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Volume 37.5 September 2013 1707–23 International Journal of Urban and Regional Research
DOI:10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01161.x

How Culture and Economy Meet in South

Korea: The Politics of Cultural Economy
in Culture-led Urban Regeneration
HAERAN SHIN and QUENTIN STEVENS

Abstract
This article investigates the ways in which cultural economy is formed through
negotiation and interaction between local actors in the case of culture-led regeneration
in Gwangju, South Korea. It looks at the dynamics between the bureaucrats’ pursuit of
economic growth in the city and the efforts of civil society to maintain a strong political
spirit throughout the regeneration process. Through in-depth interviews with various
participants and archival analysis, the politics of cultural economy are examined in
relation to the Gwangju Biennale and the City of Culture project. The findings show that
in these two cases bureaucrats were the dominant force, a tendency that instrumentalized
culture. They also illustrate that this dominance brought about resistance from civil
society. However, in the process of both engaging in conflict and working with each other,
the different discourses of economic growth and cultural meaning were integrated, and
in the process mutual learning and adaptation took place among members of the two
groups. Civil society also faced cleavages resulting from different approaches to how to
collaborate with the bureaucrats and its ensuing self-reflection on communicative value
enhanced its rehabilitation. The article argues that the politics of cultural economy is
dynamic, involving processes of renegotiation, adaptation and self-realization. It also
offers the possibility of a new arena for the public sphere. Civil society plays a critical
role in the integration of culture and economy.

Introduction
This article investigates the ways in which cultural economy1 is formed in practice and
the political dynamics that the process brings out. Using a politics-oriented approach,
we ask under what political conditions does cultural economy, the integration of culture2
and economy, emerge? Through in-depth interviews and archival analysis, the article
specifically analyses the interaction and negotiation that took place between different

The fieldwork for this research received financial support from the Korean Research Institute for Human Settlement.
We appreciate the efforts of the Gwangju Biennale staff and civil society members who enthusiastically provided
information and communicated with us. We would also like to thank various IJURR reviewers for their constructive
and insightful comments that made developing this article enjoyable for us.
1 Cultural economy in this article refers to the increasing tendency of economy and culture to become
integrated in urban and regional policies such as those involving culture-led urban regeneration
projects.
2 Culture, in this article, is understood as both a set of artistic practices and projects and a set of
shared values and practices. In the empirical case, bureaucrats focus only on the former definition,
but the civic group argues that both should be reflected in culture-led urban regeneration.

© 2012 Urban Research Publications Limited. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
2DQ, UK and 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA
1708 HaeRan Shin and Quentin Stevens

participants — bureaucrats and civic groups3 — in Gwangju, South Korea. It contributes

to studies of the cultural economy of urban policy by bridging the gap between the
theoretical concept of cultural economy and empirical findings about decision-making
processes (Evans, 2005). The literature on cultural economy in culture-led urban
regeneration has not paid enough attention to the political processes and social effects of
cultural economies, and the lack of empirical studies focusing on this aspect (Jack, 2002)
has resulted in the formation of cultural economy being regarded as apolitical. This
article offers an empirical contribution to the analysis of collaborative practices of urban
regeneration planning.
We demonstrate that cultural economy is a product of dynamic processes of
interference, resistance, communication and integration involving different agents.
We also argue that civil society plays a critical role in the integration of economy and
culture, being both a set of processes and relations. The role of civil society makes
culture-led regeneration a policy agenda that is subject to controversy, while disputes that
erupt through the participation of civil society lead to more active public debate. In order
to understand the political dynamics of cultural economy, this study examines culture-led
urban regeneration from within the conceptual framework of ‘the politics of cultural
economy’. The concept refers to the dynamics that occur as a result of the interaction
between the divergent aims of different participants in a process of integration. It helps
us to understand that, despite a policy direction that has turned towards the ‘cultural
economy’, the integration of different participants cannot be taken as a soft and natural
process. In order to understand the integration of culture and economy it is important to
look at the politics that take place among different groups and individual participants,
as well as the discourses articulated by these differing agents.
Culture-led urban regeneration in Gwangju was very consciously selected as an
empirical case study. Due to its political history,4 characterized by being at the forefront
of democratic movements against military dictatorship, Gwangju has been isolated
economically and politically. To compensate for this, the national government, after its
democratization, financially supported a culture-led urban regeneration that included the
Gwangju Biennale and the City of Culture5 project. The Gwangju Biennale was initiated
in 1995 as an attempt, in part, by the city government to mitigate the city’s political
image and has continued to be held since then. For the purposes of this research, we
focused on interactions that took place leading up to the 2006 Biennale. As for the City
of Culture Project, we traced this throughout the period of 2006–09. Our research was
based on 18 in-depth interviews with key participants and archival analysis. Interviewees
were selected through a snowball method. They included members of Biennale staff from

