation’ (Polanyi, 2001) during the 1960s, andhow did the state space remain relatively stable and coherent during that period? Second,why and how was southwestern regionalism a crucial factor in fracturing the hegemonyof the 1960s and rescaling the state space? In other words, why did the ruling regimerespond to regionalism?

Theoretical backgroundA theory of East Asian developmental states might start by elucidating their actualityafter emptying ‘the actual’ of Europe.1 Scale is the ‘real structure’ of social space thatemerges out of a territorial trap and methodological nationalism (Brenner, 2004). Actualscales are shaped in accordance with the way in which social processes are scaled.Similarly, states have spaces and are organized in accordance with the scaling of actualstate processes. In this sense, therefore, we need to re-examine the existing analyticalframework for state rescaling, which best fits more stable and static societies, in order toexamine the actual state rescaling that took place in South Korea during its dynamicdevelopmental era.

Re-examination of state rescaling in thecontext of developmental state-buildingHere I shall re-examine the work of Neil Brenner (2004), whose contribution tounderstanding state rescaling has been seminal as regards the actuality of Europeanrescaling. He successfully combines Lefebvre’s state space (2009) and Jessop’s statetheory (1990) into an integrated framework and provides a sophisticated analysis drivenby three concepts — ‘state spatial form’, ‘state spatial project’ and ‘state spatialstrategy’ (Brenner, 2004: 88) — using terms originating with Jessop (1990). However,they require further refinement and correction to deal with the following threechallenges.

The first is the periodization problem connected with the rapid transformation thattakes place during the developmental era, that is, industrial transformation and a rapid,fully-fledged shift in the fabric of state space. Periodization, basically, depends on a

1 To use Bhaskar’s (2008) terminology, ‘the actual’ refers to events that actually happen, whetherexperienced or not. It is generated by ‘the real’, which refers to structures and mechanisms.

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International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37.4© 2013 Urban Research Publications Limited

distinction between continuity and discontinuity, which roughly correspond to a‘structural coupling’ and ‘strategic moment’ respectively (Jessop, 1990: 6).2

What, then, can we say about the developmental period of South Korea? The wholedevelopmental era, for at least 20 years after 1961, was marked by nation- andstate-building (see Kim and Vogel, 2011) and by various discontinuities for which theidea of ‘contemporaneous non-contemporaneity’ (Bloch, 1991: 97–116) might be moreappropriate. It could be both difficult and insufficient, therefore, to configure the actualcoupling with a single term such as the ‘Listian Warfare National State’ (Cho and Jessop,2001). Nevertheless, the 1960s is an indispensable period for examining the capitalistindustrialization of South Korea, even though the state and state space were incessantlychanging and hardly identifiable as a homogenous continuity. That being the case, thisarticle defines the period as a transitional one dominated by strategic coordination andfocuses on the field of capital accumulation strategies, state projects and hegemonicprojects.

The second question is the relevance of adding the modifier ‘spatial’ in front ofJessop’s terminologies. Drawing on strategic-relational state theory, Brenner deducesthree core concepts — state spatial form, state spatial project and state spatial strategy —from state form, state project and state strategy respectively (Brenner, 2004: 91).3

Strategic coordination cannot, however, be reduced to explicit spatial projects andstrategies; it should also include implicit ones that may contribute to shaping the statespace. Furthermore, a hegemonic project is not spatialized like a ‘spatial hegemonicproject’, even though its spatial production, like a territorial imagination, may be acrucial part of state space. In dealing with this issue, Oosterlynck (2010: 1156) states:‘hegemonic projects or state spatial strategies aimed at maintaining hegemony withincivil society gradually disappear from the analysis’. When perceived this way, themodifier ‘spatial’ may pose unnecessary limitations that make it difficult to draw the fullmeaning from Lefebvre’s ‘production of space’ (Lefebvre, 1991). So, in this article, Iwill remove the modifier and examine the spatial production of state projects andstrategies (especially hegemonic projects).

The final problem is the distinction between the capital accumulation strategy and thestate project during this period. The developmental regime of South Korea maintained an‘overdeveloped state’, in which military elites and bureaucrats had exclusive power (Choi,1993). This was especially true of the state–capital relation. The ruling regimeof the time was marked by mercantilistic features that led to it being called ‘pseudo-capitalism’ (Kwon, 2006: 194). In particular, jaebols (also spelled chaebols) — bigconglomerates like the Japanese Zaibatsu — were mobilized to receive foreign loans andget advice on industrial policies. The mercantilist relationship between state and capitalprevents us from disentangling the state projects from the accumulation strategies.

2 The structural coupling between an ‘economic nucleus’ and its ‘mode of social regulation’ underpinsthe theoretical construction of the state form as separate from society (Jessop, 1990: 6) andrepresents ‘structural moments’ of state spatiality to adduce ‘state spatial form’ (Brenner, 2004:91). This concept was originally linked to an interlocked history of structural congruence betweenthe trajectories of two systems (Maturana and Varela, 1987: 75) and in this sense may refer to thecontinuity of historical time. The opposite can be observed in the ‘strategic coordination’ and‘strategic moments’ concepts (Jessop, 1990: 359; Brenner, 2004: 91). These point to the ‘strategicdimension of co-evolution considered from the viewpoint of specific social forces or agencies’(Jessop, 1990: 359). This coordination is the field of capital accumulation strategies, state projectsand hegemonic projects (ibid.: 360). The concept of strategic coordination can thus be linked to thediscontinuity due to strategic interventions.

3 According to Brenner (2004: 88), state projects are ‘initiatives to endow state institutions withorganizational coherence, functional coordination, and operational unity’, and state strategies areinitiatives to mobilize state institutions in order to ‘regulate the circuit of capital’ (Jessop’saccumulation strategies) and to ‘modify the balance of forces within civil society’ (Jessop’shegemonic projects).

Regionalism and state rescaling in South Korea, 1961–71 1149


Territorial coalition, competing regionalisms,and conditions for fracturing hegemonyThe recent literature has discussed the shortcomings of the top-down approach anddemonstrated how territorial politics can perform significant roles in state rescaling andassimilate to the multiple roles of ‘top-down’ regulation (Jonas and Pincetl, 2006; Park,2008; Moisio, 2008). Taking into account ‘politics of scale’, in particular from theviewpoint of territorial coalitions, it is generally acknowledged that ‘jumping scales’(Smith, 1993) or ‘spaces of engagement’ (Cox, 1998) are representative strategies. Bothof them presuppose the transition of a political agenda from one scale to another thatcan mobilize sources of power outside the space of dependence (see Park, 2008;Cox, 1998). In this article, I put forward one more spatial dimension to figure out howthese strategies can increase their negotiating power in ‘spaces of engagement’, andits effectiveness, through ‘jumping scale’. That dimension, simply stated, is regionbuilding.

