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Insulation with Solidarity as a Political Condition forImplementation of Polarized Development Strategy: theSouth Korean Experience and its TheoreticalImplicationsJung Won Sonn aa Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, UK

Online Publication Date: 01 August 2007To cite this Article: Sonn, Jung Won (2007) 'Insulation with Solidarity as a PoliticalCondition for Implementation of Polarized Development Strategy: the South KoreanExperience and its Theoretical Implications', International Planning Studies, 12:3,221 - 240

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Insulation with Solidarity as a PoliticalCondition for Implementation of PolarizedDevelopment Strategy: the South KoreanExperience and its Theoretical Implications

JUNG WON SONNBartlett School of Planning, University College London, UK

ABSTRACT Polarized development strategy was a standard policy tool in the development ofunderdeveloped countries during the 1960s and 1970s and today it continues to be so in itsevolved forms. For polarized development strategy to be successful, it is critical that the centralstate be insulated from local growth alliances that attempt to take resources into their ownbackyards, even if that is against the interest of the national economy as a whole. At the sametime, if the state is completely insulated, it will not have enough political support to maintain itspower and implement policies. Therefore, solidarity with a small number of regions is alsoimportant. This paper demonstrates this point through a theoretical discussion of polarizeddevelopment strategy and an empirical analysis of South Korea’s experience.

Introduction

The objective of this paper is to understand the political conditions that are required for

polarized development strategy to work effectively. I try to achieve this objective

through a theoretical discussion of polarized development strategy and an empirical analy-

sis of South Korea’s experience.

Polarized development strategy is an economic strategy that attempts to generate

agglomeration economy and then spread its benefits to other parts of the country, even-

tually achieving spatially balanced economic growth. (Friedmann, 1966) In territorial

planning, polarized development strategy has long been the orthodoxy for developing

countries and today it continues to be so in its evolved forms, such as the new regionalist

approach (Cooke and Morgan, 1998). The discussion of polarized development strategy in

the Anglophone academia, however, has been narrowly focused on the strategy’s econ-

omic rationale. It has seldom focused on the strategy’s political dimensions. In this

context, this paper sheds some light on the inter-regional politics that not only conditioned

polarized development strategy but also were affected by polarized development strategy.

International Planning Studies

Vol. 12, No. 3, 221–240, August 2007

Correspondence Address: Jung Won Sonn, Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, Wates

House, 22 Gordon Street, WC1H 0QB London, UK. Email: j.son@ucl.ac.uk

ISSN 1356-3475 Print/1469-9265 Online/07/030221-20 # 2007 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/13563470701640135

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007 Theoretically, this paper introduces the concept of the local growth alliance to explain

the political conditions for polarized development strategy. On the empirical front, this

paper uses South Korea’s experience. I chose South Korea mainly because the inter-

regional politics play such important roles in contemporary Korean politics that the

study of South Korea helps us answer theoretical questions about interactions between

polarized development strategy and inter-regional politics. In addition, the country’s

experience itself has practical and academic value. That is because the burgeoning litera-

ture on South Korean development has not yet fully covered the spatial dimension. This

oversight occurs in spite of the fact that polarized development strategy has played an

important role in this rare instance of a nation of low-income rising to be a nation of

high-income.

In terms of research method, this research combines the analysis of raw data with a

reinterpretation of existing research. The raw data for this research includes the public

speeches of President Park Jung-Hee and other politicians, the memoirs of key bureau-

crats, legislation, planning documents, and official statistics from government agencies.

In addition, literature written in English and Korean on the South Korean state and its

economic development was surveyed widely, and some of its data and findings were

reinterpreted within the context of territorial planning and inter-regional politics.

Revisiting Polarized Development Strategy: A Theoretical Discussion

The Long-Lasting Orthodoxy in Territorial Planning

Polarized development strategy seems to be one of the few long-lived planning strategies.

Different versions of the strategy exist but most of them find their theoretical origins in

Hirshman (1958), Myrdal (1964), and Friedmann (1966, 1979). While being different in

their details, these theorists commonly theorized two phases of the spatial development.

In the first stage, ‘industrialization typically leads to a concentration of investments

upon one or two areas, while much of the remaining national territory becomes location-

ally obsolete’ (Friedmann, 1966: 9). The theorists argue that the government should con-

tinue to invest for a certain period of time so as to make ‘possible further growth of

industry and trade in the favored areas’, (Hirshman, 1958: 193) even if that results in

widening of the regional gap.

The second phase comes into play once industrialization reaches a certain point. The

continued growth of a developed region may result in the over-use of its resources in

that region and the under-use of resources in other regions. In such a case, the government

should start to pay attention to the distribution of productive activities across regions. The

government should ‘counterbalance the northward emigration of capital and talent,’ with

‘an even larger flow in the opposite direction’. This counterbalancing can be achieved

through the use of tax incentives and infrastructure investment in underdeveloped

regions (Hirshman, 1958: 194).

Polarized development strategy was often equated with the growth centre approach,

which was widely discussed and implemented in the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing upon

Perroux’s (1950) idea of a growthpole, Boudeville (1966) deployed the concept of a

growth centre, which was also called growthpole among regional planners. Boudeville

defined a growth centre as a geographical concentration of a dynamically growing (propul-

sive) industry with its related (affected) industries. The growth centre concept provided

222 J.W. Sonn

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007 polarized development strategy with toolkits for the analysis of an input–output system:

the criteria for choosing target industries and policies to influence a firm’s location

decisions.

In the subsequent discussion, however, growth centre strategy was largely discredited in

both the research and practice of territorial planning (Hermansen, 1972; Thomas, 1972;

Dawkins, 2003). Critics of growth centre strategy such as Holland (1976) pointed out

that growth centre theorists fail to take into account oligopoly competition, where firms

mainly respond to one another’s strategies (over which the policy has little influence)

rather than to market signals (some of which the state can generate or influence). Other

critics, such as Darwent (1969) and Higgins (1983), criticized on the inappropriate use

of input–output analysis and its inability to explain the difference in economic growth

among developed regions, respectively. These critiques almost completely wiped out a

discussion of the growth centre from the territorial planning literature.