3 Bureaucrats from city government and central government, and members of civic groups worked on
two main projects of culture-led regeneration, the Gwangju Biennale and the City of Culture project.
The interaction refers to that between the two groups, bureaucracy and civil society, as well as that
between individual bureaucrats and members of civil society.
4 As such, it is a locus of hyper-politicization in modern Korean history, especially that which has taken
place since the 18 May 1980 democratic uprising (known in South Korea simply by the shorthand ‘18
May’) — the overthrow of the military regime in 1987, and the crystallization of formal democracy in
the country as of 1997. The 18 May democratic uprising, which took place in Gwangju to resist the
dictatorship, is the most important historical event in modern Korean history. Publication of any
news about it was prohibited while it was happening, and central government sent troops into the
city to suppress the movement. Citizens organized their own army and temporarily maintained a
democratic independent community, somewhat like the Paris commune. It ended in the slaughter of
a still unknown number of civilians (between three hundred and two thousand, depending on the
source of the record), whose dead bodies were carried away in trucks and buried in Mang Wal Dong.
For more information, see Yea (2002), Shin (2004) and Lee (2007).
5 The official name of the project is the Hub City of Asia, but City of Culture is widely used as a
referent. For detailed background information, see Lee (2007).

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different sectors,6 City of Culture project staff, city government staff, and artists and
members of civic associations involved in the event or the project. A summary table of
the interviews is attached as an appendix at the end of the article. All the interviews
were conducted in Korean, fully transcribed, and have been translated into English
when quoted. They were supplemented by an analysis of archival documents including
newspapers, public reports, annual management reports and secondary literature.
The empirical findings of this article are fourfold. First, progressive arts and civic
associations have resisted the city government’s attempt to instrumentalize culture
by exposing the artistic projects as an attempt to depoliticize the city’s image and at
the same time boost its economy. Group conflicts became personalized in relation to
concerns about work and communication culture when bureaucrats and civic association
members worked together on projects. Second, Gwangju’s civil society has become
diversified into three groups according to different approaches taken to the Gwangju
Biennale. While this disparity initially undermined its sense of unity and leadership, it
eventually empowered Gwangju’s civil society by demonstrating how these groups were
capable of flexible and creative strategies. Third, participants working together learned
to compromise by adapting their rationales. Fourth, the conflicts between civic groups
inspired members to be self-reflective, making them realize that civil society was not
communicating effectively within itself.
The rest of the article is organized as follows. In the next section, we critically revisit
previous studies of cultural economy and put forward the politics of cultural economy as
a theoretical framework for this study. Next, through empirical analysis we demonstrate
how the city government and civil society came into conflict over the political
mobilization of the Gwangju Biennale and the City of Culture project. Then we discuss
how these conflicts have evolved and what consequences they have had for Gwangju civil
society. We conclude that, in the case of Gwangju, the politics of cultural economy have
brought about disorder, but at the same time made it possible for a culture-led urban
regeneration to function as a public sphere.

