Reading developmental urbanization in Seoul politico-ecologically

In order to establish an Asian research network, expand future research cooperation, and stimulate communication among center colleagues, Seoul National University Asia Center holds brown bag seminars at Asia Center 3F concourse every Thursday at 12pm. 

Dr. JIN-TAE HWANG is a research fellow at SNUAC. His work focuses on the political ecology of development in East Asia and East Africa. He will be presenting <Reading developmental urbanization in Seoul politico-ecologically>. 

There has been recently increased attention to the East Asian developmental urbanization by more focusing on the urban scale than national scale. However, scaling down is unsuccessful to adequately capture the dynamics of urbanization in East Asian cities because the developmental urbanization debate still regards East Asian cities as the artifact of the national bureaucrat and national capital. In this presentation, several alternative perspectives are suggested to escape the territorially trapped East Asian developmental cities. Firstly, I ascertain that urbanization is multi-scaled processes beyond city’s administrative boundary. A case study reveals that development of Seoul, the capital city and growth pole of South Korea, has closely intertwined with underdevelopment of Gangwon Province after the completion of Soyang Dam in 1973. Secondly, urbanization should be seen as politico-ecological processes. The birth of Soyang Dam and Soyang watershed was the politico-ecological transforming local nature into state-nature for ensuring reliable electricity and water supply to Seoul in the name of “the Modernization of the Fatherland” while marginalizing the interest of people in Gangwon Province.