Ever since Gilbert’s (1988) monumental work, ‘region’ has not been defined merelyas a scale that requires an association with other historical scales, such as the national orurban ones (Brenner, 2009), but also as a territory that is shaped physically, symbolicallyand institutionally (Paasi, 1996). In particular, the boundaries of regions, as discursiveproducts, allow the people within them to imagine their community and distinguishthemselves from outsiders. Given that the region and its boundaries are objects of theimagination, discursive practices are supposed to be involved in region building. By thesame token, regionalism can be, by definition, the discursive practice that ‘seeks toachieve legitimacy for definitions of boundaries and to obtain approval for this definitionin cultural and political, and popular and official understandings’ (Thrift and Kitchin,2009: 294).

However, not all attempts to build regions can succeed in cracking a hegemony orin bottom-up rescaling, as a matter of course. Thus, the key question is: under whatconditions can bottom-up regionalism win out in a competition with top-downregionalism,4 which has more available authorities and institutional instruments? Inconnection with this issue, I wish to propose two hypothetical criteria: (1) the spatialcoherence of the state process, and (2) the multi-scalar agent.

The concept of coherence recurs frequently with regard to state space in Brenner(2004: 92–4). He proposes two interrelated concepts, ‘territorial coherence’ and‘interscalar coordination’, which usually refer to the coherence of the territorialdimension and the scalar dimension respectively, although they have not been clearlydefined and distinguished from each other. According to Jessop (1990: 359), strategiccoordination may influence systems and structures ‘only when the strategic interventionsof social forces are well coordinated and coherent’. In this article, I will use the term‘spatial coherence’ of strategic coordination, in an integrated sense, rather than as twoseparate terms, because coherence requires a proper spatial organization in both theterritorial and scalar dimensions simultaneously.

Here we must recall the argument put forward in this article that non-spatial projectsand state strategies, including hegemonic projects and capital accumulation strategies,can also contribute to the production of state space, even if the result and the selectivityare unintended consequences. Specifically, I take as my point of analysis Jessop’s (2002:42) subcategories of the state project: the political project and the governmental project.The political projects ‘articulated by different social forces that are represented withinthe state system, seek such representation, or contest its current forms, functions andactivities’; the latter connotes the ‘prevailing state project with its raison d’état — or

4 Keating (1997) distinguishes between top-down regionalism as state policy and bottom-upregionalism as the process of making political demands such as cultural issues, questions ofautonomy, social priorities and differences in economic emphases.

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governmental rationality — and statecraft that seeks to impose a relative unity on thevarious activities of different branches, departments and scales of the state system’ (using‘state project’ in the narrow sense).

This article tackles the issue of the selectivities of the political, governmental andhegemonic projects mentioned above and their coherence. Elucidating the selectivities ofthe projects and examining their coherence will shed light on how the productionof space has rendered hegemony stable in the spatial dimension. Given that themorphological coherence of state spatial processes can be confirmed, it is certainly worthinquiring into the possibility of hegemony being cracked by political practices, such asregionalist movements, that threaten the spatial coherence of state processes.

Here, I would like to propose another hypothetical criterion. In developing theframework for integrating the top-down and bottom-up approaches, another difficultquestion that has to be dealt with is how regionalisms can be involved in strategicrelations of the state. Although Brenner (2004) leaves the door open for the interventionof regionalist factions in these relations, we need to consider links that can enable certainlocal agendas to ‘jump scale’ and forge a ‘space of engagement’. This study pays especialattention to multi-scalar agents who carry out multifaceted roles varying among differentscales — who, in other words, have agency ‘as the stream of actual or contemplatedcausal interventions of corporeal beings’ (Giddens, 1993: 81) in the social relations ofseveral scales at the same time. In this context, the agents can be multi-scalar nodesconnected to the various scales of social relations that appear to play a part in strategicsolidarity and competition by articulating bottom-up regionalism to the space ofengagement.

Research context: the hegemoniccrisis of the developmental regimeIn order to provide a research context, in this section we will briefly examine thetrajectory of economic growth and its spatial and political result. As of the late 1950s,the only industrialized areas in South Korea were a number of cities, such as Seoul,Daegu and Busan, along the Gyeongbu (Seoul–Busan) railway (see Figure 1 and FigureS4). This geographical feature was the result of two historical conditions: Japanesecolonial industrial development and the Korean War (Park, 2003: 823). This does notmean, however, that the cities were flourishing as industrial sites. It was not until the1960s that the full-fledged industrialization of South Korea began. As shown inFigure S15 in the Supporting Information, the 1960s marked a milestone in the economicachievement of ‘South Korea, Inc.’. Both GDP (gross domestic product) and gross fixedcapital formation increased sharply after the mid-1960s, indicating a quantitativeexpansion in the size of the economy and capital investment respectively.

As industrialization progressed, the share of manufacturing and construction(secondary industry) in GDP increased rapidly during the 1960s, especially in the latterhalf of the decade (see Figure S2). During the same period, the share of agriculture andfisheries (primary industry) decreased from 41% to 26% (see Figure S2), and the farmingpopulation also declined from 58% to 45% (Bank of Korea, 1972: 6). This was also theperiod when the rural population started to move to urban areas. The proportion of urbanresidents in the population as a whole was only 28% in 1960; this had increased to 41%by 1970.6 All of this took place over just 10 years, and the pace of change was sustainedthroughout the decade (Chang, 2007).

5 Figures labelled S1, S2, etc. are to be found in the Supporting Information accompanying the onlineversion of this article. A list of such figures is given at the end of the article.