The integration of culture and economy

in culture-led urban regeneration
By integration we mean culturalization — or the cultural turn taken by policymakers
in their urban growth strategies in which cultural policies are used as tools of urban
economic development (Scott, 1997). In this article, the integration of culture and
economy is specifically operationalized in terms of actors: as increasing interaction and
understanding between bureaucrats who see culture as an efficient tool of economic
development and other actors who value the cultural meanings implicit in policies
for their own sake and criticize the instrumental approach.7 The literature on cultural
economy (e.g. Scott, 2000; Anheier and Isar, 2008) has focused on the ways in which
culture and economy have become increasingly integrated in terms of productive
processes, institutions and logics in contemporary society. The cultural turn, and
the increasingly intertwined nature of culture and economy have been influenced
by society’s increasing interest in symbols, tourism and images (Scott et al., 2001). The
notion of cultural economy has been used widely in various disciplines including
geography, urban studies, organizational studies, cultural studies and public policy, while
studies in cultural economy have covered contexts including the cultural turn in work

6 The Biennale staff consist of art experts, members of civic organizations and bureaucrats from
the city government.
7 See Gibson and Kong (2005) for a thorough discussion of different approaches to addressing
the phenomenon of cultural economy.

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(Heelas, 2002), everyday life (Amin and Thrift, 2007), public policy (Cunningham,
2001; Jeffcutt, 2001; Galloway and Dunlop, 2007), creative and aesthetic industries
(McRobbie, 2002; Negus, 2002; Gibson and Klocker, 2003; Gibson and Connell, 2004)
and economic knowledge (Allen, 2002; Slater, 2002).
This study relies on one of five factors identified as being characteristic of the rise of
cultural economy in geography by James et al. (2008). This perspective focuses on
the ways in which culture and economy intertwine in the strategies of global cities
(Flew, 2009). In particular, culture-led urban regeneration, an example of an interlocked
relation, has become a popular method adopted by policymakers to achieve economic
growth and a favorable reputation. The image-making effect of urban regeneration
through cultural events, iconic projects and symbols (Bassett, 1993; Whelan, 2003;
Miles, 2005) has become increasingly critical in the establishment of urban and regional
identity (Bayliss, 2004). Both in Western societies and Asian cities,8 place marketing and
urban regeneration focusing on cultural events and practices have become part of the core
ideology of urban policies (Shin, 2004; Wu, 2004; Yeoh, 2005; Lin and Hsing, 2009).
It should be noted that, although culture and economy are not separate entities (Amin
and Thrift, 2007), emphasis on cultural meaning and pursuit of a city’s economic growth
are not automatically entangled. Rather, they challenge each other through different
logics, institutions, rationales, rhetoric and methods (Newman and Smith, 2000). A
number of previous studies have borne witness to conflicts (Boyle and Hughes, 1991;
Beazley et al., 1997; Bassett et al., 2002) among participants in urban regeneration
ranging from criticism and resistance to pitched battles in culture wars on the part of
urban residents (Mitchell, 2000), so it is critical to observe that the process of
consensus-making is dynamic among members who have different logics, focuses and
work cultures. In practice, policymakers who seek to develop the cultural economies
of their local polities promote collaboration among various participants as well as among
neighboring cities (Power and Scott, 2004).
Previous studies demonstrate that the integration of different institutions is supported
by in-person relationships among members of those institutions. Formal and informal
interpersonal relationships and in-person communication promote the cultural economy
through people being able to share symbolic meanings (Coe, 2000). Clustering likewise
plays an important role, as spatial proximity facilitates face-to-face contact (Scott, 1999).
Various interest groups are influenced by face-to-face contact with one another, which
preferably takes place on a daily basis. Through those interactions, participants influence
and are influenced by, not only logics and official documents, but also their counterparts’
subcultural and personal characteristics.

The politics of cultural economy

We put forward the notion of the politics of cultural economy as a way of making visible
the conflict, integration, adaptation, and other dynamics that exist among participants
who possess different agendas and interests. For Jack (2002), there is a lack of studies
that focus on an explicit politics of cultural economy. The social effects and divisive
nature of cultural economic governance have not received enough attention while
the focus has been on mutual constitutions of cultural and economic categories

8 Kong (2000) distinguishes Singapore from Western cities such as Glasgow and Manchester where
the promotion of cultural industries has been suggested as a solution to economic decline.
Compared to those Western cities, Asian cities including Singapore and Gwangju have pursued
cultural strategies as mechanisms to promote themselves, rather than as a response to a crisis. Both
globalization and strategies towards its promotion in Asian cities have been more ideological in the
sense that policymakers in these cities have been inspired to prepare cultural approaches by looking
to the experiences of Western cities.

