THE STATE AS INDUSTRIAL LOCATOR AND DISTRICT BUILDER - THE CASE OF CHANGWON, SOUTH-KOREA

The state may be a major shaper of industrial geography, especially in developing countries. Defense procurement offers an opportunity to st udy its role. In locating military industrial facilities, we hypothesi ze that the state is responding to different priorities than would civ ilian firms-strategic concerns (protection, secrecy), proximity to mil itary bases, preferences of military personnel. The resulting spatial pattern may segregate military activity from other civilian sectors, w ith both positive (interregional equity, new seedbed activity) and neg ative (expensive replication of infrastructure, barriers to interregio nal interfirm cooperation) consequences. The state, as industrial dist rict builder, may foster or discourage firm networking and synergy. St rategic and discretionary factors predominated in locational choice of a new military industrial complex built in the 1970s in Changwon, Sou th Korea, which now accounts for about 70 percent of the country's mil itary output. While contributing to interregional equity, the Changwon complex, constructed by a central government corporation, does not en courage intradistrict networking, is spatially divorced from the defen se electronics industry in Seoul, and thus has limited abilities to se rve as a major center of innovation for the nation.