Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
the very absence of a large, important agricultural sector in modern South Korea
is an advantage, not disturbing plans in other areas.
Throughout South Korea's development there has been a strong dependency
on Japan; Japanese direct investment was made in factories in South Korea, as
well as some financial investment. Korean industries grew with Japanese
technology, and imported Japanese components for assembly and return to Japan.
In recent years, Korean industry has invested in similar fashion in mainland
China.
In all of this development surge, regional issues were kept at a low level of
priority. Had primary products and agriculture been seen as vital, there might
have been an effective regional policy, but the emphasis was on urban industrial
growth centred on two core regions, around Pusan in the southeast, and Seoul in
the northwest (
Fig. 8.1
). A huge concentration of population in Seoul makes this
one of the world's largest cities, estimated at 19 million people in 1995. There
were decentralization policies to move industries out from the two older centres,
including tax incentives for relocation, the provision of growth poles, and some
help for agricultural prices (Auty 1990). The growth poles, located in the
southeast to help the weaker of the two main centres, Pusan, have been successful
in production terms, achieving rapid growth for the region where they were
established in the 1970s. The growth, however, still did not outweigh the very
rapid growth of Seoul itself.
The larger growth poles were based on heavy industry complexes (other
smaller ones were really only industrial estates), and petrochemicals, steel and
machinery poles were set up. Obviously, as in the West, these heavy industries
only achieve limited direct employment, but they benefited from being located
within 100 miles of the big centre, Pusan. Major centres were at Yochun
(petrochemicals) and Changwon (diversified machinery) in 1974, Pohang (steel)
and Ulsan (petrochemicals, Hyundai machinery) in 1975, and Kwangyang (steel)
in 1982. It was important for the success of these big centres that they had good
access to other industrial centres, forming a network centring on Pusan. These
poles are linked partially to the kind of firms that grew in South Korea. The four
largest of these, Hyundai, Samsung, Daewoo and Lucky, each had a turnover
size larger than the combined top ten in Taiwan, which relied on small firms.
Strong government intervention supported these large conglomerates with many
products.
During the period from the 1960s to the 1980s there were major regional
changes, involving a reduction of interregional economic differences of
considerable magnitude. In 1968 there was a 3:1 range of gross regional product
(GRP) between the richest and poorest regions. By 1983 this had been reduced to
1.7:1. Such changes were not really attributable to the growth poles
per se,
so
much as to a massive population shift from the rural regions to the cities, and
especially to the growth zone around Seoul. The northwest core region, with 8.89
million people in 1970, had 28.3 per cent of the national population; by 1985, it
had 15.83 million, or 39.1 per cent of the national total. The southeast region