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(see McRobbie, 2002, for example). However, it is critical to see cultural economy
in terms of actors’ relationships with one another, because the cultural turn or
culturalization of urban policy does not occur smoothly among actual participants,
whose objectives are not always congruent with one another.
This research focuses on three aspects of the politics of cultural economy based on
studies of the politics of urban regeneration (Miles and Paddison, 2005; Quinn, 2005;
Sapotichne et al., 2007; Lin and Hsing, 2009): (1) conflict and competition, (2)
partnership, and (3) self-reflection directed towards the public sphere.
First, conflict and competition between economy-oriented and cultural-value-
pursuing participants have appeared in a number of studies. Businesspeople and
policymakers are driven to reach certain aims, particularly urban economic growth
and success in local elections, through city-branding (Bailey et al., 2004; García, 2004a;
2004b; Miles, 2005; Quinn, 2005; Sharp et al., 2005; Beaumont and Loopmans, 2008;
Lin and Hsing, 2009). They therefore take an instrumental approach to culture. Civil
society, however, focuses on the less tangible, softer and longer-term impacts of culture
(García, 2005) rather than the calculable short-term economic impacts that bureaucrats
usually emphasize. Despite efforts to get involved, civil society has been isolated while
the state and the market have been dominant in deciding the direction of the cultural
industry and cultural events, which they seek to leverage for the purposes of increasing
land prices and rents (see, e.g., Bassett et al., 2005; Shaw, 2005; Sacco and Blessi, 2009).
As both Zukin (1995) and Kong (2000) critically note, the cultural remaking of a city
can disenfranchise local communities and devalue original cultural activities.
Gibson and Kong (2005) moreover point out, that cultures, cities and plans are
contested resources and are embroiled in the urban and cultural politics involved
in planning. The recognition of the difficulties inherent in consensus-making with
regard to cultural projects implies that the cultural economy depends on the relationship
among participants in the decision-making process of urban policies. While the main
participants acting within a city have different focuses and logics, they commonly see
culture as a resource for both socio-political and economic amelioration (Newman and
Smith, 2000). In the competition to achieve cultural resources, the culturalization of the
economy becomes a place for the politics of involvement in culture (Du Gay and Pryke,
2002; Yúdice, 2003; Flew, 2009).
Second, the formation of governance and partnership over time and through in-person
contact is an instance of an evolving relationship in which power relations do not
disappear but are rearranged. Adaptations are made as the contradictory demands of
different groups in turn affect everyone else to different degrees according to each
agent’s position in the overall power hierarchy. In a cooperative conflict in an unequal
power structure, the powerless have to go through an adaptation process as the pressure
for cooperation is greater than the freedom to express genuine interests (Sen, 1999).
Integrating this perspective into external urban politics produces an understanding of
urban politics that focuses on the elements of partnership or conflict within them,
or a combination of both in cases where conflict invites negotiation, which becomes
partnership.
The governance studied here was established for the implementation of two major
projects of culture-led urban regeneration that were initiated by the city government in
order to bring about urban growth. Gwangju civil society is not necessarily anti-growth,
partly because limited urban growth is considered to be a consequence of the national
government’s unfair regional development policies (Shin, 2004). The distinction between
culture and economy is not clear-cut in terms of the focus of rationales and agendas
because culture and economy can be coordinated quite naturally at the level of ideology
(Kong, 2000). Unlike in cases of growth politics, in the Gwangju case there was more
motivation for interaction and adaptation as no part of the civil society in Gwangju
was fundamentally opposed to the agenda of any other part. Despite the difference
in focus, both groups frame culture-led regeneration as an urban growth strategy. That is
because the political dynamics are influenced not only by power relations between the