While polarized development as a territorial planning strategy is being forgotten, this as

an outcome of capitalist development is widely accepted across several schools of thought.

Marxist economic geographers argued that spatially uneven development is a natural part

of capital accumulation (Harvey, 1982; Dunford & Perrons, 1983; Massey, 1984; Smith,

1984). Institutionalist economic geographers maintain that most vibrant sectors of the

economy are clustered in a small number of places. They thereby imply that the regional

economic gap is rather persistent (Scott, 1993; Saxenian, 1994; Storper, 1997; Sonn &

Storper, forthcoming). In economics, Paul Krugman argues that more established indus-

trial centres are likely to be more efficient (Krugman, 1991, 1995). A possible, though

by no means the only, policy implication of these theories is that the state can foster econ-

omic growth by promoting polarized development, and that the spatial distribution of

wealth should be postponed to the future when enough wealth has been created, the

same policy option as the polarized development strategy proposes. A recent flurry in

world–city promotion in the policy circles across nations is one example (Lim &

Wong, 2005; Rim, 2005; Department of Urban Development, 2007). By emphasizing

on investments in most developed parts of the respective countries, the advocates of

global-city development are, in effect, advocating a polarized development strategy.

New regionalists in policy circles who advocate innovation-led development are actually

advocating polarized development, too, because—at least for Wales, their most successful

example—the central government’s investments were critical, and these investments

recreated a few pockets in Wales as centres of economic growth, according to Lovering

(1999).

In other words, polarized development strategy still maintains its relevance in the ter-

ritorial planning discussion. Decades of discussion in the Anglophone academia,

however, seem to be focused narrowly on economic dynamics (i.e., whether or not it

makes sense from an economic point of view). Both critics and advocates of polarized

development strategy have seldom explicitly discussed the political process that accompa-

nies, conditions and is influenced by the formulation and implementation of the polarized

development strategy. This is possibly because potentially useful theories such as Marxist

state theories (Dear & Scott, 1982; Clark & Dear, 1984), Marxist theories of uneven devel-

opment (Harvey, 1982; Dunford & Perrons, 1983; Massey, 1984; Smith, 1984), and

Weberian theories of urban politics (Molotch, 1976; Logan & Molotch, 1987) were

included in the planning research mainly in the late 1970s and 1980s, after the theoretical

discussion of polarized development strategy passed its peak. But if polarized

South Korean Experience and its Theoretical Implications 223

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007 development strategy is still popular, if not dominant, under a different disguise, its further

study and its political aspects have both historical and practical value. The following sub-

section attempts to theorize the political process of polarized development using theories

from urban politics and political geography, which were mainly developed in the 1980s

and 1990s.

The Growth Alliance and Unspoken Politics behind Polarized Development Strategy

For the creators of polarized development strategy, politics was not of much concern.

This is because, they assumed that the state is the arbitrator of a society that pursues

‘the common and long-term interests of the community at large’ (Myrdal, 1964: 87).

This assumption is, however, naı̈ve at best because the formulation of policy—as well

as its implementation—involves multiple interest groups, most of which act mainly

upon their own interests. These diverse groups, acting within and outside the state,

attempt to influence state policies, thereby making policy processes highly political.

In the case of territorial planning, the policy process is often a political power struggle

among regions, and between regions and the central state on the location of investments.

Struggle among regions exists mainly because the impact of investment is often spatially

bound (Park, 2003b). This is particularly so when the investment is for a spatially fixed

infrastructure, such as industrial complexes, roads, railways, and bridges, whose benefits

is mostly localized (Swyngedow, 1992).

The attempt to attract investment is often a class-cross/sector-cross mission because the

benefits of physical infrastructure are region-wide. Some classes and sectors benefit more,

as Cox and Mair (1988) maintained, but fixed public collective goods benefit the most

influential actors in a region by creating investment opportunities for the capitalist

class, jobs for workers, and higher land rent for the land-owning class. These possibilities

trigger the formation of an alliance among some of the most influential individuals and

groups in the region, which I will call the local growth alliance. I avoid using the term

‘local growth coalition’ because that term, developed specifically in a U.S. context,

usually implies a formal organization among power elites (Molotch, 1976; Logan &

Molotch, 1987). I use growth alliance in a more general way, one that encompasses

loose networks of local elites as well as formal organizations such as a growth coalition.

Irrespective of the organizational forms, local growth alliances aim to attract the invest-

ments from external bodies. The investors can be any outside bodies such as central

government, businesses, universities and any other entity (Harvey, 1985). But when the

state is highly centralized and national politics have a critical influence on local economic

development, as was the case in South Korea during the 1970s, the local growth alliances’

main objective is to influence the central state to invest in their regions (Park, 2003a: 817).

In their attempt to attract state investment, local growth alliances utilize diverse chan-

nels, such as exerting pressure on local members of the national assembly, manipulating

public discourse and lobbying bureaucrats. From a national economic point of view,

however, a politicized process of investment decisions does not always bring about desir-

able results. Because the main objective of a local growth alliance is the growth of its local

economy rather than that of the national economy, it would attempt to attract any invest-

ment, even if that investment could be more efficient in another region. Therefore, if policy

process is strongly influenced by local growth alliances, it is difficult for the state to choose

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007 the site that has the most favourable conditions for industrialization. It is also hard for them

to continue investing in that site for a reasonably long period of time.

It is for this reason that the central state needs some insulation from local growth

alliances. However, if the central state is completely insulated from local growth alliances,

the it will not have enough of the support that is needed for the maintenance of power and

consistent policy implementations. I will discuss how the balance between insulation and

support was achieved in South Korea in section 4, after a brief discussion in section 3 on

how polarized development strategy unfolded in South Korea.

The Polarized Development Strategy in South Korea

Economic development of South Korea is often attributed to the state’s economic planning

(Deyo, 1987; Amsden, 1989; Wade, 2003). Spatial planning, which was based on polar-

ized development strategy, implicitly during the 1960s and more explicitly during the

1970s, was an important apparatus in implementing economic plans.

