An Exploration of the NICs Political Ecology : A Nature-Based Tourism Experience in a Newly Industrialized Country, South Korea

An Exploration of the NICs Political Ecology:

A Nature-Based Tourism Experience in a Newly Industrialized Country, South Korea

Souyeon Nam*

한국의 친환경 관광경험을 통한 신흥발전국 정치생태학 탐색

남수연*

Abstract : This paper challenges the dichotomy of First World political ecology and the Third World political ecology by discussing political ecology agendas that are specific in Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs). In the course of achieving rapid economic growth, NICs have shown particular socioeconomic developmental paths, which also have mediated human-environment interactions therein. Institutional and ecological legacies of the developmental state penetrate through NICs-specific socioeconomic and ecological conditions. In order to illustrate the particularities of political ecology agendas in NICs, this work examines a nature-based tourism in South Korea called the Jeju Olle Trail, with the themes of power struggles between the state and non-state actors in resource management, construction of nature, and shifting rural lands and ensuing class struggles. By doing so, the paper aims: 1) to challenge the dichotomy of the First and the Third World political ecologies, 2) to explore particularities of political ecology in NICs; and thereby 3) to suggest NICs political ecology to the discipline of political ecology. The findings suggest that NICs does not fit in either the First World political ecology or the Third World political ecology because these countries are “in transition” and “in-between” the First and Third World. NICs political ecology will expand the scope of political ecology, when its NICs specific contexts are examined based on lessons learned from both the First and the Third World political ecology.

Key Words : Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs), South Korea, First/Third World political ecology, nature-based tourism

요약 :정치생태학계에는 제1세계 정치생태학과 제3세계 정치생태학의 이분법이 일반적으로 통용된다. 그

러나 상대적으로 최근 경제발전을 이룬 한국을 비롯한 신흥산업국가는 사회경제적 지위가 “변화하는 중(in transition)”이며 제1세계와 제3세계의 “중간(in-between)”에 위치하므로 이 이분법의 적용이 불가능하다. 본 연 구는 신흥산업국의 특수한 사회경제적 발전경로가 어떻게 정치생태학적으로 발현되는지를 살펴봄으로써 이분법 에 대한 문제제기를 시도한다. 이를 위해 한국의 제주 올레길에 대한 분석을 진행함에 있어 발전국가가 국가의 경 제발전을 추진하는 과정에서 남긴 제도적이고 생태적인 영향들이 현재의 신흥산업국가에서 발생하는 자원의 접 근 및 통제를 둘러싼 사회세력 간 갈등에서 어떻게 나타나는지에 주목하였다. 구체적으로는 국가와 비국가 주체 간 갈등, 자연의 사회적 생산, 그리고 생산경관에서 미적자연경관으로 전환하는 과정에서 나타나는 계층 간 갈등 등을 분석하였다. 이를 통해 본 연구는 1) 양분된 제1세계와 제3세계의 정치생태학에 대한 문제를 제기하고, 2) 한 국의 사례를 통해 신흥산업국 정치생태학의 특수성을 도출함으로써, 3) 정치생태학계에 신흥산업국 정치생태학

* Research associate, Regional Development Lab, Seoul National University ([email protected])

1. Introduction

McCarthy (2002) urges political ecologists to turn their attention from then-dominant research interests in the Third World toward the First World. For that, he demonstrates that political ecology themes equally mat- ter to the First World where political ecology agendas had not yet been much examined. McCarthy’s suggestion has brought about prolific outcomes for one and a half decades. Political ecologists began to examine how multi- scalar struggles over property rights were mediated by contesting ideals about natural resources in the context of advanced capitalist societies (Robbins and Sharp 2003;

Prudham 2004; Schroeder et al. 2006).

However, the dichotomy is problematic and porous (Walker 2003, Schroeder et al. 2006). It fails to capture dynamism. The category is established based on assump- tion that the members of First and Third World would be there within the category, without experiencing socio- economic status’ shifts at the global scale. Yet, history has shown that some countries have experienced dynamic shifts of their socioeconomic status at the global scale.

Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs) have achieved rapid economic growth in recent years (Page & Campos 1993) although majority of populations suffered from extreme poverty in the 1960s and 1970s. For instance, South Korea’s GDP per capita increased from $91 in 1961 to $27,222 (current US $) in 2015 (World Bank Database). As such, NICs’ socioeconomic status today is upward far from the Third World countries’, yet they are not yet included in the First World. The dichotomy fails to capture the countries in transition. Even when the assumption of fixity is taken, the dichotomy does not

allow spaces for those countries, of which socioeconomic status are located in-between those of the First and the Third World. Taken into account of both dynamic and static view on the First and the Third World, the category is incapable of explaining environmental politics in the countries in transition and in-between. For that explana- tion, there is a need to understand particularities of the countries’ human-environment interactions.

Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs) are defined in this paper based on the two characteristics of NICs, countries “in transition” and “in-between.” There exist no agreed definition of NICs. In general, NICs are cat- egorized based on temporality of economic growth: first tier since the 1960s - Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea, with a moniker “Asian Tigers,”; and second tier since 1990s – ASEAN, BRICs, and some African countries (Hobday 1995). These NICs’ socioeco- nomic status is in transition, and in-between. However, the paper limits its discussion to the political ecology in the first tier NICs where mainstream political ecologists’

interest has not reached, considering the ultimate goal of this paper shed light on “the other” political ecology (Kim et al. 2012), although the second tier countries, which once had been the Third World and recently embarked economic development initiatives, could also form another layer of political ecology. In this regard, the term “newly” industrialized countries seems obso- lete since it has already been at least a couple of decades decade since they achieved rapid economic growth. Yet, this paper sticks to the term NICs because no other word captures the characteristics of “in transition” and “in- between” better than the NICs does, which are the keys in challenging the dichotomy of the First and the Third World political ecology.

을 제안하는 것을 목적으로 한다.

주요어 :신흥발전국, 신흥발전국 정치생태학, 한국, 제1세계 / 제 3 세계, 친환경 관광

NICs’ exceptional economic growth has caught scholarly attention. Researchers, particularly those from economic geography, urban planning, and development studies, strived to determine the factors that enabled the success. Strong leadership of the so-called “developmenta (Placeholder1)l state” in economic development, as well as quality of human capital and social relations through nationality, kinship, school, or regions of origins within and beyond national boundaries, have been pointed out as East Asian particularities that could possibly have enabled the economic development (Kim and Lau 1994, Amsden 1989, Wade 1990). Later studies explore varied reconfiguration of national economies with shifting lead- ership of the developmental state

and its control over in- dustries and social capital due to the global imperatives of neoliberalism (Radice 2008, Weiss 2000, Park and Saito 2012).

