ABSTRACT

This chapter examines Korea’s unique cultural competition factors, such as familism and collectivism, with respect to Korea’s regional characteristic being the unit of analysis. It explores the scope of analysis to the country level using competitive trait to explain political space of governance in Korea. One of the regionalist behaviors is the competition for infrastructure development with neighboring rivals. When infrastructure such as railroads and roads are constructed, the economic development effect in the region will be huge, as more and more citizens will travel to the cities. The economic development of Korea in the 1970s focused on industrializing the core, central region while sacrificing the rural sphere area due to limited resources. Korean regionalism has been artificially formed, expanded, and reproduced through development and democratization. The consequential gap in economic development became a factor of regionalism and regional competitiveness.