Politics of Scale and the Globalization of the South Korean Automobile Industry

This article explains the liberalization and globalization of the South Korean automobile industry, with an emphasis on the multiscalar processes of globalization. In particular, it explores the processes by which the South Korean government shifted its policy for the automobile industry, from a nationalist and protectionist orientation toward liberalization in the late 1990s, which, in turn, attracted inward investments from foreign automakers and facilitated the globalization of the nation’s automobile market. While exploring the roles of diverse actors and forces—operating at various geographic scales—in these processes, I placed more analytical weight on examining the ways in which contestation between national and local forces contributed to the government’s liberalization policy. I argue that the globalization of the South Korean automobile industry in recent years was not only an outcome of the globalizing strategies of foreign automakers, but also was facilitated by an institutional fix by the nation-state (particularly the liberalization of policy) to a regulatory deficit, which stemmed from the national-local tension with respect to a state-led economic restructuring project.