2017, Vol.26, No.3

Journal of Regional Studies and Development 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.4

pISSN : 1738-3846 / eISSN : 2765-4028
https://journal.kci.go.kr/jrsd_ipaid

This paper is designed to analyse the characteristics of the social economy sectors in Seoul Metropolitan Area, with a special reference to the promotion policies sponsored by the city’s administration. By reviewing historical development of the Korean social economy sectors, we emphasize a unique Korean way of combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches ; there always were autonomous community-based social economy movement in civil society when people are exposed to serious challenges, while the central government and/or local governments are ready to suppress or encourage these voluntary activities, depending on the types and ideological orientations of governments. This unique mix is represented in Seoul provinces in terms of public-private partnership. Until now, this trial seems to be successful especially after the establishment of the incumbent city administration, with a precaution that the partnership still needs to address more stringent evaluational system and motivated participation of the widespread stake-holders.

This study is to analyse characteristics of social economy in Gyeonggido and to explore constructive ways of future development of Gyeonggido's policies for social economy. Social economy organizations in Gyeonggio have been developed with thanks to supports of municipal governments in Gyeonggido rather than supports of Gyeonggi local governments. Due to the local government's passive policies for social economy it seems that many social economy organizations have low economic and organizational capacities for social aims. However, Gyeonggi local government pursues innovate policy model called 'TTabook community model' for social economy and it try to enlarge its scope beyond economic and social policies of the government. This study discusses its characteristics based on both theories of social economy and social-solidarity economy which recently emerged as a innovative model for local development.

In Korea, social economy sector includes social enterprise, cooperatives and self-sufficiency organizations. These organizations can develop themselves in a variety of ways across the different patterns of regional and environmental characteristics. Therefore, reviewing backgrounds, trends, characteristics and future direction of social economy in the provincial level is meaningful for regional and national development of social economy. In this sense, this study focuses on Chungcheong Buk-do Province, describing development patterns of social economy organizations and their impact on local economic development and their future directions.