The political and socioeconomic shifts necessarily brought about ecological shifts given that the environ- ment is temporally and geographically contingent (Cronon 1995). For example, South Korea’s rapid in- dustrialization in about twenty to thirty years resulted in environmental degradation due to intense use of resources. More importantly, as the main actors of re- source management shifted from the developmental state to decentralized state agencies and the civil society (Minns 2001), although centralized state authorities still remain in different forms, the ways in which these actors defined access to and control of resources has also shifted.

Determining these dynamics is important in under- standing NICs specific human and nature interactions, considering the dynamics is one of the critical points that differentiate NICs from the First and the Third World.

However, there has been little research that examines how these unique trajectories of NICs socioeconomic de- velopmental path is linked with shifting environmental conditions, with a few exceptions in recent years (Hwang 2015, Hwang et al. 2017, Hwang and Park 2013).

This paper explores how socioeconomic developmental

paths and subsequent dynamic social and demographic shifts of Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs) have mediated multi-scalar power struggles among state and non-state actors over access and control of resources, by examining a nature-based project in South Korea. By doing so, the paper illuminates another dynamic layer of political ecology that exists between the First and the Third World, thereby suggests the NICs political ecology. To that goal, this paper begins by reviewing development and themes of the Third World political ecology and the First World political ecology. Then it discusses how NICs specific traits mediate the material and discursive condition of the environment, by examin- ing a nature-based tourism project in South Korea. The conclusion suggests possible directions of NICs political ecology based on this paper’s findings.

2. First and Third World Political Ecology

1) Political ecology

Political ecologists examine human-nature relation- ship with an explicit emphasis on political economy.

Through their seminal work on political ecology, <Land

Degradation and Society> (1987), Blaikie and Brookfield

examine multi-scalar dynamics of using land-based re-

sources beginning from land managers with the focus on

their relations with nature (land) and other social actors

involved in land management. In doing so, Blaikie and

Brookfield develop a political ecology framework to ex-

amine shifting dialectic of society and nature, combining

the concerns of “ecology” and a “broadly defined politi-

cal economy” (1987, 17). Based on Blaikie and Brook-

field’s concept of political ecology, other scholars also

emphasize ecology and social structures as the two pillars

of political ecology analysis. For example, for Watts and

Peet, political ecology is a “confluence between ecologi- cally rooted social science and the principles of political economy” (1996, 6). Watts similarly notes that political ecologists examine the complicated relations between society and nature, emphasizing struggles over access to and control over resources (2000, 257). Relying on these scholars, this paper defines political ecology as the studies on access to and control of natural resources, emphasiz- ing actors of resource use and social structures.

Political ecologists often examine empirical cases to identify political economic structures of access and con- trol of resources. Although cases derive from various geo- graphic locations, their theses tend to converge. Robbins suggests four theses of political ecology as: 1) degrada- tion, and marginalization; 2) environmental conflict; 3) conservation and control; and 4) environmental identity and social movement (Robbins 2004, 14-15). Degrada- tion and marginalization thesis is concerned with shifts of capitalist production of nature in ways to exploit na- ture, i.e., using nature in unsustainable ways, marginal- izing local resource users who have been using resources for livelihoods in traditional, often sustainable, ways. En- vironmental conflicts occur when resource management interventions by international and/or state agencies result in increased scarcity of a particular resource, generating tensions among social groups such as gender and ethnic- ity. Similarly, conservation and control thesis emphasizes that external interventions to protect the environment impede local livelihoods and social relations, when tra- ditional ways of production ironically proved to be more benign than newly adopted interventions. Lastly, the environmental identity and social movement thesis looks into the processes that local groups shape environmental and local identities in relation with ecological and struc- tural shifts and mobilize their power to resist powerful political and economic forces at the global scale. These four theses share specific subjects that reveal core inter- ests among political ecologists in examining human- nature relations, namely, environmental sustainability,

livelihoods, external interventions vs. traditional ways of resource use, and conflicts and resistance among local groups.

The interests among political ecologists suggest geo- graphic inconsistence between researchers and research sites. The subjects of the linkage between the environ- ment and livelihoods distorted by external interventions tend to be found from the Third World. On the other hand, political ecology began from the First World researchers, mainly from the UK the US. Thus, politi- cal ecologists based on the First World have adopted political ecology frameworks in examining empirical cases have come from the Third World. The geographic inconsistency between researchers and empirical cases brought about a debate in political ecology. Geographic distributions of empirical cases in political ecology stud- ies have shown a temporal transition. Political struggles over environmental shifts occurring in the Third World have received scholastic attention since the 1980s. The geographic focus then turned toward the First World in the beginning of the 2000s.

2) Third World Political Ecology

As mentioned, political ecology studies by the 1990s had regional focus on the Third World. Geographic distributions of empirical cases spanned from Africa (Watts 1983, Bassett 1988, Neumann 1998, Peters 1994, Carney 1996, Fairhead and Leach 1995, Jaroz 1996), Latin America (Hall 1989, Hecht and Cockburn 1989, Amado 1989), and to South-east Asia (Peluso 1992, Agrawal 1992, Forsyth 1996, Hong 1987, Rangan 1997).

The studies examined the Third World-specific social

structures linked with ecological processes. The themes

include: post-colonialism (Watts 1983, Fairhead and

Leah 1996, Neumann 1998, Peluso 1992), gender roles

in resource uses (Schroeder 1993, Rocheleau et al. 1995,

Jackson 1993), and micro-politics, triggered by structural

shifts at national and global scales (Bassett 1988, Neu-

mann and Schroeder 1995)

.

While most of these studies implicitly shared their interests in the Third World, examining cases from the region, some other scholars made it explicit that political ecology studies are based on the Third World empirical cases. For example, Blaikie examines soil degradation occurring particularly in “developing countries” (1985).

