A Third World perspective on industrial decentralization: The World Bank Study on Seoul

Over the past five years the World Bank has been engaged in an extensive investigation of the implementation of policies designed to recast the urban system of South Korea and, more especially, to constrain the expansion of the capital city, Seoul. The South Korean situation furnishes an example of an active employment decentralization policy pursued in a middle-income developing country. The task of the paper is to synthesize the extant research material on Seoul, chronicling the unfolding nature of policy intervention, the directions of industrial policy in South Korea and suggesting the broader implications for decentralization planning in South Africa.