Korea's public sector relocation: Is it a viable option for balanced national development?

Korea's public sector relocation: is it a viable option for balanced national development?, Regional Studies 41, 65-74. An empirical model combining economic, demographic, and migration models was built in order to analyse the effectiveness of public sector relocation plans for balanced national development. Five different relocation scenarios were tested. The major findings were as follows. First, relocating about 40 000 public sector jobs from the Seoul Metropolitan Region (SMR) to non-SMR regions (scenarios 2-5) is not sufficient to reverse the SMR population concentration trend by 2030. Second, relocating central governmental functions (9992 employees) to the Chungnam region has little impact on mitigating SMR population concentration and on attaining balanced national development. Third, the relocation plan proposed by the Korean government, which is scenario 2, alleviates the population concentration by decreasing the SMR population by 5.4%, but many non- capital regions lose their population because the numbers of public sector employees assigned to the non- SMR regions are not large enough to attract people to those regions. Fourth, and most importantly, relocating private firms with high inter-industry linkages is a better policy option for increasing the population in non- capital regions, and hence attaining balanced national growth, rather than moving public sectors.