The work begins by demonstrating that most soil ero- sion policies adopted by lesser developed countries have turned to be unsuccessful in reducing soil erosion or increasing food production, with a handful countries of exception such as South Korea and South Africa. Blaikie identifies the reasons why the policies usually fail. First, apolitical approaches to environmental problems resulted in the failure. Apolitical (using Robbins (2004)’ term) approaches views environmental problems solely as a re- sult of ecological processes, without considering political economy aspects involved in them. Second, the soil ero- sion policies were established based on colonial perspec- tives in which backwardness including overpopulation brought about soil erosion problems. Third, increasing rural peasants’ involvement in market economy were en- couraged, without considering social and ecological con- ditions in developing countries. In the analysis, Blaikie’s regional focus remains in the Third World, instead of the First World. The book includes a review on soil erosion policies of the US, which is a developed country. Yet, the US policies are analyzed only to be compared with the policies of the Third World, considering that many de- veloping countries adopted the US model in establishing their soil erosion policies. On his interest in developing countries, Blaikie notes,

soil erosion…can contribute to chronic food short- ages, so-called natural disasters and hazards, drought, landslides, floods, and undermine an entire country’s development effort, while in developed countries its impact is less immediate and pressing. Further- more…certain land-users in the tropics [where lesser

developed countries are located] can bring about very rapid and sometimes irreversible environmental change (Blaikie 1985, 9).

In the excerpt, Blaikie makes a comparison between developed and developing countries. He argues that so- cial and ecological impacts of environmental problems are more detrimental to lesser-developed countries com- pared to developed countries, requiring urgent exami- nation of environmental problems in the Third World.

Thus, Blaikie concentrates his examination of political economy in environmental control and contestation ex- plicitly on developing countries.

While Blaikie has yet to use the term ‘political ecol- ogy’ in examining developing countries’ environmental changes mediated by political forces, Bryant (1992) and Bryant and Baily (1997) adopted it to the Third World studies, also contributing to shedding an explicit light on political ecology’s concentration on the Third World.

In reviewing the Third World studies that examine contextual sources of environmental change, conflict and access, and political ramifications of environmen- tal change, Bryant (1992) suggests political ecology frameworks. He argues that political ecology would gain importance in the Third World studies, because the development of the Third World would be unprecedent- edly determined by environmental changes mediated by political forces (page 12). Thus, for Bryant (1992), the po- tential for development of the Third World, i.e., today’s

“underdevelopment” (Blaikie 1985), and its dependence on environmental and social processes are the justifica- tions for employing political ecology in understanding particularly the Third World, similarly with Blaikie (1985). Through the argument, Bryant establishes the

‘Third World political ecology” as a body of scholarship.

Bryant and Baily (1997) then further develops Bryant

(1992)’s argument. With political ecology frameworks,

they discuss the Third World political ecology issues

based on actors, such as local people, NGOs, and inter-

national organizations. In a way to emphasize political processes of environmental shifts in the Third World, they examine the actors of “a politicized environment, which include, the state, multilateral institutions, busi- ness, environmental non-governmental organizations, and grassroots actors. These actors’ interactions result in reinforcing the chronic problems of the region since colonial histories: extreme poverty accompanied by envi- ronmental degradation. The illustrated problems further justify Bryant and Baily (1997)’s argument for a “specifi- cally” Third World political ecology (page 7).

In sum, the studies on the Third World’s environmen- tal shifts mediated by political forces flourished since the 1970s. Here the Third World is synonymous with devel- oping countries, particularly indicating Latin America, South/Southeast Asia, and Africa. Based on those studies, a body of scholarship called the Third World political ecology was established in the 1990s. They em- phasized that political ecology was useful for analyzing environmental and social shifts occurring specifically in the Third World. It was because the region’s majority of population was dependent their livelihoods on the environment, which was increasingly shifted, and medi- ated by multi-scalar actors. Examinations with political ecology frameworks gained urgency due to expedited environmental degradation and extreme poverty in the Third World.

3) First World Political Ecology

The geographic distribution of political ecology stud- ies began to shift in the 2000s. Apart from the Third World, the studies examining social processes involved in environmental changes in developed countries began to flourish. McCarthy (2002), arguably, initiated the shift.

He expanded the geographic scope of political ecology toward the First World, by urging political ecologists to look nearby, instead of remote research sites

. Given the significance of McCarthy’s work in the debate of First

and Third World political ecology, McCarthy (2002) is worth being discussed at length.

McCarthy (2002) challenged taken-for-granted as- sumptions among political ecologists that political ecol- ogy themes exist mainly in the Third World, by examin- ing the Wise Use movement. The Wise Use movement was a coalition of organizations in the rural American West. Culminating in the 1990s, it aimed to maintain local traditional access to federally owned lands while setting front environmentalism and locality. McCarthy examined the Wise Use Movement by deploying political ecology as both an analytical framework and an explana- tion. He identified analytical frameworks such as “state capacity.” Then he compared the Third World and the First World conditions to explain similarities, such as

“weak” or “strong” state authorities. Below I discuss the eight analytical frameworks and comparative explana- tions based on the dichotomy that McCarthy used. The discussion aims to: 1) help understanding of detailed themes of political ecology, 2) highlight the differences and similarities of the First and the Third World politi- cal ecology conditions, and 3) utilize McCarthy (2002)’s work as a basis to build the paper’s argument toward the NICs political ecology.

McCarthy first challenged dichotomies of purposes of using rural land-based resources in the First and Third World. It was widely assumed that the purpose of ac- cess to and control of rural land-based resources was to achieve aesthetic satisfaction in the First World as op- posed to livelihoods and subsistence in the Third World.

However, the Wise Use movement suggested that the struggles in the First World were for livelihoods purposes rather than aesthetic purposes. In addition, consistently losing access to federal lands in the course of making livelihoods increased American West rural populations’

marginality, which had been conceived as being found

only in the Third World. Second, scale of research differs

between the First and Third World. Resource conflicts

and conservation agendas were examined at the federal

level (formal) in the First World while at the local scale (informal) in the Third World based on the assumption that laws regulate resource uses without failure in the First World. Yet, the Wise Use movement revealed am- biguity and limits of resource use regulations in one of the most advanced capitalist country, highlighting the importance of the local scale in determining access to and control over resources. Third, strong state capacity of the US was only a relative sense with the Third World countries. The US resource regulation and enforce- ment often reveal inefficiencies and incoherence. Thus, research findings from examining “weak” Third World state capacities often provided guidance for diagnosing problems in the First World resource controls. Fourth, there was an assumption that First World property rights were regulated by formal authorities with distinctive ownerships while those in the Third World were mostly informal with ambiguous ownerships. Yet in fact, evi- dence from the First World suggested that formal regula- tions there were inconsistent with what really happened on the ground. Property rights there were much more complicated, ambiguous, and thus constantly shift- ing than largely assumed that formal regulations were far from completely covering property relations. Fifth dichotomy that McCarthy pointed out was the differ- ence of ‘loss and criminalization of access’ between First and Third World. Unlike widespread assumption that the symptom was hardly found in the First World, local access to federal lands frequently happened resulting in criminalization of those accesses. Sixth, McCarthy argued that integration into capitalist markets and moral economies could co-exist, when moral economy was regarded as “preindustrial.” Rural residents in American west demonstrated behaviors of moral economies instead of capitalist economies, such as prioritizing community sustainability over personal profits, when they were in the most advanced capitalist country. Seventh challenged assumption was cultural politics. Although meaning embedded in resource uses have been so central in ex-