In the 1960s, South Korea’s economic strategy was focused on non-durable consumer

products. To oversee that focus, the state designated Kuro district, Seoul and Pupyong dis-

trict, Inchon, and Ulsan, as the Special Industrial Estates. Transportation projects

accompanied the industrial development. The project that best symbolizes the polarized

development strategy in South Korea was the construction of the Gyeongbu Expressway

between 1964 and 1970. This highway connected Seoul, the most industrialized region at

that time with the southeastern coast, which was the site for the development of polarized

development strategy in the 1960s and 1970s.

The 1970s saw the beginning of a more explicit strategy of polarized development.

During this phase, the state attempted to transform the economic structure from one

centred on nondurable consumer goods to that on heavy and chemical industries. This

plan was made public by President Park Jung Hee in 1973 as the Plan for Heavy and

Chemical Industries (Park, 1973). Under this plan, the state used territorial planning to

create industrial complexes, transportation, and other infrastructure for heavy and chemi-

cal industries in the Yong-Nam region. The Gyeongbu Expressway that penetrates Yong-

Nam became a fully-blown developmental axis with most state-built industrial complexes

of the 1970s alongside it (See Figure 1).

The document that most comprehensively shows the direction of spatial planning during

this period is The First National Comprehensive Physical Plan (Plan henceforth).

This plan, which set the urban- and regional-planning guidelines for both the central

and local governments, clearly shows the state’s desire for polarized development (Suh

& Lee, 1990). The Plan pointed to the southeastern coast of the Yong-Nam Region as

the site of development. 1

This South-Eastern Coastal Industrial Belt Region is expected to be responsible for

approximately one-third of the nation’s manufacturing output. This productivity

will, in turn, create an increase in population in major cities on the Southeastern

coast. There will appear mega cities of commercial and industrial functions such

as free-trade zones, which will be base camps for the [country’s] international out-

reach.

(The Government of the Republic of Korea, 1971: 28)

South Korean Experience and its Theoretical Implications 225

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Because the Plan was a guideline without legal binding, the state passed a series of leg-

islative bills to execute the Plan. Among the most important was the Industrial Complexes

Promotion Act of 1973. Article 8 of this law ordained that when the minister of construc-

tion designates an industrial complex according to this law, any other legal procedures are

bypassed. This meant that architectural laws, zoning controls, environmental regulations,

and all other planning restrictions could be simply ignored.

Based on this act, the state developed a vast area of industrial complexes. Between 1972

and 1976, 87.5% of the total area of industrial complexes was developed by central or local

governments. This is a very high ratio, even by South Korean standards, considering that

only 56.7% of the cumulative total area between 1967 and 1988 was developed by the

central or local government entities (the Ministry of Construction and Transportation

2005). The state’s development of industrial complexes gave it very strong leverage regard-

ing the location decisions of private businesses because, at that point, land for industrial use

was scarce.2 The state used this leverage in pursuing the polarized development strategy that

was outlined in the Plan. Of the 17 industrial complexes designated by the central govern-

ment during the Plan period, seven were in the Southeastern Coastal Industrial Belt and

three in other parts of Yong-Nam. Only five were in other regions (See Figure 1).

Development of the South-Eastern Coastal Industrial Belt and Yong-Nam in general

contributed to the South Korean economy’s transition to heavy and chemical industries.

Figure 1. National Industrial complexes and Expressways in 1970s. Sources: Data from the Ministryof Construction and Transportation (2005); Korean Highway Corporation (2005)

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At the same time, the spatially polarized strategy for industrialization resulted in a regional

disparity. Figure 2 shows changes in each region’s share in juristic persons’ assets.

Yong-Nam’s share increased from 26.0 in 1968 to 33.0 in 1977. Other measures such

as the manufacturing employment, total value added, and the number of establishments

in manufacturing, all indicate similar trend. (Kim, 1992: 124)

Economic Rationality in South Korea’s Polarized Development Strategy

A polarized development strategy requires an economically rational choice of development

site. The South Korean state seems to have achieved this aim. In the 1970s, the Yong-Nam

region was the most economically rational choice for a growth centre, even though the

Capital region was more industrialized at that point of time. Due to the special qualities

of the heavy and chemical industries, the Capital region had to be avoided. First of all,

the heavy and chemical industries required a large-scale productive infrastructure that indi-

vidual businesses could not afford and Seoul could not provide. The heavy and chemical

industries needed a specialized infrastructure that included industrial complexes, ports,

roads, and utilities. Those large-scale infrastructures would, as Oh Won Chol (1996), one

of Park’s economic aids, wrote in his memoirs, cost much less when they were freshly

built in green fields than when they were redeveloped in existing built-up areas.

Furthermore, unlike the consumer product industries in Seoul, which took advantage of

a virtually unlimited supply of unskilled immigrants from the rural areas, the heavy and

chemical industries needed trained workers. When trained workers are not sufficiently

available, which was the case, it is critical to retain workers for a certain period of

time. This is because it takes longer to recover firms’ investment in workers’ training.

For this reason, decent-quality collective consumption goods within commuting distance

from the factories needed to be provided for workers and their families.3

Figure 2. Each region’s share in juristic persons’ assent, 1968 and 1977. Source: Korean NationalStatistical Office 2007a

South Korean Experience and its Theoretical Implications 227

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007 But even if green-field development was advantageous, one may wonder whether the

state could not choose regions other than Yong-Nam. It turns out that Yong-Nam was

the best region in many ways, as Oh Won Chol (1996) recalls. In terms of natural con-

ditions, cities in the South-East were endowed with better seaports (Markusen & Park,

1993). Furthermore, Yong-Nam had Busan and Daegu, the second and third largest

cities in Korea, both of which were large sources of labour.

In addition, cities in Yong-Nam had a better industrial base. During Japanese occupancy

between 1910 and 1945, cities in Yong-Nam were more industrialized than cities in any

other regions in the southern peninsula, which was later constituted as South Korea,

although not comparable to cities in the northern part of the peninsula. Because of its

proximity to Japan, Busan, the largest city in Yong-Nam, was more industrialized

than any other city, apart from Seoul. In the 1940s, Yong-Nam constituted 13.8% of

the total industrial output, which was higher than other regions in South Korea except

the Capital region. Furthermore, during the Korean War (1950–1953), Yong-Nam was

the only region that remained mostly unscathed from urban battles, chaos in the judicial

system and, most importantly, the US Air Force’s indiscriminate bombings. Consequently,

Yong-Nam’s importance to industry grew even more after the war. Therefore, it was

reasonable for Yong-Nam to attract more state and foreign investment than other

regions during the 1950s, a tendency, which in turn reinforced Yong-Nam’s status

(Kim, 1997: 206).

