Postwar & Welfare-Modernist (1945–1975)

Korea First Comprehensive National Territorial Plan

1972 · South Korea · East Asia – Korea · National modernization and capital-city building · Planned by Government of the Republic of Korea (Ministry of Construction)
Plan map of Korea's First Comprehensive National Territorial Development Plan (1972-1981), showing designated growth-pole regions, industrial complexes, ports, airports and the planned expressway and transmission networks.
Plan map of Korea's First Comprehensive National Territorial Development Plan (1972-1981), showing designated growth-pole regions, industrial complexes, ports, airports and the planned expressway and transmission networks. · © National Geographic Information Institute, Republic of Korea — used with credit · National Geographic Information Institute (NGII), Republic of Korea — National Atlas of Korea

Core idea

First decadal national plan concentrating industrial complexes and growth poles to drive rapid modernisation

Why it matters

Engineered South Korea's spatial modernisation and launched the decadal national-territorial-plan lineage

Description

Implemented in 1972 for the decade 1972–1981, the First Comprehensive National Territorial Plan was South Korea's first statutory plan for the development of the national territory, prepared under the Ministry of Construction. In the context of state-led, export-oriented industrialisation, it concentrated investment in large coastal industrial complexes and a small number of selected growth poles, supported by national networks for transport, communications and energy. The plan prioritised the efficient build-up of industrial capacity and supporting infrastructure over balanced regional equity, channelling resources into a few high-growth locations to accelerate the country's economic and spatial transformation.

Significance

The plan engineered the rapid spatial modernisation of South Korea, embedding the growth-pole and industrial-complex strategy that concentrated population and industry along the south-eastern coast. It inaugurated the decadal Comprehensive National Territorial Plan lineage — now in its fifth iteration — and prompted the founding of KRIHS in 1978 to support subsequent plans, institutionalising national territorial planning as a permanent function of the state.

What shaped it

Plans it influenced

Sources

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hub.toekom.st — History of Urbanism · an interactive timeline of 850 planned cities across 6,000 years.