6 Statistics Korea, Korean Statistical Information System, http://kosis.kr (accessed 20 May 2012).



As is well known, this achievement arose from the so-called state-led industrializationof the developmental state in South Korea. What we can draw from this rather hackneyedformulation is that the 1960s might be considered the initial stage of the ‘GreatTransformation’ in the sense that the modern market economy and the modern

Figure 1 Map of Korea

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nation-state were interlocked and co-evolved. However, the political regime supportingthe outstanding growth of the 1960s experienced a hegemonic crisis. In 1969, PresidentJung-Hee Park, who had taken power after the coup d’état of 16 May 1961, amended theconstitution so as to allow the president a third term and enable himself to run in the 1971presidential election. The national support he had gained during the economic growth ofthe 1960s was weakened by criticism from students, the intelligentsia and the urbanmiddle class (Kim, 1995). A series of regionalist campaigns in the southwest, however,can be considered the most serious challenge that Park faced.

Park won the presidential election of 1971 (with 53.2% of the vote against 45.3%), butthe sense of exclusion from industrialization was a potentially serious vulnerability ofdevelopmentalism. Compared with the 1967 election results, the 1971 election stands outin two ways. First, simply put, Park gained more votes overall in 1971 than in 1967, asTable 1 shows. Second, despite these gains, Park’s support in the top six major cities andthe southwest region decreased by 6.2% and 8.9%, respectively. In particular, support forPark in the southwest in the 1971 election was a mere 34.8%. The necessityfor government intervention and bribery to fix the results of the 1971 election — forwhich there is considerable evidence — could be considered a defeat for Park and theruling regime (Lee, 1998: 221). Kim Dae-Jung, the main opposition candidate and acongressman from Gwangju in South Jeolla, presented the first substantial threat to theruling regime since the coup. What on earth happened in the southwest during the late1960s and early 1970s? Why did they vote against Park? That is the key question to beasked in the discussion below.

Table 1 Percentages of support for President Park Jung-Hee and the main oppositioncandidate out of total valid votes, by region, in presidential elections (1967–71)

Provinces1967 1971 Change in Park’s

Support RatePark Yoon Park Kim

Seoul metropolitan citya 45.2 51.3 40.0 59.4 -5.2

Gyeonggi 41.0 52.6 48.9 49.5 7.9

Incheona 39.1 56.7 42.1 56.9 3.0

Gangwon 51.3 41.7 59.8 38.8 8.6

North Chungcheong 46.6 43.6 57.3 40.7 10.7

South Chungcheong 45.4 46.8 53.5 44.4 8.1

Daejeona 49.3 46.3 48.6 50.6 -0.7

North Gyeongsang 64.0 26.4 75.6 23.3 11.6

Daegua 71.5 23.5 67.0 32.3 -4.5

South Gyeongsang 68.6 23.0 73.4 25.6 4.7

Busan metropolitan citya 64.2 31.2 55.7 43.6 -8.6

Jeju 56.5 32.1 56.9 41.4 0.3

Southwest regionb 43.7 47.4 34.8 62.3 -8.9

North Jeolla 42.3 48.7 35.5 61.5 -6.8

South Jeolla 44.6 46.6 34.4 62.8 -10.1

Gwangjua 40.9 54.5 22.7 76.0 -18.2

Top six major cities 51.7 44.2 45.5 53.8 -6.2

Total 51.4 40.9 53.2 45.3 1.8aMajor cities with more than 100,000 votersbSouthwest region includes North and South JeollaSource: National Election Commission http://www.nec.go.kr/sinfo/index.html (accessed 3.5.12)



The production of state space and its coherence in the 1960sThe spatial production of state projects

I now examine the key state projects implicitly connected to accumulation strategies. Theforemost state project in 1960 was the centralization of political power, the so-called‘developmental dictatorship’ (Kwon, 2006) or ‘bureaucratic authoritarian regime’ (Im,1987). Here, a couple of policy programs materialized and, whether they were intendedto or not, overlapped with the formation of the industrial spaces.

The Economic Planning Board as a state project:monopolizing rent on the national scale

The establishment of the Economic Planning Board (hereafter EPB) in 1961 was amajor change in both the governmental and political projects. Although there weresimilar organizations in Taiwan and Japan, the EPB enjoyed greater powers and status(Yoon, 2001). First of all, the head of the EPB was also the deputy prime minister, andbudget authority was transferred to the board from the Ministry of Finance. Budgetplanning can exert a most powerful influence on a state’s policy priorities and is alsothe instrument controlling the authoritative distribution of values (Peters, 1979: 349)and permission to introduce foreign capital. Large foreign loans can increase a state’sautonomy from its society by reducing the share of resources supplied domestically. Inaddition, the EPB considerably restricted other departments’ authority andmonopolized the authority to decide economic policy while operating outside theNational Assembly’s oversight.

Significantly, the EPB had, along with jurisdiction over budget planning, variouspolicy tools by which to intervene in the financial market, such as supporting export,reforming interest rates and guaranteeing foreign loans. We see here that the EPB’smonopolistic use of these financial tools created immense rent on a national scale.7

According to a study, the total rent generated through the control of capital flowincreased from 8% of GNP in 1960 to 26% in 1970 (Kim, 1999: 133). The rent was builtup on the national scale and channelled into a specific area by the EPB. Since the EPBhad no branches on other scales, the flow of rent was entirely controlled by the centralgovernment, particularly the EPB, and its decision-making criteria were based on thenational scale.

Elimination of local autonomy as a political project

The ‘Military Revolutionary Committee’ that gained power after the coup d’état of 16May 1961 disbanded the nation’s local assemblies by handing down Decree No. 4 thesame day. The committee announced that this was just an interim measure. The militarygovernment repeatedly claimed to support the revival of local autonomy after enactinga new constitution, explicitly stating that it would try to implement it. Moreover,a constitutional amendment, confirmed by national referendum in 1962, includedregulations for local autonomy. However, no law executing local autonomy was enactedduring Jung-Hee Park’s regime. Even under the Yushin constitution, which gave thepresident virtually unlimited power and tenure, Park’s regime absolutely refused todiscuss local autonomy by adding the supplementary provision that local assembliesshould not be established until the reunification of the country.

The elimination of local autonomy naturally forestalled the possibility of sharing rent,monopolized by the establishment of the EPB, between the national and subnationalscales. Local autonomy and the vitalization of local politics are elements that go against

7 According to Akyüz and Gore (1996: 466–8), state-created rents were crucial to the capitalaccumulation process, establishing new industries in East Asian developmental states and boostingprofits and promoting investment (see also Chang, 1994).