These conditions made Yong-Nam a better choice for concentrated investment than the

other four regions and thus the state’s decision was economically rational. Rational selec-

tion of the site is, however, only a minimum requirement for polarized development as I

theoretically argued in section 2. If strongly challenged by local growth alliances, polar-

ized development strategy cannot be implemented even if it is ‘rational’, from a national

economy perspective. The next section deals with political conditions that enabled the

South Korean state to implement polarized development.

Political Conditions for Polarized Development

Insulation: The Weakness of Regional Representation

If strong challenges from local growth alliances are an obstacle to polarized development,

an absence or weakness of local growth alliances would create a favourable situation. Such

was the case in South Korea during the 1970s, partly because of historical contingencies

and partly because of the deliberate actions of Park’s administration.

Among the four mainland regions that were not selected as the site of polarized devel-

opment, Gang-Won and Choong-Chong are relatively small regions that were seldom

main actors in contemporary inter-regional politics, at least until the 1990s. But the

other two, the Capital region and Ho-Nam, had larger populations and have often been

key actors in contemporary inter-regional politics. Why then did these two regions not

resist the unfair treatment of Park’s administration?

The Capital region did not have to resist because it was thriving without the state’s

deliberate sponsorship. First, the consumer products industry that led South Korea’s

economy during the 1960s was still vibrant during the 1970s. More importantly,

however, most business conglomerates or Chaebols had their headquarters in the

Capital Region, despite their production facilities being located in Yong-Nam. Chaebols

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007 chose to locate their headquarters in the Capital region to maintain close interpersonal

contacts with bureaucrats which were crucial in keeping abreast of certain critical infor-

mation and also in keeping the states supportive of business activities. This was the

case because of the state-guided economy that was in place, whereby the state often

secretly made important decisions in informal and sometimes even unlawful ways. There-

fore, Seoul was not in desperate need of the state’s deliberate patronage.

Ho-Nam, however, was in a different situation: once the most prosperous region thanks

to its fertile land, its economy lagged behind under Park’s Administration. Furthermore,

Ho-Nam was the home of Kim Sung Soo and his group, the most influential political

group during the latter part of the Japanese occupancy (1910–1945). The region

could have become the main challenger to the polarized development strategy of Park’s

administration if a series of incidents during the 1950s had not impeded its elites and

Kim Sung Soo’s group, in particular.

During the Japanese occupancy, Kim Sung Soo and his group emerged as dominant due to

their cooperative attitudes towards the Japanese colonial government. Although this group

included some strict nationalists, the majority of them, including Kim Sung Soo himself,

cooperated with the Japanese colonial government for business and political opportunities.

Furthermore, even the nationalist wing of this group pursued semi-autonomy within the

Japanese Empire rather than a complete liberation. Naturally, the Japanese colonial govern-

ment favoured this group over the radical nationalist and communists, who organized mili-

tary action for Korea’s complete liberation. It was also natural that Kim Sung Soo’s group

expanded its business and political influence under the Japanese colonial government’s

patronage. The influence of this group in Korean politics was so strong that the Japanese

colonial government even considered having it take over the administration, when

Japan’s defeat became evident towards the end of World War II (Eckert, 1991).

When Japan retreated from Korea after its defeat in World War II in 1945, Kim Sung Soo

and his group’s political influence was matched only by leftists, although the formers’ col-

laborative background with the colonial government meant that they were not completely

accepted by the people. It was logical for Rhee Syngman, the first president of modern

South Korea who had public support but did not have political organizations to build an alli-

ance with Kim Sung Soo’s group, to consolidate his power against leftists and radical nation-

alists. Until 1948, Kim Sung Soo and Ho-Nam’s elites were, therefore, the most influential

political group aside from President Rhee Syngman. In 1948, however, when these Ho-Nam

elites opposed both President Rhee’s ministerial appointment of his close aids and his radical

plan for agricultural land reform, President Rhee broke the alliance. This event served as a

blow to the political influence Kim Sung Soo Group.

Land reform is of particular importance in explaining the further collapse of Kim Sung

Soo’s group. This group was supported by the landlord class and was thus resistant to

President Rhee’s radical plan for agricultural land reform. However, the peasants’

desire for land, which was fuelled by the socialist land reform in North Korea, prompted

President Rhee to implement land reform in a relatively radical way. According to one

estimate, only 15% of the landlord class received reimbursement greater than subsistence

level (Kim, 1993: 54). Consequently, only a small portion of the landlord class success-

fully transformed themselves into capitalists, while the majority collapsed. This meant

that Kim Sung Soo’s group lost its main supporters and material foundation. Futhermore,

political position of the peasants completely changed. Before the land reform, they were

under their landlords’ ideological influence as well as economic subordination and

South Korean Experience and its Theoretical Implications 229

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007 supported Kim Sung Soo’s group. After the land reform, independent small farm owners

with no reason to be controlled by the landlord class, former peasants, became supportive

of President Rhee who had made land reform possible (Kim, 2000). Consequently, in the

1950 general election, the Korean Democrat Party, the successor to the Democratic

National Party, and its allies won only 22% of the seats. That figure was substantially

lower than the 38% they had garnered during the 1948 election (Kim, 2000: 199). Their

decreased influence was even clearer in their power base, the Ho-Nam region, where agri-

culture was the main industry. Their share of the vote in two Ho-Nam provinces was

11.6% and 20%, respectively, down substantially from the 26.1% and 37.7% that they

received in the 1948 general election (National Election Commission, 2005).

The Kim Sung Soo group’s attempts at counter-attack were seldom successful. The first

such noticeable attempt occurred during the Korean War. The Korean Democrat Party, of

which Kim Sung Soo’s group was the core, made a wide-ranging alliance with indepen-

dent members of the Assembly to attack President Rhee. This alliance, however, was

demolished by Rhee Syngman’s self-coup in 1952 and his embracing of the independent

members afterwards.