amining struggles over access to and control of resources in the Third World, scholars paid too little attention to those occurring in the First World. McCarthy argued that the lack of attention was caused by the assumption on the western tradition of rationality, as it overrode local unscientific cultures. Yet, cultural politics was central in the Wise Use movement, too. The movement advocated local residents’ rights to use federally owned lands for resource extraction by arguing that exercising the rights was critical to protect local customs and cultures. Lastly, colonial legacies and roles in spatial divisions of labor were also found from the First World. Just like the Third World, advanced capitalist countries, such as the US, Australia, and Canada, were European colonies, and thus, experienced the expansion of colonial powers in so- cial processes of resource uses. In addition, the Wise Use movement advocated the rights for those in the primary industry who suffered from poverty and lack of politi- cal power in a relative sense within the country. In sum, McCarthy challenged the above-discussed dichotomies of the assumption applied in examining environmental governance between First and Third World (Table 1).

Through discovering the Third World conditions within the First World (Schroeder et al. 2006), based on the evidence provided by one of the most advanced capitalist country, McCarthy opened the door for burgeoning of the First World political ecology.

Heeding upon McCarthy’s call, many political ecolo- gists have explored the environmental politics looking

“near” (Robbins 2002, Schroeder 2005). They have joined the quest for First World political ecology (Walker and Fortmann 2003, Robbins 2006, Robbins and Sharp 2003, Cadieux 2011, Prudham 2007, Hollander 2004).

Main themes of political ecology have been examined

with empirical First World cases, which include: en-

vironmental histories (Ekers 2015, Hollander 2004),

environmental knowledge (Robbins 2006), neoliberal

restructuring (Robertson 2004) including privatiza-

tion (Mansfield 2004) and state incapacities (Prudham

2004), community-based resource management (Martin 2006), cultural politics over the environment by corpora- tions (Robbins et al. 2012) and organizations (Guthman 2014), ecotourism as developmental strategies (Che 2006), and landscape ideologies (Walker and Fortmann 2003). While some of these studies investigate the First World-specific agendas, such as obesity (Guthman 2011)

and lawns for aesthetic purposes (Robbins 2012), most others maintain to examine traditional political ecol- ogy themes deriving from the Third World, focusing on agrarian society and marginalization of resource uses.

In doing so, the studies respond to McCarthy’s call for looking for implications from the Third World political ecology in order to understand political ecology agendas

PE as an analytical

framework PE as an explanation

Themes Assumed Dichotomy First World in reality

(evidence from “Wise Use”)

Third World First World

Rural land and resources

Livelihood purposes;

Marginality among rural populations

Aesthetic purposes;

Living conditions far from marginality

Livelihoods purposes as well; self- conceived marginality among rural populations

Scale Local; informal Federal; formal & legal Local scale politics and informal insti- tutions often determine access to and control of resources

State capacity Weak authorities and ineffi-

cient enforcement Strong authorities and profes-

sionalized management Incapable, incoherent, and inefficient state regulations; Local pressure Property relations Ambiguities; Social networks Legally formalized; Transfer-

able private property

Informal property rights still present;

Ambiguous property rights, mediated by shifting bureaucratic discretions Loss and criminal-

ization of access Loss and criminalization of long-established uses of resources among local users

Struggles over access to and control over resources non- existent due to formalized property rights

Previous access to federal lands are to be limited; Criminalization of access is occurring and brings about controver- sies; local resistances

Integration into capitalist markets and moral economy formation

Moral economy (alternative for modern capitalism) forma- tion as precapitalist

Economic activities controlled by rational individuals; To maximize individual profits rather than foster social rela- tions

Federal lands used as sustainable sources of raw materials for local communities rather than individual profits; common resources rather than privatization (anticaptialist)

Cultural politics Struggles over meanings; Tra- dition, custom, ethnicity, and collective identities; Western view of human-nature rela- tions

Little attention to culture;

Rational, instrumental, and individualist agents; Moder- nity

Complex cultural politics at the center of environmental politics; Deploying local cultures embedded in resource uses to bolster the argument of Wise Use

Colonial legacies and roles in spatial divisions of labor

Colonialism and its legacies inscribed in access to and control of resources

Have little to do with colonial- ism and its legacies

First World countries were under European colonial powers, thus, the legacies are still to be found in patterns of access to and control of resources From McCarthy (2002, 1284-1297)

in the First World (McCarthy 2002, 1288), thereby ad- vancing political ecology as a whole.

The dichotomy of First and Third World political ecology is continuously reproduced among political ecologists (Hurley and Halfacre 2011, Hayes-Conroy &

Hayes-Conroy 2013; Schroeder et al. 2006). As the First World political ecology came out from the reflection on the dominance of the Third World political ecology, the dichotomy of the First World and the Third World political ecology has been established as a scheme to view political ecology. The conversation among political ecol- ogists still revolves around the axes of the First and Third World by identifying the Third World conditions within the First World cases just like McCarthy (2002) did.

3. Toward NICs Political Ecology

This paper challenges the dichotomy by examining how unique socioeconomic developmental paths of NICs mediate political ecology processes. Notable character- istics of NICs include rapid economic growth based on the strong leadership of the so-called the developmental state, accompanied by the state’s political oppression on its citizens and ensuing citizen demand for democracy, green spaces, and social equities. These characteristics, though, have been ever changing in NICs societies for decades after achieving economic growth. The changes reflect domestic and international imperatives: the neoliberal ideology that swept the globe resulted in a decentralization of state agencies and deregulation of the economy. In doing so, citizens’ political awareness about democracy has augmented, vitalizing civil society. In addition, citizens’ socioeconomic conditions have far im- proved compared to the 1960s when the developmental state embarked on developmental plans, implying that they gained purchasing power to afford their pursuit of green spaces.

