The Paradox of Balanced Development Policies: Why Repeated Efforts Failed to Mitigate Capital Region Concentration in South Korea?

This study aims to structurally explain why capital region concentration has intensified in South Korea despite the repeated implementation of balanced regional development policies. By applying a policy framework consisting of four key components—policy goals, policy instruments, implementation modes, and institutionalization levels— this study analyzes and compares the characteristics of successive governments' approaches to regional development. The analysis reveals that although each administration adopted either a relocation-based balanced development strategy or a regional growth hub strategy, they shared common structural limitations, including top-down policy design led by the central government, lack of regional autonomy, and institutional deficiencies. As a result, these limitations failed to foster endogenous regional capacity and instead further entrenched the developmental imbalance favoring the capital region. The study concludes that misalignments within policy design are central to the repeated failures of balanced development efforts and emphasizes that without substantive decentralization and institutional grounding, meaningful outcomes from such policies remain unlikely.