In 1960, another opportunity presented itself. At this point, Kim Sung Soo had died and

the politicians who had originated from his group were in the Democrat Party as a sect

called the Original Democrats, or Goopa. The other sector, which was composed of

former Japanese colonial government technocrats and other collaborators of Japanese

colonialism, was called the New Democrats, or Sinpa, because they had newly entered

into politics. The 19 April civil uprising forced President Rhee to admit his election

frauds and step down. In the subsequent election, under a new constitution with a

double executive system, the Democrat Party won. But the Sinpa won the prime ministeral

position and other essential cabinet positions. That situation left Goopa with those

positions such as that of President, which was only nominal under the new constitution

and led Goopa to split from the ruling party. To make matters worse, in 1961, General

Park Chung Hee overturned the Democrat government by launching a military coup.

He then placed restrictions on the political rights of many former politicians with the

excuse of eradicating corruption.4 As a result, the Ho-Nam elites found themselves

outside institutionalized politics.

It is important to note that Kim Song Soo’s group was seldom an explicit advocate of

Ho-Nam. However, considering that the majority of core members were from Ho-Nam

region and were elected there, this group was a potential advocate that might very well

have become an explicit advocate, when it became apparent in the 1970s that the

Park’s Administration on polarized development strategy was against Ho-Nam’s interest

and the Ho-Nam people started to resent this antagonism.

During Park’s eighteen years in presidency, the remaining members of the Democrat

Party, and under many different party names including the New Democrat Party, com-

prised the main opposition. The potential representation of Ho-Nam, however, was

even less possible than it was before Park came into power. That was because the political

resistance had to embrace diverse political groups such as nationalists and leftists, which

were against President Park. Kim Young-Sam, a young and rising politician and the direct

successor to Kim Sung Soo, was elected in the Yong-Nam region. Meanwhile, Kim

Dae-Jung, a charismatic figure who was elected in Ho-Nam, was regarded as a New

Democrat successor. Kim Dae-Jung was later accepted as Ho-Nam’s leader but not

fully until after the 15 May Democratic Uprising in 1980 (Moon, 2002). This meant

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007 that, during the 1970s when Park’s administration explicitly pursued polarized develop-

ment strategy, Ho-Nam did not have strong regional representation in national politics.

In the absence of strong regional political advocates, Ho-Nam could still have had influ-

ence on central government if there had been many high-ranking bureaucrats from that

region. This is because during the Park regime, President Park was highly supportive of

bureaucracy, thanks to his dislike to congressional politics. President Park and his infor-

mation agencies, such as the Korean Central Information Agency, had the means to coerce

members of the congress while the elite bureaucrats were answerable directly to Park

himself (Evans, 1995). However, Park Jung Hee favoured bureaucrats from Yong-Nam,

while bureaucrats from other regions, especially from Ho-Nam, a region of potential

threat, were discriminated against. This becomes evident if the numbers of high-ranking

bureaucrats are broken down according to regional origins. Of the 345 bureaucrats who

ranked equal to ministers or to vice ministers during Park’s eighteen-year reign, 130 or

37.7% came from the Yong-Nam region. This is quite a large number considering that the

population of Yong-Nam in 1925 was 25.8% of South Korea’s total population (See Table 1).5

The president’s secretaries were even more regionally biased. In 1963, four out of six

senior secretaries and six out of eight secretaries were from the Yong-Nam region.

Given the unchecked presidential power under President Park’s authoritarian regime, a

presidential secretary was more influential than ministers or members of the national

assembly.

Without many advocates in the national assembly or in the bureaucracy, Ho-Nam was in

a difficult position in terms of influencing state policies. Without advocates in Seoul, local

attempts to influence the state’s investment decisions were not likely to be successful

either. For example, the ‘Committee to Correct the Government’s Unfair Treatment of

South Jolla’ was organized in 1966. This committee lobbied for the state’s investment

in the region, but achieved little except for a few nominal successes such as the Kia Auto-

mobile Company’s investment in Ho-Nam. This was a different result from Daegu’s (a

city in Yong-Nam), which was successful in getting President Park Jung Hee’s endorse-

ment of several urban renewal projects in 1965 and 1966 (Park, 2003a: 827–831).

The combined effect of excluding other regions from politics and policy process

constituted the Yong-Nam elites’ monopoly of power. This caused resentment in the

Table 1. Regional breakdown of high-ranking bureaucrats by administration

Rhee Syngmanadministration

(1948–1960) %

Yoon Bo-Sonadministration

(1960–1963) %

Park JungHee administration

(1963–1979) %

Capital Region 33.2 16.3 14.1Choong-Chong 16.0 16.3 13.9Yong-Nam 18.8 25.5 30.1Ho-Nam 6.2 16.3 13.2Kang-Won 6.1 0.0 5.6Che-Joo 0.4 1.0 2.1North Korean Provinces 18.8 22.5 20.1Total 243a 96a 429a

aThe figures include ministers, vice ministers and other bureaucrats of equivalent ranks.

Source: Data from Kim, M. H. (1997) p. 178.

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007 Ho-Nam region and partially influenced the Kwangju Democratic Uprising in 1980. At the

same time, this exclusion gave the state the insulation from local pressure it needed to

implement economically rational but politically unfair investment decisions towards

Yong-Nam under the polarized development strategy.

Solidarity: Strong Support from the Yong-Nam Region

But direct advocacy is not the only way for a region to influence the state. Even under

limited freedom of speech, spheres of public discourse including journalism did not com-

pletely disappear. Furthermore, there were general and presidential elections although

those under the Park Administration were by no means fair ones.6

Therefore, Park Jung Hee had to find a way to compensate for his decreasing support

from Ho-Nam and other regions. He found it in Yong-Nam, a region he and most of his

men were from and that benefited most from his polarized development strategy. There

is no evidence that Park had a blueprint from the beginning to mobilize Yong-Nam as

his power base. But contingent factors opened up possibilities for the emergence of domi-

nant regionalism in Yong-Nam and Park proactively turned those possibilities into reality.