To explore how these characteristics have environmen- tal implications, the paper examines a nature-based tour- ism in South Korea. South Korea as well as the Jeju Olle Trail project is suitable to tease out how NICs-specific socioeconomic characteristics mediate access to and con- trol of natural resources. It is because South Korea suffers from environmental degradation engendered in the pro- cess of the “compressed modernity” (Chang 2010) of the country (Bello and Rosenfield 1990, Chung & Kirkby 2005), and this link revolves around struggles over access to and control of nature of the Jeju Olle Trail, reflecting recent changes in NICs mentioned above.

Data was collected through ethnographic fieldwork on Jeju Island for sixteen months from 2011 to 2013, using ethnographic research methods, namely in-depth inter- views, participant observations, and archival research.

Data from most recent media articles are also added.

1) Political Ecology of the Jeju Olle Trail

Jeju Island, located at the southern off the coast of the South Korean mainland, is one of the most-visited tourist destinations in the county. On the island, an ecotourism project named the Jeju Olle Trail has recently opened, linking existing walking paths along coastlines.

It is designed to provide tourists with an opportunity to explore not only natural landscapes of the island but also everyday lives of the people living there. The 25 different paths that stretch for 420 km and encircle the island pass through small coastal villages as well as beaches and hills.

General concepts of ecotourism are implied in the project that the tourist activities do no harm to the environment and economically benefit villagers. As the Jeju Olle Trail turns out to be successful in attracting tourists, other provinces have competitively developed walking paths with similar concepts.

(1) Environmental governance

The Jeju Olle Trail was established through the en-

vironmental governance among the Jeju Special Self- Governing Province (JSSGP), the Jeju Olle Foundation, Jeju residents, and the urban middle class, including tourists, and migrants who recently moved to Jeju Island attracted by the island’s natural and cultural amenities.

By 2007 when the Jeju Olle Foundation established the trail, the JSSGP was designated as the first, and the only so far, Self-Governing Province among nine South Korean provinces in 2006. Its designation represents the South Korean government’s endeavor to achieve decentralization by establishing the JSSGP as an exem- plar case for decentralization. Although the JSSGP is a decentralized state agency, representing an advancement of the country’s democracy, the Jeju Olle Foundation made it explicit that the Jeju Olle Foundation refused the JSSGP’s intervention in the Jeju Olle Trail management, for the reason that the state has been destroying the en- vironment (Suh 2010). The Jeju Olle Foundation’s resis- tance was based on an assumption that a non-state actor would manage the environment in a sustainable way, unlike state actors. By emphasizing that non-state actors, i.e., Jeju residents as well as the Jeju Olle Foundation, established the trail instead of state actors, the foundation gained the legitimacy for controlling resources (lands of different uses that compose of natural landscapes along the Jeju Olle Trail) along with involved social relations.

The JSSGP accepted the ways in which the Jeju Olle Trail was controlled dominantly by the Jeju Olle Foundation while the JSSGP only supports the trail’s management.

In doing so, the JSSGP set the Jeju Olle Trail front for place marketing as an environmentally and socially sus- tainable tourist destination (Joseilbo April 14 2016).

(2) Discourses on nature

A book titled “Fatigue Society” (Han 2012) swept the South Korean society in 2012. Relying on Foucault’s notion of governmentality, a Germany-based philoso- pher argues that today’s individuals screen themselves to adapt to capitalist ideologies, and end up being extremely

weary in the process of self-exploitation. The book was highly influential in South Korea as it drew realization among South Koreans that they had been too tired in ex- ploiting themselves to become a diligent, persistent, and exemplar citizens. With the efforts, the country achieved remarkable success. However, individuals found them still painstakingly working for improvement, even with- out realizing that they were exploiting themselves.

The Jeju Olle Trail weaved “nature” into the Fatigue Society discourse (Hangyorae October 28 2012)

. The Jeju Olle Foundation linked village lanes, farm roads, and beach, avoiding paved roads, thereby established the Jeju Olle Trail as a continuous and collective tourist des- tination. By “linking” instead of “building” the tourist destination, the foundation claimed the environmental conservation idea embedded in the trail, i.e., the trail establishment unaltered the environment of Jeju Island as it had been. In order to emphasize environmental conser- vation idea, the foundation prohibited from using heavy equipment in establishing the trail (Suh 2008, 2010; Kyo-

Jeju Olle Trail was proclaimed to be only “rediscovered”

without altering its originality due to the particular ways that the Jeju Olle Trail was established. The Jeju Olle Foundation claimed that the urban middle class wrecked from constant pursuit of success in urban settings could experience mental healing within the nature along the Jeju Olle Trail as it retained childhood memories and nature (Suh 2010). In the nature of Jeju Island, the Jeju Olle Foundation leader experienced mental and physical healing, at the end of thirty years of hectic life as a Seoul- based journalist. Her experience, along with other artists’

and the ex-urban middle class individuals’ offered the evidence for the urban middle class mental healing in nature on Jeju Island (Ibid.).

Targeting the urban middle class that had been tired

at the end of being used as parts for the country’s indus-

trialization, the Jeju Olle Foundation suggested tourists

to enjoy the Jeju Olle Trail like a “gansedari (Suh 2010)”

It is dialectic of Jeju Island meaning “lazy.” The Jeju Olle Foundation urged tourists to walk slowly along the Jeju Olle Trail, instead of hurriedly rushing from beginning to ending points of trail routes, as South Koreans had rushed for industrialization. Being immersed in pre-in- dustrial nature and by doing so experiencing laziness and mental healing was prioritized over conquering routes.

The discourse of nature on Jeju Island was highly influen- tial, contributing to increasing the number of tourists on Jeju Island.

(3) Rural land uses

Agriculture has been an important industry on Jeju Island, although its contribution to the regional economy has declined. 18% of population are employed in the ag- riculture sector (2015, compare with 7% at the national level), and 11% of Jeju Island’s Gross Regional Domestic Product (GRDP) (2014, compare with 2% at the nation-

al level) (KOSIS). For that, 37.1% of Jeju Island’s total land is used for agricultural purposes, such as agricultural and ranch fields (2016, compare with 20.1% at the na- tional level) (Ibid.).

