The development of the textile industry in Taegu, South Korea.

摘要

The research question of this study, the uneven development of the textile industry in Taegu, South Korea since the 1960s, is investigated from interactions among different geographical scales (local, national, and international) which are guided by locality studies, regulation theory, and world-system theory.The research findings are divided into two parts: the economic development of South Korea and the conditions of (re)production of Taegu's textile industry.The main features of South Korean economic development are (1) the strong government, (2) the establishment of a few large companies (Chaebols), (3) the changing structure of the labor market, and (4) uneven spatial development. The textile industry of Taegu has been (re)produced by the interactions among the local administrative government, local textile business people and workers during the processes of economic development of South Korea. Until the early 1970s, Taegu's textile industry was developed by exploiting cheap and surplus labor and the South Korean government's light and labor intensive industry oriented industrialization. From the late 1970s, however, it had many problems due to the changing conditions of the national economy, the national and local labor market, and the national government's industrial policy as well as an increase in competition in the international consumer market and developed countries' protectionism.Finally, the theories used are very valuable to explain the uneven development of local economic sectors (textile industry in this research) in the processes of national (South Korean) economic development. However, they do not give us any concrete and dynamic conditions and actions which involve the (re)production of local economy within a national and international economy and politics.