Kim, Won-Dong Park, Joon-Shik Hyeon, Jeong-Seog

Transcription

1 144 Kim, Won-Dong Park, Joon-Shik Hyeon, Jeong-Seog The former mining areas of Gangwon Province are one of the best known historical places where the most serious challenges of local regeneration have happened in Korea. The deep mountain areas had to sacrifice their coal and other resources in order to supply energies for rapid industrialization. However, from the beginning of the later 1970s, other energy resources began to remove the place of coal in Korea, and most of the major coal pits were closed and those areas had to suffer abrupt population decrease. Mining towns, communities, and economic activities almost faded away and the whole area had to face fast disintegration. In face of the crisis of the whole community, the local people in the Gangwon areas had to struggle with the alternative ways of local regeneration. Among them, some organized groups of community people began to search for alternative ways of local regeneration. They began to organize community movement demanding the special law asking central government to make massive investment for alternative industry. Their demand for local regeneration has been one of the major forces which enabled the implementation of special law for the revival of former mining areas. However, reconstructing those areas with an alternative vision had to go through different pathways due to different visions among stake holders including central government, local people, and development agencies. From the start of its implementation, the central government and its agencies wanted to reshape those areas with resorts areas based on casino industry. However, community people did not have strong social consensus on the visions and ways of community regeneration until very recently. Despite long search for alternative social vision, and conflicts among local community people, they were not able to converge on meaningful ways of social and economic regeneration. The idea of community regeneration through social economy is one of the most recent trials to provide people in the community new visions, policies, and the methods of local development. The idea of social economy is nothing new in the area because there has been a long tradition of community movement, which tried to oppose the government-led

2 development projects and called for sustainability and local participation as an alternative value. During their hard trials with the central government, community leaders, union people, and civil movement were able to submit a new blueprint for establishing citizen company idea. However, despite hard struggle among civil movement leaders, the genuine idea of social economy was not realized due to the lack of social consensus and concrete ideas among community people and interest groups. One of the other reasons for the failure of the movement is that community people did not have enough experiences and viable examples, which is strong enough to persuade those ideas to be accepted as an alternative strategy of local regeneration. However, recent movements and search for alternative development can be regarded as something different because it shows us a new possibility for local partnership among community, local public company, and the state agencies. Our research is a trial to have a reevaluation of community movements, development strategies and to examine the possibility of social economy as an alternative and viable social development model. In doing this, we examined the meaning and memories of grassroots community movement, which gave birth to the special law on the firmer mining area. After that, we tried to see the new approaches on community development which began to converge among different interest groups including community people, local government, private sector, and the central government. We also tried to investigate several ways of embedding social economy in local community as part of public projects and hope to evaluate on the effects of social economy on local society. Former mining areas of Gangwon Province have provided huge test beds for different kinds of local regeneration. Undergoing two decades of struggle, the region and its communities have tried various kinds of local regeneration projects. The major initiative has been a massive public investment project to change the economy of the region from coal to casino tourism. During last two decades, casino finally replaced the place of coal. However, despite those changes the whole area became more dependent on monoculture style industry, government protection, and huge subsidies. In addition to that, government led approach did not pay enough attentions to the intangible social risks of development projects. The risk side of the development strategy without social integration and the long-term sustainability was not considered seriously. One of the fundamental issues among local people was that the new social constructions artificially created by investment were not able to fill the gap between people s aspirations and economic realities. The high aspiration and spirit on the creation of new social and economic reality for the local people expected to be realized by new industry did not happen. Economic changes

3 146 did also bring about many new social problems related with social integration between community people and newly settled population. The massive construction works around the coal regions were not effective in bringing the lost population back to the permanent residency. Casino facilities employed younger generation from outside. However, their relationship with the local community remained very weak, because most of the employees wanted their children to be educated outside of the region. Despite various efforts and activities, social barriers dividing people from us and them settled deeply inside the people. Community people were gradually removed from the center of local economy. Their jobs were confined to remain as small suppliers competing among themselves. The influence of community people and their companies had to be sidelined and the economic and social marginalization of community people became more and more apparent as time goes on. Most of the local regeneration program has been too much dependent on the influences of central government, which took the biggest share of newly established casino and resort group. The most enduring problem of local society is that, the nature of community itself began to change from settlement to nomadic place because casino made mobility and movement of people became more frequent. As a result, the mining areas have already changed into nomadic society, where majority of people are not staying but always moving depending on their employment, work, education, and preferences. The strong community culture and tradition, which once symbolized the coal city, have been disappearing very fast. Villages, residences, markets, and communities of the old town have almost gone. As the towns became more and more nomadic, historical legacies, culture, and social capital were placed at the abandoned corners of the area and those people taking care of the community has been retreating very fast. In this context, mining cities, communities, and its people had to struggle with some new directions and objectives, which may be very different from the existing development approaches. The idea of social economy as an alternative model for local regeneration began to be seriously considered in this context One of the painful lessons of local revival is that there does not exist any easy ways to succeed. Most of the development project aimed for reviving local economy from declining industries to a new one must struggle very hard in order to realize their objectives. Of course, there are many successful cases or historical examples suggesting valuable lessons. However, most of those success stories are the results of favorable environments or economic conditions. Reflecting on the historical experiences of former mining areas, community revival was found to be a long way because it is not just another investment, but overcoming intangible