While the lands are used for agricultural production, they are also a part of tourism resources. In other words, the lands are viewed from the aesthetic standpoint while being used for livelihood purposes. Sometimes these views on the same landscape are compatible, yet in other times, result in conflicts between Jeju residents and tour- ists. As shown from the above discussion on “discourses in nature” section, the Jeju Olle Foundation established environmental and aesthetic ideals of rural landscapes on Jeju Island. Subscribing to the promoted ideals, the South Korean urban middle class discursively and ma- terially claimed its entitlement to rural landscapes along the Jeju Olle Trail. Even though the rural landscapes could be seen as aesthetically pleasing “natural” land-

Figure 1. Saemaul Monument and paved village lanes Murung 2 li, Jeju Island; Picture taken by the author in Fall 2013

scapes, the landscape ideal required further modification of actual rural landscapes. Along the Jeju Olle Trail, rural villagers were asked to take the cost of landscape modi- fication by shifting their ways of making livelihoods. In addition, the aesthetic landscape discourse-subscribing urban middle class negated rural villagers’ developmental achievements, as tourists complained about paved roads to Jeju residents when they encountered. For example, villagers paved village lanes and farm roads using their own labor in the 1970s, under the Saemaul Movement (Figure 1). Their once proud achievement of modern- ization (pavement) has been blamed for ruining the aesthetic natural landscapes along the Jeju Olle Trail.

This process erased history, lived experience, and labor for livelihood from the landscape, and incorporated and enhanced environmental and aesthetic aspects of the landscapes along the Jeju Olle Trail.

2) Locating NICs Political Ecology

The Jeju Olle Trail illustrates political ecology pro- cesses, i.e., the environment is rendered political, with the establishment of the regime to control natural resources on Jeju Island. The trail reframed nature on Jeju Island in a way to create values. Material and discursive class strug- gles ensue between Jeju residents and tourists, with the interventions of the Jeju Olle Foundation and the JSSGP agencies. In this process, NICs-specific characteristics mediate the struggles, differentiating NICs political ecol- ogy from the First and the Third World political ecology.

Anti-state sentiment

The role of the state in resource management is one of the key themes in political ecology. While McCarthy (2002) focuses on state capacity to cast doubt on ineffi- cient resource management of the state in both First and the Third Worlds, the role of the state in relation with other actors is more often discussed when political ecol- ogy processes are examined emphasizing on actors. In

general, in the Third World, the state reserves strong au- thorities. It plays dominant roles in political and ecologi- cal processes, although state authorities are threatened by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), transnational corporations, or grassroots (Bryant and Baily 1997, Per- reault 2005). On the other hand, citizens ask greater dis- cretion resisting state regulations (Shoreman & Haenn 2009) in the First World. The state in the First World is often described as a facilitator of capitalist accumulation based on the regulationist approach (Robertson 2004) instead of a controller of social and ecological processes within territories (like the Third World cases; Neumann 1997 as an example), if not absent from discussion (Rob- bins 2006).

The roles of the NICs state reflect political shifts of those countries, showing differences from those identi- fied in the First or the Third World political ecology. The state’s roles in resource management have drastically shifted, requiring a particular attention to NICs’ political dynamism. In case of South Korea, the shifts were de- rived, first, from international imperatives of decentral- ization of state agencies. The rapid economic growth was driven by bureaucratic entities called the “developmental state,” characterized by strong leadership and centralized state authorities. With decentralization drive since the mid 1990s, the authorities have been devolved to lower- level state agencies, such as provincial governments.

Second, domestically, the power of civil society has grown, resulting in further decreasing state authorities.

Although South Korea achieved a remarkable rapid eco-

nomic growth in several decades, the success was based

on political expense of South Korean public, who had

suffered from the state’s violent political oppression (Kim

2010, 197). The political oppression brought about active

protest against authoritarian government among Korean

citizens, culminating in the 1970s and 1980s. As South

Korean society gradually moved toward democracy,

particularly triggered from the June Protest (1987), these

voices exploded through the activities of civil society

(Minns 2001). The largest concerns among these voices were about social inequality pervasive in South Koran society and environmental degradation, both caused by single-minded economic growth and industrialization.

The South Korean public attributed these social and eco- logical problems to the developmental state (Kim 1997).

These changes of decentralization and the emergence of civil society reflect the anti-state sentiment (Ibid.). It is because the decentralization was driven based on the belief that decentralization ensured democratic processes of state affairs by sharing power among stakeholders, so does the state’s partnership with civil society.

The Jeju Olle Trail case well illustrates how recent political changes turn environmental and vice versa, in South Korea, one of the NICs. The key issue here is “who controls the environment.” In the Jeju Olle Trail case, when the environment controlled by the developmental state began to be perceived as problematic, the state ac- tors were criticized, regardless of whether the state actors at the moment of evaluation actually had brought about the problems or not. The criticism was raised by an ac- tor, which had a contrasting characteristic, i.e., a non- state actor. The resistance against the state intervention embedded in the Jeju Olle Trail touched the anti-state sentiment among the urban middle class who had expe- rienced and also been involved in the country’s political turmoil in the course of industrialization. For example, the Jeju Olle Foundation leader, who has been the typical urban middle class for thirty years, was prisoned because she was involved in the protest against the oppressive state then. Also, the celebrities who publicly advocated the trail have been progressive figures in South Korean media and culture, such as a journalist Son, Sukhee, an architect Kim, Jinae, and a singer Yang, Hee-eun (Suh 2010). As these figures represent the citizen’s protest against the developmental state’s authoritarian behaviors in South Korea, the Jeju Olle Foundation’s refusal of the state intervention could evoke the anti-state senti- ment among the South Korean public. The foundation’s

control over the environment, along with social relations involved in the Jeju Olle Trail, was ultimately rational- ized with the urban middle class support. In this process, the environment is inextricably intertwined with politi- cal struggles, endowing or taking power from the actors competing over controlling resources. And the NIC developmental state’s particular way of industrialization and resulting environmental outcomes determines these political and environmental struggles.

Anti-industrialization

Cultural politics, one of the political ecology themes, has been addressed both in the Third World political ecology (Peet and Watts 1996) and the First World political ecology (McCarthy 2002, Robbins 2006). In both, actors of human and environment interactions deploy cultural politics to gain advantageous positions in struggles of access to and control of resources. Cultural politics found from the Jeju Olle Trail case locates it as a political ecology project. The Jeju Olle Trail attracted tourists by producing a particular type of nature, mak- ing it palatable to the South Korean urban middle class.

The production of nature was political like in First and Third World political ecology cases, because it ultimately served for particular interests (Smith 2010), among the urban middle class in case of the Jeju Olle Trail. Yet, how the nature is produced is fundamentally different from the First and the Third world political ecology.

