Seung Ook Lee

Recent work in political geography and Marxist, critical political economy has refocused attention on the interrelations between political economy and geopolitics. This paper examines the contributions of Antonio Gramsci to the theory of geopolitical economy and the production of territory. Doing so enables two key insights. First, explaining the production of territory requires unraveling multiple—sometimes competing—levels of geopolitical and geoeconomic power relations. It follows that geopol

Traditionally, China and North Korea have been described as ‘blood brothers’ because of their common socialist ideological ground. Since 2000 the basis of their relationship has shifted from one‐sided economic support by China into strategic and mutual cooperation. In this paper, we analyse changes in their relationship by examining two specific points: first, China's growing investment and trade in North Korea, and second, close linkages of regional development strategies between the two countr

Abstract This paper examines modern Korean politics through the framework of Giorgio Agamben's theories of sovereign power, bare life, and the state of exception. Though his political analysis draws from the European history, we contend that the nature of his method attests to the possibility of analogical examples in non‐Western places. Thus, we argue that a postcolonial encounter with Agamben may enrich our understanding of sovereignty and political geography. In the Korean context, such an an

One of the prevalent stereotypes about North Korea is that it is the world's most isolated country. This view derives from North Korea's ruling ideology – juche – which calls for territorial isolation from external influences. For this reason, any territorial strategy like the introduction of special economic zones is generally regarded as an inevitable economic choice forced upon it. However, I argue that it is not that North Korea has no choice but to open its territory due to economic sufferi

Abstract Park Won‐soon, the former mayor of Seoul, put forward a new vision of Seoul as a progressive city, and one of his signatures was the promotion of a new urban regeneration policy called the Seoul‐type Urban Regeneration Model (SUR). It was first presented as a solution to compressed and profit‐oriented urban redevelopment but evolved into an alternative model which conveyed the worlding desire of the Seoul Metropolitan Government to redefine Asian urbanism beyond developmentalism or neol

This paper analyzes China’s North Korea strategy, focusing on its territorial practices and representations. Traditionally, China’s territorial visions of North Korea mainly reflected geopolitical imperatives. However, China has recently remobilized its territorial strategies in geoeconomic terms. The study shows that China’s territorial strategies are to enhance geopolitical security through geoeconomic means. To grasp these dynamics, this paper examines three territorial features: China’s geop

The so-called Sunshine Policy launched by the liberal regime of South Korea brought about a significant transformation in its visions of North Korea. Through it, North Korea became an “object of development.” This was something different from the previous idea of North Korea as a politico-military target. However, to conservatives, North Korea remains within the politico-military realm as an object of territorial and ideological absorption. As a result, political conflicts in South Korea in the

Regulation theory became a popular framework for economic geography in the mid-1990s but lost favor before it became prominent in South Korea. This paper revisits regulation theory — in both its original (1990s) and the revised (2000s) forms — to consider its applicability to the case of Korean capitalism. We contend that the difficulties in applying regulation theory to Korea are, on one hand, indicative of certain fundamental limitations in the theoretical approach and, on the other hand, usef

Since the early 2000s, the discourse of “economic territory” has surfaced in conjunction with economic neoliberalization in South Korea. This paper argues that economic territory as a geoeconomic imaginary not only facilitated the expansion of free trade agreements as an accumulation strategy but also served as a hegemonic project which masked the nature of an accumulation strategy as a class project and consolidated political legitimacy by manipulating nationalism. To examine this linkage, it c

제주국제자유도시는 세계화 시대 경제위기 극복과 새로운 국가경쟁력 확보 등의 당위성을 바탕으로 지방의 적극적인 추진의지와 중앙의 정책적･제도적 지원을 통해 ‘21세기 동북아 중심도시’를 목표로 야심차게 출범하였다. 그러나 국제자유도시 추진이 결정된지 약 20년이 지난 현 시점에서 이러한 발전 비전은 사실상 상실되었다. 이 논문에서는 ‘이상적 자유시장 경제모델’을 표방한 제주국제자유도시가 발전주의 국가모델의 유산이 여전히 작동하는 한국 경제체제에서 예외적으로 급진적인 신자유주의 개방경제공간을 지향하였고 각종 신자유주의 탈규제 정책의 실험장으로서의 역할을 자임하였지만, 환경과 사회경제적 모순 격화로 인한 지역사회 갈등의 심화, 중앙정부의 형평성 논리 및 제한된 자치권으로 인하여 사실상 실패하였다고 주장한다. 이를 위해 예외공간으로서의 경제특구에 대한 이론적 논의를 기반으로 제주국제자유도시 발전 비전의 변화과정을 분석하고, 다양한 예외적 제도와 공간적 장치들이 제주를 어떻게 예외공간화하고

This article presents Jeju Island, the largest island in the Korean Peninsula, as a spatial ensemble newly constructed by various geopolitical and geoeconomic forces in East Asia. A new urban model called the Jeju Free International City has integrated China’s growing presence as a geoeconomic opportunity for local economic development. Yet, the subsequent establishment of Jeju Naval Base is premised on the vision of China as a new geopolitical threat that should be addressed. This incoherence r

This paper examines the implications of North Korea’s Special Economic Zone (SEZ) strategy since the early 1990s in terms of the shifts in both North Korea’s economic system and geopolitical order on the Korean peninsula. Specifically, it analyzes the shifts in North Korea’s SEZ policy in three different aspects—North Korea’s unique territorial logic, stress on decentralization, and comparison with Chinese reform and opening-up. Based upon this analysis, this paper criticizes a linear approach t