Community participation in South Korean heritage-led regeneration

Abstract

This research addresses the conflicts around the implementation of community participation in heritage-led regeneration in South Korea by: 1) examining the evolution of the heritage concept from the Japanese colonial period to the present; 2) mapping out the development of a heritage-led regeneration plan with community participation for four key cities designated as ‘Ancient Cities’; 3) a focus on the local specificities and challenges to the implementation of heritage-led regeneration and community participation in Gongju, one of the four Ancient Cities. As such, the thesis provides a unique and novel insight into and an overview of the evolution of the heritage concept in South Korea, followed by a focus on more recent policy development towards heritage-led regeneration and community participation, and in particular how such processes are shaped by conflict between state power and local community needs. Although political democracy and systems of local autonomy have been established in South Korea since the 1990s, heritage policy has not been democratised in the same way. Heritage policy, as developed by the state in an authoritarian political environment, was instead maintained and extended. By researching community responses to this process, the thesis highlights that power imbalance is a critical point of debate, revealing a gap in perspectives on community engagement between policy planners and local communities. South Korean policymakers have argued that a heritage-led regeneration strategy supports regional development while effectively preserving heritage. Whilst introducing community engagement may have been considered ancillary to achieving these policy goals, local communities have successfully used it to demand significant changes to policy and power structures. The study shows that local communities have struggled for rights and power within authoritarian heritage policy and local power structures, and argues that community participation should be viewed not as a policy tool but as a change process