The cultural politics involved in producing particu- lar nature along the Jeju Olle Trail reflect what NICs experience after industrialization. First, NICs citizens are susceptible to cultural politics involved in nature imagined as preindustrial

. In case of South Korea, its relatively small territory has been filled with buildings and roads, leaving little for green spaces. When the coun- try rushed for industrialization, the citizens could not afford looking around or pausing for a second. However, once the country realized economic growth, citizens’

demand for leisure in green spaces has augmented (Kim

2000). Nature as scarce resources has become a subject of politics, as seen from the Jeju Olle Trail case. Second, imagined preindustrial nature is linked with personalities supposedly lost in the course of industrialization. NICs have passed through intense industrialization processes, considering the short amount of time taken for economic growth. South Korea particularly has little natural re- sources, and thus heavily dependent on human capital for economic growth. Thus, the citizens had single- mindedly pursued growth or improvement, competing amongst each other to produce more and better outputs.

Once the goal was reached, South Korean citizens have begun to aspire to improve their lives in a fundamentally different ways from economic growth (Kim & Kwon 1996). The interest in quality of lives increases as a reflec- tion on the industrialization processes. The Jeju Olle Trail case shows that nature being lost in the process of industrialization could be produced as a great candidate to reorient people, and thus to improve quality of lives.

Here, nature is produced in a particular form that reflects NICs industrialization processes. The social processes are ecological, and vice versa, pointing that the production of nature in NICs is a political ecology processes.

Uneven development & Anti-modernization The process the Jeju Olle Trail establishment shares a political ecology theme found both from the First and the Third World. That is, structural changes, like de- velopmental project implementations, bring about the marginalization among rural populations. As McCarthy (2002) discusses, marginalization among rural popula- tions can be understood in two ways. First, rural liveli- hoods tend to be threatened due to institutional changes of access to and control of resources. In case of the Jeju Olle Trail, two different purposes of aesthetics and liveli- hoods could coexist on a single landscape. Thus, rural landscape ideals among the urban middle class, which has purchasing power for the tourist capitalism on Jeju Is- land, were prioritized over rural livelihoods. Rural farm-

ers reported that they had to modify their traditional ways of doing agriculture in a way to align with tourists’

landscape ideals, such as hiding unaesthetic components of farming like equipment or fertilizer bags from agri- cultural fields etc. Second, self-conceived marginality was engendered among rural populations as the Jeju Olle Trail was implemented along Jeju rural villages. When the Jeju Olle Trail swept the country gaining a reputation as an exemplar developmental model, Jeju rural villages competed amongst each other to be included in the Jeju Olle Trail in order to enjoy additional income from tour- ists (Suh 2010). Rural residents invested to open local res- taurants and lodges, in addition to doing agriculture. Yet, rural villagers reported that their expectations for addi- tional income failed to be met when they made efforts to adapt to the shifts of rural land uses. Their self-conceived marginalization increased instead.

Unlike the similarities, NICs have specific characters in using rural lands that differentiate them from the First and the Third World. In other words, the particular path of industrialization is weaved into the struggles over ac- cess to and control of rural lands along the Jeju Olle Trail.

Bryant and Baily (1997)’s argument that rural lands are

used dominantly for livelihoods in the Third World and

for aesthetic purposes in the First World is still valid in

general. Of course, it is undeniable that rural lands in

the First World (Gosnell and Haggerty 2007, Robbins

also experience the transition of purposes of using rural

lands from livelihoods to aesthetic front. What is par-

ticular in this binary among NICs is that the purposes

of using rural lands are “in transition.” The NICs urban

middle class now has purchasing power after successful

industrialization, and its demands for rural landscapes

for aesthetic purposes have increased. Yet, the rural lands,

resources for aesthetic rural landscapes, are still used for

rural populations’ livelihoods. Class conflicts between

the urban middle class and rural populations over rural

landscape visions are occurring. In the South Korean

case, the Jeju Olle Trail brought about a riffle effect as South Korean state agencies established more than 500 trails by 2013. After the Jeju Olle Trail was established in 2007, the number of Jeju tourists rapidly increased, from 5.4 million in 2007 to 7.6 million in 2010 and 8.9 million in 2014 (Jeju Self-Governing Provincial Tourism Association 2015). As the Jeju Olle Trail successfully at- tracted tourists, bringing about the ‘walking fever’ across the country, other provinces on the mainland bench- marked the Jeju Olle Trail to achieve regional develop- ment by utilizing existing rural landscapes that had not been used as tourism resources. Considering the scope of rural land use shifts spread across the country, struggles over access to and control over rural landscapes between the uses of livelihoods and aesthetic purposes are ongo- ing, calling for the need for identifying political ecology processes therein.

The self-conceived marginality among rural popula- tions also has historical origins in the South Korean industrialization processes. While achieving rapid eco- nomic growth in two or three decades, the single-minded pursuit for economic growth has engraved urban-rural- differential outcomes. As of 1960s, the inauguration of the President Park, Junghee, the government focused on fostering the light industry and its export. Factory work- ers who migrated from rural areas to cities looking for jobs had to endure extremely low salary and wretched working environment to produce light industry products for export. The government implemented policies to keep crop prices fairly low (called the “Low Crop Prices policy”) in a way for factory workers live on low sala- ries. Thus, rural populations were left behind while the country achieved economic growth at the expense of the agricultural sector. Moreover, social, economic, cultural, and political infrastructure were developed only in urban areas, particularly in Seoul, while rural lands were targets of land speculation7) among the urban middle class.

These processes of industrialization resulted in devastat- ing rural economy, engendering self-conceived marginal-

ity among rural populations. The Jeju Olle Trail’s imple- mentation deepened the feeling.