Political contingencies. 1962 saw the onset of Yong-Nam’s dominant regionalism, a

tendency that would support General Park’s reign for the next eighteen years. Its emer-

gence was, however, not a result of its proactive pursuit by Park’s. Rather, it was an

outcome of his strategies to strengthen his regime, a regime that was illegitimate and

thus vulnerable to attacks from nationalist and liberalist movements. To counter those

attacks, Park needed a political organization but he neither had a well-organized group

supporting him nor knew how to organize one. He, therefore, chose to rely upon people

whom he could personally trust. People who shared a background with Park were

obvious candidates. As a result, army veterans and/or individuals from the Yong-Nam

region had a better chance of being recruited by Park. In fact, two categories of potential

recruits substantially overlapped because participants in his military coup were mainly

Army officials from Yong-Nam.

The regional bias in recruitment was evident in the party-building process. As I men-

tioned previously, Park placed restrictions on the political rights of politicians from pre-

vious regimes. However, in building a new ruling party, Park reinstated some of those

politicians for his own use, many of whom had grown up or had a political base in

Yong-Nam. The reinstatement of politicians from the old regime occurred mainly

because Park and his followers did not have enough time, manpower, or know-how to

build a ruling party from scratch. But it was also partially because Park and his followers

wanted to curb Kim Jong Pil, who had been Park’s number one in the coup and who was

now Park’s challenger. In 1962, Kim Jong Pil was in charge of building a political party

that would support the military regime. He and his clan wanted to build a party that orga-

nized a large mass of new faces instead of one that was under Park’s personal control, an

idea that many intellectuals and professionals were supportive of. Kim Jong Pil made that

choice because without mass mobilization, political future of he and his followers would

be overshadowed by General Park, who had strong control over coup participants. Kim,

therefore, mainly solicited intellectuals and professionals who had not been involved in

the previous regimes. However, before this project was completed, Park sent Kim Jong

Pil into exile overseas. To outnumber Kim Jong Pil’s recruits, Park’s followers then

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007 reinstated politicians from the old regime and used them under Park’s direct control

(Chang, 2000).

This event brought about a regional divide within the ruling party. While Kim’s party

recruits came from across the nation, many of Park’s reinstated politicians were from the

Yong-Nam region. For example, Uhm Min Yong, the first former politician from the

Liberal Party to be reinstated, resided in the same boarding house as General Park

while the two of them were in high schools in Yong-Nam. Upon being reinstated, Uhm

became President Park’s politics tutor and recruited his old friends from Kyong

Book High School (a prestigious high school in Yong-Nam), who were participants in

the Rhee Syng-Man administration. The politicians who were recruited by Uhm Min

Yong included Lee Hyo Sang, who became the Speaker of the National Assembly, Kim

Sung Gon and Baik Nam Uk, two of the ‘Sainbang’ of the Quartet, who was Park’s

proxy in the Republican Party until 1973, and many others (Kim, 1996).

As a result of this regionally biased recruitment, politicians who were personally from

or elected in the Yong-Nam region composed the ruling Republican Party’s core group.

Furthermore, during Park’s Presidency, 30.8% of candidates for party-list proportional

representation and president-appointed members of assembly also came from the Yong-

Nam region (Kim & Park, 1991. See Table 1).

As described above, a regional bias of the ruling party started from an internal power

struggle. The consequences of this bias, however, went beyond an inter-sect struggle

within the ruling party. Along with a regionally biased staffing of the cabinet and the

bureaucracy, it also gave career advantages to Yong-Nam elites. I explored this in the pre-

vious section, and the economic advantages is explored in the next subsection. These

advantages produced a feeling of superiority in Yong-Nam elites and contributed to soli-

darity among them.7

Advantages of regional networks in economic development. But it was not power

struggle alone that made Park favour people from Yong-Nam. As Evans (1995) and

many other political economists of South Korea maintain, Park was one of the few author-

itarian leaders in the developing world who had a reason to place a great deal of importance

on economic development. That was because of the lack of legitimacy of the Park Regime.

While leaders of most developing countries at that time, including India, Indonesia, Mexico,

and China, contributed to national liberation, Park had a history of working for the Japanese

Army. Furthermore, Park’s military coup overturned a corrupt yet democratically elected

administration. Sucess in economic development would partially compensate for his lack

of legitimacy. Most importantly, South Korea was in economic competition with and

under military threat from North Korea, which was economically outperforming the

South, at least until the early 1970s (Castells, 1992). Regional networking turned out to

assist economic growth as well as building and maintaining Park’s power.

This was because regional networking facilitated informal or sometimes secret infor-

mation exchanges (Kim, 1990). Regional networks played important roles, particularly

in the bureaucracy. The Park Administration could not expect a formal bureaucratic

chain of command to work perfectly for two reasons. First, Park could not completely

trust bureaucracy. Under the Rhee Administration and in the second republic, it was

common for bureaucrats to openly seek personal gain over administrative transparency

(Evans 1995). Park attempted to discipline them by introducing a US Army-style efficient

management system and by creating several internal inspection agencies, but those

South Korean Experience and its Theoretical Implications 233

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007 measures needed time to take effect. Secondly, because Park’s economic leadership was

often unorthodox and sometimes even unlawful, as will be explained below, open

communications were not always suitable. Under these circumstances, personal communi-

cation and a personal chain of command, one that was based on personal trust and char-

isma, worked better than open communication. To that end, alumni networks from

prestigious schools, such as Kyong Book High School, and hometown-based informal

organizations within and between formal organizations were organized and utilized as

the channel for everyday communication.

The advantages of an informal relationship were present in other societal domains,

including the economy. When the market economy is not fully mature and the state is

taking economic development initiatives, relationships between businesses and the state

are critical to managing the economy. Furthermore, Park often lured Chaebols with oppor-

tunities for rent-seeking, thereby causing them to comply with the state’s plans in spite of the

associated high risk. For instance, Chaebols could venture into the heavy and chemical

industries in spite of their low profit rate (Amsden, 1989). This is because they trusted

that, in the event of failure, the state would compensate them for their loss by allowing

them to rent in some other way. Providing rent incentives to a certain Chaebol often required

unorthodox or even unlawful methods. Thus, formal assurance was often difficult. Instead,

the state offered President Park’s or high-ranking officials’ informal promises, which Chae-

bols trusted, as Cho (2002) witnessed. This kind of trust and secrecy is more easily acquired

when the two parties involved have a common background or share a common acquain-

tance. Being from Yong-Nam himself and having collaborators from the same region, it

is not surprising that President Park disproportionately formed ties with Yong-Nam

Chaebols. Such ties made informal assurances possible, which in turn made repeated

transactions possible.