4 obstacles and barriers including reconstruction of society itself. Enduring almost two decades of revival efforts, community people in the mining cities are gradually accustomed to living with casinos and resorts. However, they also could get a hard awakening that, they are still depending on public subsidies and the casino resorts. Low trust on communities, uncertain future, local sectarianism, and unstable life situation did not change much. The former mining areas of Gangwon Province have undergone two decades of large scale social and economic experiments. Massive social and economic restructuring from coal to tourism has brought about fundamental changes which turned the social characters of the community upside down. Those changes are still going. However, despite huge social reorganization, those community people living in the communities are having difficulties in reorganizing their lives. One of the major structural factors behind the dependancy and powerlessness of local society can be largely explained by the nature of economic restructuring. The economic restricting was almost exclusively governed by the government. Development project led by the government agencies and casino resort did not pay enough attention on the needs of local people and their communities. Local communities also lost their social capital due to the depletion of younger population and decay of communities. Due to the government led development, existing community became more and more dependent on direct and indirect public subsidies. Instead of coal, resort became the dominant provider of employment and business opportunities and the resort industry itself are maintained due to heavy protection by the government. The city and its social economy had to sacrifice their autonomy in exchange for radical transition from coal to casino tourism and community people had to hang on another industry regulated by the government. Under these circumstances, a new awakening on the need for different ways of local regeneration began to emerge. The new approach for local regeneration began to focus on societies and communities rather than economies and companies. It also tries to amend existing ways of local development by emphasizing much on the need for partnership, participation, and mutual governance. One of the hard lessons they want to learn is that a strong inclusive partnership among social and institutional actors at community level is crucial in the regeneration of local economy. Keeping a higher level of social standards among actors is also crucial for the accumulation of social capital and trusts. However, they also face fundamental dilemmas of new approaches, because they had to depend heavily on the move of government and the company. In a situation, local social capital and willingness of the local people have almost gone, a new strategy also has to depend on public hands in order to initiate and regenerate community social capital. Government agencies and the company understand the need for social investment and they began to start

5 148 new project in order to embed social economy in local society. However, it is still uncertain whether such move can be sustained in long-term perspective, because people also know by experience such government led project may change easily depending on the changes of political priorities. In order to get to make meaningful social changes, any strategy need time to be sustained and strong commitment of people. Long sustained and consistent pursuit of social goals with firm confidence may open supply channels, networks, and human resources for local regeneration. The Role of Central and Local Government are still crucial. However public projects are very easy to get into failure without firm commitment, strong leadership, responsibility and transparency combined with appropriate incubation of human resources, mature civil society, and good governance. Development and implementation of new policies based on different paradigm has just begun around the turn of 2010s. We may need to wait for several years whether new approaches could make any meaningful social impacts on the nature of local society. Community people, public agencies and local companies may hope to see positive effects of new approaches on the revival and reintegration of local society. They hope new approaches emphasizing the role of social economy and investment in society could contribute reconstruction of local society in a sustainable way. Gangwon coal areas have been very successful in shifting the economic base of the area by top-down and fast injection of completely different industry. However, it had to sacrifice an autonomous and independent local economy and vibrant local civil society. It is very hard to determine what kind of factors may have decisive effects on the different trajectories and consequences. Different revival strategies may be the combined results of complex interplay among economic conditions, historical legacies, and patterns of social compromise. Different regeneration strategies may result in permanent consequences on the long lasting fabric of social capital including the nature of trust, common pool resources, economic interdependence, collective mindset, and culture of local communities. In that sense, the social experiments, which is still going on in Gangwon area may provide significant lessons for local people who had to suffer from industrial changes, declining communities, and disaster areas. Professor, Dept. of Sociology, Kangwon University Professor, Dept. of Sociology, Hallym University Contract Management Team, Institute of Mine Reclamation Technology) Received 18 March 2015 ; Accepted 26 March 2015