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state projects that concentrate power on the national scale, as they open up political spacefor territorialized stakeholders. This political project thus ensured that the EPB, with nolower branches (even within the central government), would keep its rent on the nationalscale.

Jaebols as the mercantilist assistants: territorially uneven distribution

Kwon (2006) and Sonn (2006) define the jaebol of the time as a ‘mercantilist assistant’and a ‘sub-structure of state authority’, respectively. They describe jaebols as importantpartners in the establishment of industrialization strategies. Their roles includedproviding the information considered key to the production of the industrial space usedto link with overseas capital and reviewing the facilities to be used for its introduction.Kim (1990) points out that a micro motivation of power, namely seeking to decreaseuncertainty (a concept used in the field of organizational theory), gave birth to the spatialselectivity of the bureaucracy. This attempt is defined as a rational selection for reducinguncertainty and transaction costs by choosing entrepreneurs from the southeast, the homeprovince of President Park and other ruling elites, in a situation in which legitimacy waslacking — after the coup d’état. His claim provides a useful view that the spatialselectivity of jaebols was produced by the governmental project to secure the legitimacyof the regime.

Fifty out of the 56 people selected as key entrepreneurs in 1972 were self-madefounders who had benefited from the economic growth that began after the military coupin 1961 (Oh, 1975). Cha (1981) builds on this fact, pointing out that 15 (or 54%) of 28key businesspeople who started in the 1950s had failed by the 1960s, while another 32started and grew quickly during the 1960s. When we look closely at the ups and downsof company activities by region, the distribution of economic elites is clearly uneven. Theshare of founders of large companies born in South Gyeongsang and North Gyeongsangprovinces is higher than for other regions (see Table S1). This territorial unevennessbecame a major variable affecting the location of industrial complexes and subsequentstate capital investment.

Two accumulation strategies and two industrial spaces

The capital accumulation strategies and governmental projects of the 1960s wereentangled, as discussed above. In other words, accumulation strategies were largelydetermined by the industrial strategies and policies of the state. In this connection wecould highlight two industrial strategies: the import substitution industrialization strategy(hereafter ISI) and the export-oriented industrialization strategy (hereafter EOI). Bothstrategies produced their own industrial spaces more explicitly than any of the other stateprojects mentioned above, although the spatial productions of the projects weresimultaneously overlapped and interwoven. The ISI and the EOI cultivated Ulsan andGuro, respectively, as industrial strongholds.

The ISI and Ulsan Industrial Center

Jung-Hee Park’s regime announced the First Five-year Economic Development Plan(1962–6) and proclaimed the project of self-sustained economic growth and the ISIstrategy on 5 January 1962 (Rhee, 1994: 61). The production of state space, as demandedby the ISI, was carried out throughout the 1960s, although the ISI strategy was replacedby EOI after the revision of the plan in 1964. In particular, investment in basic industrieswas concentrated on the Ulsan Industrial Center (UIC) under the Chemical IndustryFive-Year Plan. The amount invested by the government to construct the UIC amountedto 7.7% of the total amount invested during the first five-year economic developmentplan. Moreover, 24.8% of total mining and manufacturing investment flowed into theUIC (Chang, 2007: 33).



The first five-year plan started with a list of chemical industrial plants to beconstructed. However, the questions of who, where and how had not been decided (Oh,1995: 18). Thirteen entrepreneurs who had been accused of amassing wealth unlawfullyin 1961 were selected to implement the construction. They founded the KoreanIndustries Association (now the Federation of Korean Industries, a jaebol interest group;hereafter the KIA) and sent two teams to the United States and Western Europe to attractforeign investment. After the investigation, Byung-Chul Lee (chairman of the KIA andfounder of Samsung) proposed that a special industrial complex be established at anappropriate location as soon as possible (Oh, 1995: 23). Thus began the establishment ofthe UIC.

Before the establishment of the UIC was undertaken, a special law expropriating landfor the industrial district was announced on 20 January 1962. On 27 January, only a weekafter the law was enacted, Ulsan was designated as a special industrial district. The EPBimmediately took the initiative in the construction and management of the UIC (EPB,1962). The concrete location of the complex was influenced by jaebols’ interests,although Ulsan offers favourable conditions for the establishment of port facilities,particularly thanks to its tidal range, a mere 0.85 m (Chang, 2007: 24); additionally, italready had considerable infrastructure dating back to Japanese colonial rule (Kim,D.-W. 1989: 180–1). A strong will to construct the UIC can be clearly seen inByung-Chul Lee’s memoir (Lee, 1986), and Yeon-Soo Kim, a leading jaebol who hadalready built a number of plants in Ulsan, also advised the KIA to select Ulsan as thelocation of the chemical complex (Lee, 2008).

No other places were produced by the above-mentioned governmental projectsand accumulation strategies. The UIC was almost the only industrial space wherestate-created rents were actualized and utilized to stimulate industrial development. Theauthority to establish and manage the UIC belonged almost completely to agents andtheir social contacts on the national scale.

Construction of the industrial complexesfor the EOI: Guro as a replication of Ulsan

The ISI strategy was soon modified. When South Korea faced a foreign-currency crisisin 1964, the United States demanded that it modify its policies and economicdevelopment plan (Lee, 2006: 154). This economic crisis and strained US–Korearelations caused the government to give up on its original plan. After this strategic turnin 1964, the EOI strategy was pursued aggressively. Since then, the industrialization ofKorea has been successful, at least from the standpoint of quantity. The strategic detourthrough the labour-intensive EOI offered an opportunity for large cities, such as Seoul,Daegu and Busan, to take a quantum leap.

When the EOI strategy was announced, the KIA explained the current status ofproducts exported to Japan and the technological capability of Japanese–Koreancompanies during a seminar on economic issues held on 8 January 1963. As a result, thegovernment promised to adopt policies supporting the development of export-orientedindustries (Korea Export Industrial Corporation, 1994: 141–2). In March of the sameyear, the Export Industry Promotion Committee was formed. Its first initiative was todispatch an EOI inspection group to Japan on 15 March 1963, in order to observe theindustrial environment of Japan’s export industries and attract Japanese-Koreanbusinesspeople. During the visit, they demanded the construction of an industrialcomplex like the UIC near Seoul (ibid.: 145–6). Attracting capital from the United Statesand Japan was necessary for industrialization after several financial policies enactedduring the previous phase had failed. The result was the export industrial complexes inGuro (in south-western Seoul) and Bupyeong (next to Guro) along with supportingorganizations, such as the Export Industrial Complex Promotion Committee and theKorea Export Industrial Corporation in the public sector and the Export IndustryPromotion Committee in the private sector (see Figure 1).