Considering these advantages of informal networks, in combination with the advantage

of being in the site of the polarized development, it is by no means surprising that the

majority of Chaebols were Yong-Nam based. Among the owners of the 50 largest

Chaebols, 22, or 44%, were from the Yong-Nam region. By the end of the Park

Regime, among the 368 CEOs who were listed in Business Who’s Who, which was pub-

lished by Myong-Jin-Gak, 59% were from the Yong-Nam region. (Nam, 1992: 211)

Yong-Nam’s dominance was not limited to politics, bureaucracy, and business. Accord-

ing to Kim Man Heum (1997), who surveyed the power elites in Korean society, a dispro-

portionately large number of powerful positions—from executives of banks, to generals in

the military, and to editors and publishers of daily news papers—were filled by people

from the Yong-Nam region (Kim Man Heum, 1997: 179, Table 2–7). Consequently,

the power elites in all social domains were connected through regional networks. The soli-

darity among them could easily be formed, and that solidarity made it possible to extend

and consolidate regional networks. And, as is the case in any network, once set up, out-

siders could not easily penetrate the regional networks.

Political mobilization of dominant regionalism. The benefits of regional networking

among Yong-Nam’s elites spilled down through the social and economic hierarchy.

Because the Yong-Nam region was over-represented with Chaebols, there were more

job opportunities for Yong-Nam’s working class and more subcontracting for Yong-

Nam small businesses. Also, the government’s uneven investment towards Yong-Nam

benefited the region’s land-owning class by increasing land rents. The economic benefits

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007

that the Yong-Nam region enjoyed across its social class boundaries laid a necessary con-

dition for the region’s political support of President Park. Economic benefits, however,

were not a sufficient condition.

There were deliberate attempts by Park and his men to mobilize regionalism in the

Yong-Nam region. In 1963, Lee Hyo Sang, the Speaker of the National Assembly, said

in a speech in support of General Park at Daegu, ‘Candidate Park Jung Hee is a proud des-

cendent of the Shinla Kingdom’s royal family. We shall elect and serve him as our king of

the millennium’ (Segye Times, 1992). This is an explicit regionalist remark because

Shinla was an ancient kingdom whose territory roughly coincided with contemporary

Korea’s Yong-Nam region. In spite of Lee Hyo Sang’s and other political leaders’ explicit,

wide-sweeping attempts, their effects were limited at the beginning. In 1963, Park’s vote

from the Yong-Nam region was 56.7%, which was only 10.1% higher than he received

from the entire country. In the 1967 presidential election, however, he won 65.9% of

the Yong-Nam region’s vote, higher than the national average by 14.5%. Regionalist

mobilization continued its rise and became even more explicit. In 1971, Lee Hyo-Sang,

who had continued in his position as Speaker of the National Assembly, said, ‘Everybody

in Yong-Nam, except those who are insane, will vote for Park’ (Hankook Ilbo, 2000). This

kind of an explicit regionalist mobilization influenced the Yong-Nam people and 71.1% of

them voted for Park that year, a percentage that was 17.9% higher than the national

average (See Table 2).

As such, the solidarity of Young-Nam, which was expressed as dominant regionalism,

was of fundamental importance to Park’s maintenance of power. The solidarity that was

formed among elites through the regionally biased recruitment of politicians and bureau-

crats and which contributed to a regionally biased formation of Chaebols reached a wide

range of societal domains. In turn, the solidarity among elites was instrumental in mobi-

lizing dominant regionalism among Yong-Nam’s ordinary citizens. Yong-Nam’s dispro-

portional support compensated for Park’s decreasing support from Ho-Nam and other

regions. Without Yong-Nam’s support, Park would have been in a situation in which he

would have had to compromise his polarized development strategy.

Further Discussion

This paper’s discussion shows that the successful implementation of polarized develop-

ment strategy requires certain political conditions. To implement the strategy without

intervention of local forces, the central state should be insulated from them. To maintain

that insulation, ironically, strong support from a limited number of regions is required.

From an empirical study of South Korea, this paper shows that polarized development

strategy depends on complex historical conditions. Park and his bureaucrats did have ideas

Table 2. Park’s votes in the Presidential elections in %

1963 1967 1971

Yong-Nam Region 56.7 65.7 71.1National 46.6 51.4 53.2Difference 10.1 14.3 17.9

Source: Data from National Election Commission 2005.

South Korean Experience and its Theoretical Implications 235

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007 regarding polarized development, but had the political representation of the Ho-Nam

region not been disarmed through a series of incidents in the 1950s, the polarized devel-

opment strategy would have been met with strong resistance. Furthermore, at the begin-

ning, Park’s bonding with the Yong-Nam region was mainly for political reasons such

as lack of legitimacy and internal power struggle. Only later, did regionalism turn out

to be an important condition for polarized development. In that sense, the political situ-

ation, which was external to economic policy, set necessary, if not sufficient, conditions

for polarized development.

This finding resonates with recent developments in statist literature on East Asian econ-

omic development. In evolutionary reconceptualization of the developmental state, it was

suggested that the developmental state in South Korea was not completely pre-planned, as

earlier authors such as Amsden (1989) assumed, but was the outcome of historical acci-

dents (Yoo & Lee, 2001; Yoo, 2003). According to Lee (1999), Park’s regime became

a developmental state following a sequence of external shocks and accidents, such as

the failure of their initial plan for import substitution in the late 1960s and US pressure

for export-oriented policies. In a similar line, this paper illuminates how the accumulation

of historical accident contributed to the initial success of polarized development strategy.

This finding stands in stark contrast to the common belief in Korean regionalism litera-

ture that political regionalism is an outcome of Park Jung Hee’s polarized development

strategy. Rather, the political regionalism that emerged in Yong-Nam was a precondition

for the continued implementation of a polarized development strategy.

