Explaining State Intervention in Pollution Issues in South Korea: The Case of the Evacuation of the Pollution Victims in Ulsan and Onsan

Abstract

Although policy priority has always been on economic development in East Asian countries, these countries have also experienced some state intervention in environmental issues. However, explanations for the development of environmental policies in these countries have been relatively sparse compared with those of their industrial policies, The author attempts to widen our understanding of environmental-policy development in East Asia by examining one notable state intervention in pollution issues in South Korea—the evacuation of the pollution victims of Ulsan and Onsan in the mid 1980s under the authoritarian Chun Doo-Hwan regime. This Korean case study shows a pattern of policy development primarily driven by particular ‘interests' (the perceived political-survival needs of state elites), with changes in external conditions, policy legacies, and policy efforts playing supplementary roles. In particular, the state intervention is interpreted as an anticipatory concession to the pollution victims by the state elites who aimed to stabilize their regime by alienating the victims from antiregime activists. The author also indicates the possibility of applying the theories established in the context of liberal democracy to authoritarian political regimes, and draws attention to the change and continuity in the development of environmental politics and policy in East Asia.