Neoliberal Urbanization and Its Discontents: Changing Urban Politics in South Korea

• In Event: 591 - Section on Community and Urban Sociology Paper Session. The Changing Face of Asian Cities: Toward New Theorizing

Abstract

Over the past 20 years, neoliberal urbanization has emerged as an important political issue. Indeed, political sectors including a state with widely differing ideological perspectives have claimed neoliberal urbanization as central to grid their political and economic interests. This paper explores changing urban politics on South Korea’s “Urban Redevelopment Projects” in the 2000s as a likely case of neoliberal urbanization. Particularly, this research attempts to answer to the following questions: 1) what kind of neoliberal urbanization does the political sector carry out, and what is the purpose of policies? 2) how have the social sectors and urban communities responded to this urban institutionalization, and how have they challenged? These issues are explored in detail through the case study of two urban redevelopment schemes unfolded by Seoul Metropolitan Government from 2002 to 2013. In the earlier phase of the Urban Redevelopment Projects in Seoul, the municipal government initiated to construct a “governed interdependence” framework with urban social groups, especially property owners. This neoliberalization process could be understood by a concept of “accumulation by dispossession.” However, political sectors were forced to respond to the insistent popular activism for “fix” of neoliberal urbanization. The issue was raised mainly by small scale property owners and tenants and became increasingly visible after the global economic crisis in 2008. Indeed, this global factor was a striking threshold to transform a whole array of politics in neoliberal urbanization. This changing circumstance consequently drew out “post-neoliberal” transformation of urban politics in South Korea.

Author

• Chungse Jung, State University of New York-Binghamton