On the theoretical front, this paper’s findings demand the original theoreticians of polar-

ized development strategy to amend their understanding of the state. In Hirshman’s (1958)

research, along with that of other authors of the time, it was assumed that state bureaucracy

is a rational actor that works in a political vacuum. Along this line, in regional develop-

ment theory, Myrdal (1964) and Friedman (1979) thought that the state could reverse

regional polarization and create a spatially diffused growth. Recent developments in the

statist approach, such as those of Evans (1995) and B. G. Park (1998), find strong evidence

that the state is actually an actor in the web of social relations and is thus influenced by

society’s power structure. In line with these findings, this paper shows theoretically and

empirically that the central government is not a completely insulated actor but an actor

that is influenced by power relations between regions. Consequently, the state’s spatial

policies, including polarized development strategy, is planned and implemented in the

context of spatial–political relations around the state.

An understanding of polarized development strategy and its political conditions also

gives some insight into the current South Korean politics and, more generally, the political

consequences of the initial success of polarized development strategy.

Around the time of Park’s death in 1979, an over-accumulation in heavy and chemical

industries was widely acknowledged (Kim, 1991). Polarized development strategy that

was mainly for the promotion of heavy and chemical industries was also put into question,

a change that was reflected in the subsequent administrations’ emphasis on regional balance

(Park, 1998). However, because the Chon Administration (1980–1988) was even less legit-

imate than the Park Administration, Yong-Nam region’s solidarity was an attractive weapon

to use. That was feasible first because 18 years of Park’s reign and his dependence on Yong-

Nam’s solidarity left a stable web of Yong-Nam elite networks; and Chon and his men were

a part of that web. Furthermore, among ordinary residents of Yong-Nam, there was wide-

spread feeling of superiority for living in a more ‘advanced’ region and for having personal

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007 ties with power elites. Chon actively took advantage of this condition. The cabinets of Chon

administration reflected a regional bias stronger than that of the Park Administration, and

regionalist voting behaviour became a more important variable than it had ever been

under the Park Administration. But this regional solidarity provoked adversity not only

from Ho-Nam but also from other regions, especially the Capital region and the Choong-

Chong region. That adversity contributed to the victory of Kim Dae-Jung, the first President

from Ho-Nam, and Roh Moo-Hyon, Kim Dae-Jung’s partial successor in the 1997 and 2002

presidential elections, respectively. After the defeat of Yong-Nam’s solidarity, however, the

attempts of the two presidents to break the state away from Yong-Nam, along with their

political and policy errors provoked persistent discontent in the Yong-Nam region. This dis-

content proved more powerful than the number of votes from Yong-Nam because the elite

networks that had grown under Park and Chon were still alive, not only in politics but also in

journalism and other parts of civil society, which were irrepressible political elements under

these two democratic administrations.

From this, it might be generalized that a successful implementation of polarized devel-

opment and the political conditions that enable a state’s success are likely to undermine

that condition at a later stage. On the one hand, if the state maintains its relationship

with the dominant region, solidarity in the dominant region and the state’s favouritism

will create adverse effects in other regions. The state will then have to mobilize dominant

regionalism even more, which in turn will cause even stronger adverse effects in other

regions. On the other hand, if the state can somehow break away from the region, the soli-

darity that supported it will turn to a force against the state.

This dilemma also shadows contemporary variants of polarized development strategy

such as the new regionalist approach. As Lovering (1999) argues, local economic

development agencies needed ideologues, whose role was filled by economic development

professionals, whom Loevering calls the ‘new regional service class’. The main job of the

‘new regional service class’ is to generate a new regionalist discourse that legitimizes the

activities of local economic development agencies. Since an important part of the new

regionalist approach is, in reality, continued support from the national government, the

networks among the new regional service class and local economic development agencies

have incentives to influence the central government to continue its support, a situation that

would create a dilemma for the central government of the South Korean-kind.

Notes

1. One noteworthy fact is that one can easily find written references to the impact regional balance had on the

First National Physical Plan. ‘In particular, this plan put emphasis on the de-concentration of metropolitan

population and industries and on the growth of small- and medium-sized cities. . .thereby balancing the devel-

opment of national territory.’ Based on this kind of statement, some scholars argue that the Plan was designed

for regional equity. However, a closer examination reveals that its emphasis on regional balance was a lip

service. The Introduction does emphasises regional balance, but the main chapters are mainly about infrastruc-

ture planning and do not develop detailed policies for regional balance (Kim, 1992: 70).

2. In a survey of businesses conducted by Jin and Cheon, the availability of land was voted as the most important

factor in their locational decisions (cited in Kim, 1992: 103).

3. A good example is Pohang Steel Company (POSCO). The state built a housing complex for the company’s

workers, even before it secured financing for the plant itself (POSCO, 2005). After the housing complex,

POSCO created a whole new town for the workers, where high-quality collective consumption goods, includ-

ing good schools for the workers’ children, were provided.

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007 4. ‘Eradication of corrupted politics’ was one of the six items in Park’s pledges that were announced upon the

success of the coup (see Park, 1961).

5. I use the 1943 population instead of that from the 1960s or 1970s because the highest power elites are mostly in

their 40s, 50s or 60s and thus were born in the 1930s at the latest. The oldest population data I could acquire

with a regional breakdown was 1925 data. (Data source: Nam, 1992: 154 and the Korean National Statistical

Office, 2007b).

6. During 18 years of Park Administration, Park created institutions that would distort election results. Examples

of those institutions include but are not limited to: 1) A third of the national assembly members were appointed

by the president. 2) After the 1971 presidential election in which Park was nearly defeated, the presidential

election was changed into an indirect election. 3) Local Assemblies were completely abolished and heads

of local authorities were appointed by the president. Furthermore numerous cases of vote purchasing and

other types of election fraud were reported. Nonetheless, presidential and general elections were never com-

pletely abolished and those that were held served as at least a partial outlet for Ho-Nam’s and other regions’

discontent.

7. Numerous newspaper articles on related matters imply that it is commonly acknowledged the superiority

complex of Yong-Nam elites did and still does exist. (Kim C.S., 1999; Kim S.K., 1999; Kim Y.H., 1999).

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