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The hegemonic project and its contribution to spatial coherence

Precarious coherence among spatial productionsby state projects and accumulation strategies

The governmental projects and accumulation strategies for rapid industrialization and thepolitical projects pursued to stabilize power shortly after the coup overlapped and wereinterwoven within the two industrial spaces. The accumulation strategies and thegovernmental projects that supported the strategies led to a concentration of institutionsand authorities on the national scale, while shaping ‘islands of development’ in theterritorial dimension. There was a sharp contrast between the highly centralized nationalscale and the ultimately uneven development of customized institutions. If we invoke anunmodified form of Brenner’s meso-level framework, the spatial production of the SouthKorean developmental state during the 1960s was ‘either logically impossible orempirically improbable’ (see Brenner, 2004: 103–4), as it presented a case of extremelyprecarious spatial coherence. However, the issue of uneven development was notpoliticized until southwestern regionalism arose in the late 1960s, despite the fact that noteven the concepts of regional and national land planning had been formed. With this inmind, a convincing argument can be made that the spatial production of the hegemonicproject complemented morphological defects originating from the state projects andaccumulation strategies.

Modernization of the fatherland and economicnationalism as hegemonic projects

The ruling regime of the 1960s exhibited features of a ‘developmental mobilizationregime’ (Cho and Jessop, 2001), assimilating economic growth to the national interest.The legitimacy of every state program was supposedly based on the national interest(Kwon, 2006: 170–1). By this account, the development planning of Park’s regimeduring the 1960s was a modernization project that turned the ‘modernization ofthe fatherland’ discourse into a powerful hegemonic project (Cho, 2010). A surveyconducted on experts in 1967 reveals the positions taken by the participants in theindustrialization discourse (Hong, 1967: 161–76). This investigation found thatindustrialization and economic growth were the foremost priorities for modernization asperceived by intellectuals, 29.6% of them citing industrialization and 22.6% increases inliving standards. Moreover, 60.7% replied that they would sacrifice their individualfreedom in exchange for economic progress. This survey both reveals their thoughts oneconomic growth and displays their discourses.

Key ideologies of industrialization as the modernization ofthe fatherland: exportism and the ‘performance first’ ideology

Exportism was settled shortly after a comprehensive export enhancement program wasannounced in June 1964. In October of the same year, Jung-Hee Park announced that themost important step required for building the foundation for a self-supporting economywas to ‘secure foreign currency by promoting exports’ and that the foremost goal of hiseconomic policy was to ‘prioritize exports above all else’ (see Oh, 2006: 78-9). Thenicknames given to the cabinet, such as the ‘assault cabinet’ and ‘export minister’,clearly represented the character of Park’s regime (Lee, W.-B., 2006: 190). The resultsappeared even sooner than expected. In November of the following year, Korea managedto export US $100 million worth of goods, and 5 December was designated the ‘Day ofExport’. In early 1965, Jung-Hee Park promoted slogans such as ‘production increase’,‘export’, and ‘construction’ by means of his State of the Union messages, declaring‘export or death’ (Kwon, 2006: 151). Thus, exportism could not be separated from theperformance of ideology. In a situation where policies were evaluated solely byquantitative criteria, indices (such as export records) were doubtlessly dealt with as thelife-or-death ends of state planning. Since economic nationalism was the main source of



government legitimacy, announcing quantified performance measures was not merelyshowmanship but a crucial ‘art of government’. This principle was well depicted in theway Park Jung-Hee managed the state’s affairs; he mostly used the quantification method(Oh, 2006: 18).

Using a strict quantification evaluation mode, the modernization project, nowidentified with industrialization, continued throughout the 1960s, serving as thecountry’s most effective hegemonic project (Cho, 2010) with the aim of ‘becoming richall together’ (Kwon, 2006: 308). The modernization of the fatherland was thus adeclaration that industrialization would benefit everyone, going beyond differences insocial class, status and region. In this regard, along with emphasizing a single interest forthe whole territory, the discourse shaped a ‘mental space’ (Lefebvre, 2009: 225) on thenational scale. The aggregation of data on national performance had the effect ofconcealing the real economic situation on the regional and urban scales. In the end,cost-benefit analyses were based on the aggregated quantities for the whole country, onthe national scale. This was how the coherence of the state space was sustained despitealmost every region being excluded from industrialization, the ‘modernization of thefatherland’.

The rise of regionalism as a bottom-up rescaling processHaving discussed the spatial production of state projects, it is now time to explore theprocess of fracturing hegemony, particularly the function of regionalist discourse andregion building in this regard. By the late 1960s, the imagined community and economyon the national scale had been challenged and cracked by the regionalism of Honam, ahistorical name for the region that includes both South and North Jeolla. Territorializedactors who had failed in business because of state spatial selectivity implemented twoscalar strategies. The first was the Honam regionalist movement and region building.The movement reconstructed the region as a pre-modern one excluded from the‘modernization of the fatherland’. The second scalar strategy was ‘scale-jumping’through a presidential candidate. Through this strategy, the territorial coalitionconstructed a space of engagement on the national scale and articulated with themovement streams of students, the intelligentsia, and the urban middle class. Theregionalist campaigns decisively increased scepticism about the modernization ofthe fatherland (see Figure 2).

Kicking off the territorial coalition: thefirst phase without territorial strategies

No sooner had the industrialization policy through the induction of foreign capital beenannounced than a group of local capitalists based in Gwangju tried to establish anautomobile plant and organized a ‘Committee for Asia Motors Co.’s Plant Construction’on 6 July 1962 (GCCI, 1976: 377). The leader of the committee was Lee Mun-Hwan, arepresentative of local capitalists with a large overseas network (Gimm, 2009: 260). LeeMun-Hwan had visited Western Europe and the United States in November 1961 toconduct preliminary negotiations for investment. The next year, he signed an agreementfor patent rights and the supply of military vehicles with Willys Co., a US militarysupplier, and then established Asia Motors Co. in February 1962 (GCCI, 1976: 377).Moreover, he signed an agreement for a three-million-dollar investment with the NewYork-based Eisenberg Company. The campaign to establish Asia Motors and constructthe plant was the first experience that united the territorialized capitalists of Gwangju(Gimm, 2009: 260). This energetic initiative to establish a vehicle plant can be seen as themoment when the territorial interests of the Gwangju city region materialized as acoalition. Yet, although this territorial coalition adopted the strategy of intervening

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directly in policymaking through personal networks such as Lee Mun-Hwan’s overseasconnections, plant construction was impossible without the permission of the centralgovernment, specifically the EPB, which had full authority over industrial policy,including foreign loans.

