The Cultural Politics Of Urban Development In South Korea

This book analyses the cultural politics of urban development in Gwangju, South Korea, and illustrates the implementation of state-led arts-based urban boosterism efforts in the context of political trauma and the desire for economic growth. The book explores urban development that is complicated by the recent history of democratic uprising in Gwangju, and it examines the dichotomy between cities as growth machines and progressive metropolises. Actor-oriented qualitative research methods are used to show how culture and economies can evolve from territorial conflicts. The author argues that the quest for both growth and social justice can coexist in intertwined ways and create urban development. Moreover, recent events in Gwangju, such as the May 18 Democratic Uprising and massacre, are shown to act as a backdrop for state-led urban boosterism and desire for economic growth at the same time as depicting a resistance to state-corporate marketing plans, which culminates in the eventual emergence of relatively coherent places-of-memory. These convergences and divergences are comparable to the urban boosterism characteristic of Western cities. The book contributes to the dialogue surrounding geography, urban studies, and postcolonial urban development, and will be of interest to academics working in these fields as well as human geography, planning, urban politics and East Asian studies.

This book provides a rich and illuminating account of the peripheries of urban, regional, and transnational development in South Korea. Engaging with the ideas of "core location," a term coined by Baik Young-seo, and "Asia as method," a concept with a century-old intellectual lineage in East Asia, each chapter in the volume discusses the ways in which a place can be studied in an increasingly globalized world. Examining cases set in the Jeju English Education City, anti-poverty and community activist sites, rural areas home to large numbers of migrant women, and Korea’s Chinatowns, greenbelts, and textile factories, the collection develops a relational understanding of a place as a constellation of local and global forces and processes that interact and contradict in particular ways. Each chapter also explores multiple modes of urban marginality and discusses how understanding them shapes the methods of academic praxis for social justice causes and decolonialized scholarship. This book is the outcome of several years of interdisciplinary collaborations and dialogues among scholars based in geography, architecture, anthropology, and urban politics.

A detailed examination of the “Korean development model” from its urban dimension, evaluating its sociopolitical contexts and implications for international development cooperation. There is an increasing tendency to use the development experience of Asian countries as a reference point for other countries in the Global South. Korea’s condensed urbanization and industrialization, accompanied by the expansion of new cities and industrial complexes across the country, have become one such model, even if the fruits of such development may not have been equitably shared across geographies and generations. The chapters in this book critically reassess the Korean urban development experience from regional policy to new town development, demonstrating how these policy experiences were deeply rooted in Korea’s socioeconomic environment and discussing what can be learned from them when applying them in other developmental contexts. This book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers in the field of urban studies and developmental studies in general, and in Korea’s (urban) development experience in particular. Chapters 1, 2, 4, and 12 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The Politics of Urban Cultural Policy brings together a range of international experts to critically analyze the ways that governmental actors and non-governmental entities attempt to influence the production and implementation of urban policies directed at the arts, culture, and creative activity. Presenting a global set of case studies that span five continents and 22 cities, the essays in this book advance our understanding of how the dynamic interplay between economic and political context, institutional arrangements, and social networks affect urban cultural policy-making and the ways that these policies impact urban development and influence urban governance. The volume comparatively studies urban cultural policy-making in a diverse set of contexts, analyzes the positive and negative outcomes of policy for different constituencies, and identifies the most effective policy directions, emerging political challenges, and most promising opportunities for building effective cultural policy coalitions. The volume provides a comprehensive and in-depth engagement with the political process of urban cultural policy and urban development studies around the world. It will be of interest to students and researchers interested in urban planning, urban studies and cultural studies.

This controversial new study, breaks with the tradition of basing political studies on analyses of institutions and political personalities, by likening the Republic of Korea to a laboratory for the clash of political cultures. In the late 1940s, the Americans embarked upon a democratization programme designed to create a Western bulwark against the spread of communism in East Asia. The intervening years have seen the advent and demise of military rule, with South Korea now having a democratically-elected government. Although the US strategy thus seems successful, the political crises of 1995 in fact indicate that many obstacles remain here to the adoption of Western-style democracy. This study argues that socialization in general and political socialization in particular are key factors in any analysis of democracy, be it in Korea or elsewhere. Accordingly, the work draws on moral education textbooks, together with surveys and interviews among members of the urban intellectual elite. In this manner, the psychological roots of power and authority - key concepts to an understanding of 'good government' - are explored.

Seoul, as one of Asia’s rising global cities, has been a place where enormous changes in politics, industry, and culture have taken place over the last five decades. This book explores the new urbanism in Seoul from the perspective of global political economy, focusing on the contexts in which the city has witnessed the transformation of its population structure, such as the rise of the global urban middle class and the city’s increased nodal function in commodity chains. The burgeoning signs of Seoul’s status as a global city are discussed in terms of transnational tourism and the frequency of study abroad, the immigrant community, and cross-border cultural flows. Examining the labour structures within the city, economic growth policy, the role of advanced information technology, and neoliberal urban development, the authors also examine the local response in the city to its emerging status. A study of the development of the Korean capital and its deep embeddedness in the world economy, Seoul, Korea’s Global City will appeal to scholars of sociology, geography and economics with interests in political economy, urban studies and Asian studies.

The minjung (people's) movement stood at the forefront of the June 1987 nationwide tide that swept away the military in South Korea and opened up space for relatively democratic politics, a more responsible economy, and new directions in culture. This volume is the first in English to grapple specifically with the nature of a national development that lies at the center of the last three decades of tumult and change in South Korea.

There is a continuing academic and policy interest in the potential for culture-based urban regeneration across the world. Such regeneration is intended to attract investment, re-imagine spaces and create employment, business and urban planning opportunities. This book seeks to examine the use of culture and arts in the urban regeneration sphere of South Korea. Specifically, a one-year-long cultural event (Culture City of East Asia) is used as a case study for exploring wider debates around and understandings of the relationships between culture-led urban regeneration initiatives and the impacts on communities in South Korea. Despite the proliferation of culture-led initiatives aiming to tackle broad social issues, there is a lack of in-depth research into the efficacy of such urban regeneration. Previous researches have asked such questions as: What benefits can cultural elements (e.g. mega-events or signature buildings) bring into a city? What is the role of culture in economic development (e.g. tourism and internal investment)? What is the economic value of cultural goods and services? This is not to say that such questions should be the only concerns in assessing a culture-led urban regeneration strategy. However, the evaluation process of culture-led regeneration frequently fails to ask questions about the impact on human communities: Are cultural resources being used to spread culture, or just to focus on economic development? Are cultural initiatives like mega-events being used to benefit local citizens? How can residents shape a culture-led regeneration strategy? This book is intent on examining residents’ opinions and perspectives about culture-led urban regeneration. It recognizes how culture-led regeneration schemes interact with local communities, focusing on the actual views of local people rather than being coldly theoretical.