The different paths of development between rural and urban areas also cause rural-urban conflicts. In the course of industrialization, South Korea experienced rapid urbanization and following infrastructure devel- opment. Unlike urban development where government planned and invested resources for infrastructure im- provement such as building roads and housings, rural development was achieved through rural residents’

participation in the Saemaul Undong (the New Village Movement), in combination with the government’s support. During the 1970s, labor and resources were systematically mobilized in a village level in order to

“modernize” underdeveloped living conditions under the strong leadership of the developmental state. Saemaul

rea. Under the slogan of “Diligence, Self-help, and Coop- eration,” villagers were urged to voluntarily participate in modernizing rural living conditions. As the government provided villages with incentives based on performance, rural villages competitively participated in improving rural village-level infrastructure such as changing roofs and widening/paving village lanes and farm roads. Thus, rural village infrastructure has been a glorious achieve- ment, particularly among elderly rural populations. The achievement of rural village modernization though was negated by Jeju Olle Trail tourists as tourists complained about pavement along the Jeju Olle Trail. The tour- ists visited the Jeju Olle Trail subscribing the Jeju Olle Foundation-established imagery of ‘natural’ landscapes in rural Jeju Island. They aspired to enjoy nature in rural settings instead of unexpected and unaesthetic ‘paved’

village lanes. Tourists sometimes complained to encoun-

tered rural villagers about the pavement, engendering, in

turn, rural villagers’ complaints about tourists’ attitudes

(Ibid.). In NICs, conflicts over how to use rural lands

have similar temporality. Landscape views often began

diverging among citizens from industrialization periods,

which has not been long (30 years in case of South Ko- rea). Before then, the urban middle class and rural resi- dents were all in rural settings, sharing same memories of the ‘natural’ rural landscapes. Also, the conflicts over land use along the Jeju Olle Trail imply that the remnants of industrialization can be controversial when rural land uses are to shift in NICs (Ibid.). The class conflicts over rural landscape views also show that the First World and the Third World political ecology agendas of rural land uses coexist in NICs political ecology.

The Jeju Olle Trail case illustrates how NICs-specific socioeconomic characteristics in South Korea mediate the social processes involved in the environment in a crit- ical way. The particularities of the NICs’ political ecology agendas include environmental degradation, political oppression, and uneven development, particular between rural and urban areas. The developmental state’s strong leadership in the course of industrialization is the thread of these social and ecological dynamics (Table 2).

4. Conclusion

This paper challenges the “problematic” yet still “solid”

dichotomy of the First and the Third World politi- cal ecology thereby explores possible directions of the NICs political ecology. NICs’ rapid economic growth

is unprecedented from the First and the Third World, requiring consideration of its particular contexts of so- cioeconomic development when it comes to understand human-environmental interactions therein. Particularly, discursive and material struggles over the environment in NICs are especially pressing, considering that demands for rural amenities have spread from the First World in the 1970s toward middle-income countries like NICs these days. It means that the First and the Third world characteristics coexist (e.g., landscape for livelihoods and aesthetic purposes), and that socioeconomic and ecologi- cal conditions rapidly shifting in NICs. Yet, how these particularities are presented in human-environment interactions needs close examination of empirical cases that contain political ecology agendas. This paper dem- onstrates that the case of the Jeju Olle Trail in one of the NICs does not fit in the First-Third World dichotomy widely accepted in political ecology scholarship after McCarthy’s (2002) suggestion because South Korea has social and economic characteristics mixed between the two sides of the “World” as a result of a social shift caused by rapid economic growth. By examining political ecol- ogy concerns (i.e., multi-scalar struggles over access and control of resources) in one of the NICs, this work illumi- nates a new “World” to explore. By doing so, it challenges the Anglo-American-centered episteme of political ecology as a response to Kim et al. (2012)’s call for a “dif- ferentiated gaze for a political ecology” (page 42), with

Agendas Socioeconomic developmental paths among NICs NICs political ecology struggles are involved in Environmental

governance The developmental state’s strong authority on the political economy and

the environment in the course of industrialization Anti-state sentiment Human-environment

interactions Rapid urbanization and green space decline, and increasing nostalgia for

preindustrial nature and neighborhood Anti-industrialization Rural land uses Structural exploitation on rural economy and resulting uneven develop-

ment between rural and urban areas; recent increase of leisure demand, particularly on rural landscapes

Uneven development &

Anti-modernization

a contribution of a geography-centered view of political ecology.

Although this paper discusses a political ecology me- diated by NICs-specific socioeconomic developmental paths, to claim generalities of NICs political ecology is not of this paper’s interest. Admittedly, this paper has a tension between generality and specificity while it ex- amines a South Korean case to determine NICs-specific characteristics. In doing so, it follows the way that Mc- Carthy (2002) took, i.e., identifying political ecology agendas from a social movement case from the US to suggest a political ecology of the First World, in which various social, political, and ecological contexts are by no means explained by a single case from the US (think about the US and European countries). McCarthy did not make efforts to generalize his findings in the First World context. Nor did he confined the scope of the First World to the US or Canada. Yet, First World political ecology is being contextualized with following works (e.g., Sjölander-Lindqvist 2008, Vaccaro & Beltran 2010), although the dominance of the North America is obviously undeniable. Likewise, this paper’s exploration of NICs political ecology through a South Korean case could serve as a beginning point to establish a NICs po- litical ecology, which is composed of numerous layers of contextualization.

Lastly, the paper is limited as a suggestion of NICs po- litical ecology due to the lack of thorough examination of existing NICs political ecology, including those in South Korea (e.g., Hwang 2017, Choi 2016). The research leaves the task for future studies.

Acknowledgement

The author appreciates the reviewers’ constrictively critical and thorough comments, which significantly im- proved the paper.

Notes

1) Douglass (1994) contends that the developmental states in the four countries have distinctive characteristics in determining national economy; thus, it is problematic to define them as a lump sum.

2) These social structures are by no means mutually exclusive.

Rather, the categories tend to be inextricably intertwined, complicating social processes of access to and control of natu- ral resources.

3) In fact, Bryant and Baily (1997) already mentioned the First World political ecology in order to build a rationale for devel- oping a body of scholarship among political ecologists special- ized in the Third World (page 8). However, it was McCarthy (2002) who channeled political ecologists to examine political ecology occurring in developed countries, after a flourish of the Third World political ecology.

4) Although the Jeju Olle Trail was established in 2007, the number of tourists peaked in around 2010, according to rural residents on Jeju Island. The popularity continued in 2012, although gradually declined, when the Jeju Olle Foundation leader linked “Fatigue Society” and the Jeju Olle Trail in an interview.

5) Nostalgia for preindustrial nature does not exclusively oc- cur among NICs. Countries of the First World have already experienced it, as Williams (1975) observed. Yet, the nature is particular among NICs in that it is reframed as preindustrial recently (after 1990s), thus, mediated by recent local and global imperatives of political economy, such as globalization and community-based development, and also of the environ- ment, such as climate change and sustainable development.

Thus, although the subject of preindustrial nature could be similar between NICs and the First World countries, the ways in which it mediates social relations differ.

6) Jeju Island is a representative case for land speculation in South Korea, particularly among the Seoul urban middle class.

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