The territorial coalition’s countermeasures againstpolicy change: the second phase of regionalism (1)

The effort to attract the Asia Motors plant to Gwangju faced a roadblock, but was verylikely to be realized with Eisenberg’s visit. The US Department of Defense demandedthat the facility be built before the company started supplying, whereas the Koreangovernment declared that it would not allow construction until the supply wasguaranteed. The GCCI recommended that the central government grant the permit, sincethe company needed to acquire a loan in the private domain (GCCI, 1976: 378).However, the movement for the establishment of Asia Motors Co. was not warmlywelcomed by the central government. The problem was that its automobile unificationpolicy centred on Shinjin Motors (Gimm, 2009: 261). In June 1964, the Ministry ofCommerce, Industry, and Energy prepared a draft plan for the cultivation of theautomobile industry that guaranteed the monopoly of Shinjin Motors, which had beenestablished in Busan. At the time, the government’s payment guarantee to the outsideworld was not an option but a necessity when Korean companies with low credit ratingswanted to borrow from the outside. It was thus disastrous for Lee Mun-Hwan and GCCIthat the central government had chosen Shinjin as the only automobile company allowedto get a foreign loan.

The series of government policies introduced around the time when there was hope inGwangju and South Jeolla Province created the turning point for Honam becoming amarginalized region. As newspaper articles claiming that the Shinjin Motors plant wouldbe established in Busan (in the southeast region) continued to be published, Honam’s‘raw deal’ was mentioned repeatedly. This, in turn, led to the formation of the South

Figure 2 The three phases of the Honam regionalist campaign



Jeolla Campaign Committee to Correct the Raw Deal (hereafter SJCCCRD). On 20August 1966, 60 figures from 12 fields (such as local newspapers, GCCI, labour unions,legal and religious associations, and opposition congressmen) gathered in order toinaugurate the SJCCCRD. On 22 August 1966, the SJCCCRD adopted a resolution withthe following three clauses (Kyunghyang Daily, 22 August 1966): (1) to urge theimplementation of three promised initiatives of the central government (the GwangjuIndustrial Complex, the Yeosu No. 2 oil refinery plant and the Yeongsan River basindevelopment; see Figure S3), (2) to urge the formation of a coalition of NationalAssembly members from South Jeolla, and (3) to rally all residents of the province toeradicate regional discrimination. Five representatives of the committee travelled toSeoul to deliver this resolution to the Office of the Prime Minister through congressmenfrom South Jeolla. In conjunction with reactions of the central government, theregionalist campaign was successful in the short run (Gimm, 2009: 269). In December1966, the foreign loan for Asia Motors was accepted by the central government, whichmeant the abrogation of the policy for the unification of automobile firms. Thisachievement had relied on the ‘raw deal’ discourse from South Jeolla Province (Oh,1996: 112).

Expansion from South Jeolla to Honam: the second phase of regionalism (2)

On 1 February 1968, a historic event, the groundbreaking ceremony for the Gyeong-bu(Seoul–Busan) Expressway, was held (see Figure S4). Construction had begun within 3months of the news that the expressway task force would launch in November 1967. On8 December 1967, Congressman Kim Dae-Jung, who would become the main oppositioncandidate in the 1971 presidential elections, discussed the Gyeong-bu Expressway andthe ‘raw deal’ for Honam. He asked: ‘How come investments are focused mostly on theGyeongsang region, even after the regime has been referred to as the Gyeongsangregime?’ (Secretariat of the National Assembly, 1967: 2). Local newspapers in Gwangjubegan to mention the ‘raw deal’ once again, starting in January 1968, when theexpressway plan materialized, most notably in a series of articles entitled ‘Road ofSouth Jeolla’ in the Jeonnam Daily (January 1968). The biggest problem was thedouble-tracking of the Honam (Seoul–Mokpo) Line. The promised double-tracking ofthe Honam (Seoul–Mokpo) railway had been pushed back many times since liberation.8

The Gyeong-bu (Seoul–Busan) Expressway construction plan, announced at a time whenthe Park regime was accused of being the ‘Gyeongsang Province regime’, was more thanenough to incite the territorial coalition. Thus, the Gwangju territorial coalition onceagain advocated the double-tracking of the Honam Line.

On 20 January 1967, the Committee for Securing Honam’s Interests was launchedunder the leadership of the territorial coalition and soon changed its name to the HonamRegion Modernization Committee (HRMC). The HRMC’s claims were detailed in asmall booklet called Marginalized Honam. The preface argues the following:

It is not unknown that Honam region has been quite marginalized by the development policycompared to other regions and that 7 million Honam residents openly hope to have equalbenefits from modernization, longing more desperately to devote all the power we have todevelop this backward district in all areas, including transportation, industry and socio-culturally, with a spirit of helpfulness rather than complaint and with an air of promotion ratherthan dissatisfaction (HRMC, 1968: 7, my translation).

The composition of the HRMC was significant, as it defined Honam as the newboundary. The committee extended the boundary of the ‘marginalized’ region from

8 The double-track construction of the Gyeong-bu railway was begun in 1940 and finished in 1944.Construction work on the Honam railway, by contrast, started from Daejeon only in 1978, and theentire line was not completed until 1988 (see Figure 4S).

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South Jeolla to Honam. Of course, this was done to demand that linear infrastructure passthrough South and North Jeolla (on the Honam railroad line and expressway). Whereasthe SJCCCRD had defined South Jeolla as a regional scale, the HRMC sought to extendthe territory of the marginalized region (Gimm, 2009) so that it encompassed all of Southand North Jeolla provinces.

Region building as a bottom-up rescaling process

As background to the emergence of Honam regionalism, there was an attempt at capitalconcentration by the local capitalists of Gwangju. When Park Jung-Hee held the reins ofgovernment, firms were given an opportunity to grow by acquiring foreign loans.Gwangju’s local capitalists took this opportunity. However, without scalar strategies theefforts failed. In the process, however, a strong regional coalition was established bylocal capitalists, politicians (from Gwangju, South Jeolla and North Jeolla) across thepolitical spectrum and local newspapers, leading to a transition into full-fledged scalepolitics. The next strategy chosen by the territorial coalition was region building throughthe discourse of regionalism. Whether intended or not, it was an attack on the spatialproduction of hegemonic projects which had supported the precarious coherence. Itinitially focused on the South Jeolla region, but then a regionalist campaign wasundertaken to build Honam as a marginalized region.

The regionalist campaigns, which lasted from the first attempt to build South Jeollaregion in 1966 and gathered force through the territorial expansion to Honam in 1968,achieved economic outcomes, at least in terms of changes of production value andvalue-added (see Table 2). The production values and value-addeds of Honam region arealso de facto similar to those of other regions such as Gangwon, South and NorthChungcheong and Jeju; even North Gyeongsang had the same value-added as SouthJeolla in 1971. Furthermore, taking into account the changes between 1967 and 1971,Honam was the only region whose shares in production value and value-added increased

Table 2 Regional shares and changes of production value and value-added (1963–71)

1963 1967 1971 1963–67 1967–70P a V b P V P V P V P V

Seoul 31.6 31.7 28.5 28.1 29.6 31.4 -3.1 -3.5 1.1 3.2

Gyeonggi 10.5 8.9 10.2 8.9 14.8 13.1 -0.4 0.0 4.7 4.3

Gangwon 5.7 8.9 5.2 7.8 3.2 4.6 -0.6 -1.1 -2.0 -3.2

North Chungcheong 4.1 5.1 4.1 5.4 2.5 2.8 -0.1 0.3 -1.6 -2.6

South Chungcheong 4.7 4.3 5.9 6.6 5.5 6.5 1.2 2.3 -0.4 -0.2

Jeju 0.5 0.6 0.3 0.3 0.2 0.2 -0.2 -0.3 -0.1 -0.1

Southwest (Honam) 9.9 11.0 7.5 7.8 10.0 10.1 -2.4 -3.1 2.5 2.2

North Jeolla 4.6 5.7 3.0 3.2 3.4 3.6 -1.7 -2.5 0.4 0.3

South Jeolla 5.2 5.3 4.5 4.6 6.6 6.5 -0.7 -0.7 2.1 1.9

Southeast 32.9 29.5 38.4 35.0 34.2 31.4 5.5 5.6 -4.2 -3.6

North Gyeongsang 12.5 12.4 10.7 10.3 7.2 6.5 -1.8 -2.2 -3.5 -3.8

South Gyeongsang 3.5 3.4 8.2 10.1 11.3 12.1 4.7 6.6 3.1 2.0

Busan 16.9 13.7 19.5 14.7 15.7 12.9 2.6 1.1 -3.8 -1.8aP = production valuebV = value-addedSource: Statistics Korea, Korean Statistical Information System, http://kosis.kr (accessed 3.5.12)



apart from Seoul, Gyeonggi and South Gyeongsang, where industrial complexes wereestablished. Minister Chung-Hun Park of the EPB offered a clue to the economic resultof Honam regionalism during an argument with opposition congressman Dae-Jung Kim,who problematized the ‘raw deal’ to Honam, on 22 November 1968 as follows: ‘Butspending is significant in various categories, which makes for a great deal, not a raw dealfor South Jeolla Province according to the statistics of the Health Department’(Secretariat of the National Assembly, 1968: 30).

However, in 1970, In-Cheon Park, the chairman of the GCIC, attempted tonationalize the issue. He visited journalists, especially from South and North Jeollaprovinces, working for major national newspapers to ask for reports on themarginalization of Honam. Not long after that, two major newspapers, the Dong-ADaily and the Chosun Daily, posted editorials and news items about Honam. On 27August 1970, the Dong-A Daily posted the article ‘To settle Honam Marginalization,’and, on September 4, the Chosun Daily posted the long editorial ‘Basic Insight intoNational Land Development’.

During the process of region building, Honam’s physical boundary had fluctuatedaccording to political and economic interests. Politicians, local newspapers, localcapitalists and social organizations in Gwangju all talked about the ‘raw deal’ and themodernization of Honam, but they were agents territorialized mainly in South Jeolla,particularly in Gwangju. Eventually, a regionalist discourse began with local Gwangjuagents, went through South Jeolla province, constructed Honam as a ‘land marginalizedfrom modernization’ and ultimately damaged the coherence of state space and thehegemony of the ‘modernization of the fatherland’. In sum, the state spatial process ofthe 1960s did not build a regional scale but merely produced islands of development onthe local scale in accordance with decision-making on the national scale. It was, rather,the bottom-up regionalism led by local capitalists that had built the regional scale inresponse to state spatial production during this period. The local actors resorted toregionalism to maximize opportunities and seek the state-created rents given by thestate-led development strategies.

Fracturing hegemony and top-down rescaling:multi-scalar agent and space of engagement

In the 1971 election, Dae-Jung Kim, the main opposition candidate, got huge supportfrom the public. He blasted the development strategy of the ruling regime: ‘We have livedthrough ‘the dark despotic era’ in the 1950s and ‘a period of military dictatorship in the1960s. Now the 1970s is the time to realize the hopeful people’s country’ (Chosun Daily,17 October 1970). He presented ‘mass-participatory economics’ and ‘mass-participatorydemocracy’ as a pair and promised to reform the structure of uneven development createdby the previous decade’s developmental regime.

Kim’s argument was thoroughly detailed in an article in the January issue ofSasanggye in 1970, entitled ‘The Vision of the 1970s: Fulfilment of Mass ParticipatoryDemocracy’. In it, he denounced the elitist modus operandi and the monopolization ofwealth by a few privileged jaebols, while describing the people as the leading agents ofchange.

He concretized a democracy model for decentralization and balanced growth, andproblematized almost every strategy and project of Park’s regime that had been sustainedduring the decade (see Table 3). The hostility that emerged in urban areas toward Park’sattempts to hold on to power for the long term could be easily mobilized through Kim’spolitical resources (see Kim, 2004 : 124–5). Honam regionalism could also be articulatedthrough a ‘mass economy theory’ in a discursive manner because the theory, whichaimed for devolution and balanced development, had a closer discursive affinity withHonam regionalism. Moreover, as a multi-scalar agent, Dae-Jung Kim had been an activeleader of the regionalist campaign.

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Top-down rescaling as response to bottom-up rescaling

Jung-Hee Park countered that the existing route and strategy should be retained andstrengthened (Chosun Daily, 18 March 1971) and stressed deepening the strategy ofmodernization of the fatherland. On 17 October 1972, Park declared martial law,dissolved the National Assembly, and announced that the Emergency State Council ofCabinet would act with the Assembly’s authority. Ten days later Park promulgated thecomprehensive reform known as the ‘Yushin’ (restoration), inspired by the JapaneseMeiji Restoration, with the slogan ‘Bu-Guk-Gang-Byoung’, which means a wealthycountry and a powerful army (Kim, 2004: 139).

However, two momentous changes were observed: the First Comprehensive NationalLand Development Plan (1972–81) and the ‘Saemaul Undong’ (New Village Movementfor rural areas). While the developmental regime of the 1960s had only produced severalindustrial places like islands of development, the Yushin regime began to recognizeits territory as the object to be mobilized and integrated into developmentalistmodernization. In particular, regional scales emerged as the de facto foci of stateplanning in general. The land development plan divided the entire territory into fourregions, and the four regions were subsequently subdivided into eight intermediatedevelopment regions. Meanwhile, the government publicized the Saemaul movementas a ‘rural revitalization movement’ or a ‘rural modernization movement’ (Ministryof Home Affairs, 1980: 668–70). These two had played not merely the role of agovernmental project to functionally reorganize state space in both the scalar andterritorial dimensions but also, especially in the case of the Saemaul movement, the roleof a hegemonic project in complementing the vulnerability of state space producedduring the 1960s. Consequently, the Yushin regime sought to restore spatial coherencethrough top-down regionalism and region building as a response to the bottom-upregionalism of Honam.

ConclusionThis article has attempted to examine the interaction between the top-down andbottom-up rescaling processes, as follows. First, I critically reviewed the existingliterature on state rescaling in the context of the developmental state, specifically tosuggest revisions to it in the context of the developmental era of South Korea. I then

Table 3 State projects and accumulation strategies of the mass participatory democracyand the mass economy theory

State Projects/Strategies Major Policy Programs

Political projects • Mass participatory democracy instead of Park’s nationalistdemocracy

• An immediate implementation of local autonomy (devolution)

Governmental projects • Promoting agricultural industry by abolishing the low-pricedgrain policy

• Systematic planning for land development (balanced socialoverhead cost investment)

• Operation of a labour–capital joint commission and a reductionof government intervention in labour–capital relations

Accumulation strategies • Encouragement of balanced industrialization among industriesand regions

• Growth of small and medium-sized national capital through themixed economy

Sources: Kim, D.-J. (1989: 163–371); Rhyu (2010: 136), selected by author



proposed two concepts in a more general sense, namely, spatial coherence to provide ahypothetical interpretation and the multi-scalar agent who facilitates articulation amongdifferent factions in the strategic relation of the nation-state. Second, I addressed thecoherence among spatial selectivities that were produced through state projects (politicaland governmental projects) and state strategies (capital accumulation strategies andhegemonic projects) during the 1960s. By this analysis, I proposed a possibleinterpretation of coherence with respect to its shortcomings and vulnerability to politicsof scale like regionalist politics. The third part showed the range of strategies availableto territorial coalitions in particular, highlighting the roles of the multi-scalar agent. I wasable to formulate, through the case study, a possible path through which the form ofcoalition and its strategies evolved corresponding to the morphological change of statespace. At the end of the case study, the space of engagement opened up by thepresidential election in 1971 was discussed. By highlighting the roles of Dae-Jung Kim,the main opposition candidate, as a multi-scalar agent, I elucidated how regionalismengaged in the political space on the national scale and contributed to fracturing thehegemony.

Specifically, the rescaling process in South Korea during the 1960s could provide apossible reference for future studies on cases that show features of ‘contemporaneousnon-contemporaneity’ (Bloch, 1991: 97–116) in the spatial sense, ranging from theIndustrial Revolution era in Germany to more recently developing countries includingChina. Two features should be highlighted here: (1) capitalist accumulation strategies asgovernmental projects in state-led industrialization, and vice versa; (2) the significanceof spatial production through hegemonic projects, which enabled people to consider thewhole territory as a homogenous single unit of economic growth. In a more general vein,I have offered two concepts: spatial coherence to assess the vulnerability of state spaceproduced by state processes, and the multi-scalar agent as a condition under which theregionalist faction and its regionalism as a strategy could successfully be engaged withother factions and their strategies in the political space on the national scale. In addition,a simple suggestion for an improvement in methodology has been made; I sought toexamine the rents that were produced by state intervention in the financial market as acriterion to figure out the scalar division of labour.

The article concludes by mentioning some of the further problems raised by this casestudy. Above all, it seems necessary to examine various spatio-temporal matrices ofdevelopmental eras by countries, which could contribute to the literature on staterescaling as well as the studies on developmental states. Furthermore, if the country hasalready passed the phase of rapid growth, we can focus on the articulation of the layer ofthe developmental era and the newly organized layer produced by globalization orneoliberal drive. Where a country is now going through a period of developmentalisttransformation under conditions of globalization, or neoliberalism, significantcomparative studies may be carried out.

Dong-Wan Gimm ([email protected]), The Bartlett School of Planning, UniversityCollege London, Wates House, 22 Gordon Street, London WC1H 0QB, UK.

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Supporting InformationAdditional Supporting Information may be found in the online version of this article atthe publisher’s web-site:

Figure S1 The change in gross domestic product and gross fixed capital formation(Source: Bank of Korea, Economic Statistics System, http://ecos.bok.or.kr, accessed6.1.13.)

Figure S2 The change in industrial structure (source: Bank of Korea, EconomicStatistics System, http://ecos.bok.or.kr, accessed 6.1.13)

Figure S3 Yeosu and the Yeongsan River

Figure S4 Railway and expressway connections

Table S1 Regional distribution of the entrepreneurs of large companies during the 1960s



Fracturing Hegemony: Regionalism and State Rescaling in South Korea, 1961–71

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