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groups in the local arena, but also by national and global circumstances such as increasing
competition among cities as part of globalization.
Third, we also notice that the politics of cultural economy in a culture-led urban
regeneration suggests possibilities for self-reflection and for the promotion of the public
sphere (Sennett, 2000). The self-reflection conducted by civil society in the dynamic
process of intermingling and conflict is similar to Ideologiekritik (Geuss, 1981), which
removes distortions in civil society’s working logic. At the collective level, civil society
criticizes the government and the private sector, but if the criticism is not accompanied
by intra-group communication, the argument for communicative action can go astray.
The politics of cultural economy not only implies the dynamics among different interest
groups but also includes the dynamics within an interest group, including in-person
communication and interpersonal communication.
Our view is also supported by Bridge and Watson’s (2000) insights into public space,
which add nuance in terms of understanding the flexible, resilient, unstable and fluid
processes of public sphere formation and maintenance. As Sennett (2000) notes, disorder
that brings about healthy self-reflection and processes that lead to shared understanding
can be fuzzy, but eventually contribute to the development of civil society. Our argument
draws on the detailed empirical studies of the culture-led regeneration of Gwangju in
South Korea, which shows that civil society rehabilitation could even be enhanced
through responses to the interference of bureaucrats. This is so if the intention of the
culture-led urban regeneration pursued by civil society is to encourage citizens to have
situated reflexivity (Healey, 1999) upon who they are.

Overview: the politics and economy of Gwangju

The Gwangju metropolitan area is the fifth largest city in South Korea and is located in
Jeolla-Do Province in the southwest of South Korea. Gwangju has an area of 501 km2
and a population of 1.4 million (Gwangju metropolitan city website). Since the 18
May 1980 democratic uprising took place, its image has been associated with its
uncomfortable political past (Yea, 2002; Lee, 2007). A negative regionalist image
combined with this history was reinforced by central government and the media to give
Gwangju an image of ‘a city of resistance’, ‘a city of democracy’ and ‘a city of blood’
(Choi et al., 1995). While the tradition and spirit of Gwangju has been a mark of pride
to many of its citizens, the Gwangju government regarded the hyper-political image as
a barrier to achieving local economic development, and even survival in the context
of increasing urban competition.
In 1995 the local government initiated the Gwangju Biennale, an art exhibition held
every two years and supported by the central government, in order to change Gwangju’s
image to that of ‘a city of culture’ (Shin, 2004). Later, the City of Culture project9 started
as a further development in the culture-led urban regeneration of Gwangju. In October
2007, the national government announced Gwangju as Korea’s Capital of Culture, an
announcement which came with proposed total funding of US$ 5.29 billion (Ministry of
Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Korea, 2007), including the construction of the
Cultural Hall of Asia (Lee, 2007) and the associated replanning of the city.

Conflicts between culture and economy

Civil society was manifested through a form of discourse and activity created by various
civic and artists’ organizations relating to the Biennale and the City of Culture project.
The conflicts between the culture side (civil society) and the economic side (bureaucrats)

9 The City of Culture policy was inspired by the European ‘Cities of Culture’ programme (Lee 2007),
which was run in Glasgow in 1990 (Mooney, 2004).

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in Gwangju centre on the political struggles that have taken place in the city’s political
history. The interference and dominance of the city government in this process were
apparent in the way that the Gwangju Biennale was instrumentalized.
The ambition of the local government, especially the mayor, that the Biennale should
act as a tool for boosting the local economy and improving Gwangju’s urban image
was pursued in two ways. First, although the Gwangju Biennale is officially run by an
independent foundation, the mayor, as the honorary chair of the foundation, exerts
significant decision-making power through his network. One of two leading directors,
the artistic director, was hired by the chair of the committee (i.e. the mayor), and
the appointment was made on the recommendation of local elites and the mayor. The
executive director was appointed from within the city government to act as a direct
channel from the mayor to the Biennale. Second, at the top of the hierarchical network
of bureaucrats and those artists figuring among the ‘top people’, the committee chair (i.e.
the mayor) makes political decisions without having to address the issues and debate
them. One of the public servants on the Biennale staff effectively described the power
wielded by the mayor as follows: ‘The mayor observes things from a distance through us
[public staff]. The two directors do everything but with the feeling that they are being
watched by the mayor’ (interview 5, 19 June 2006).
The funding did not have an automatic influence on the power structure. The city
contributed 1.5 billion won (US $1.6 million) while central government contributed 8
billion won (US $8.6 million) of the total budget of 90 billion won in 2006 (Gwangju
Biennale Foundation, 2006). Nonetheless, central government did not influence the
direction and content of the event, maintaining a distance from it. Neither did local
businesses, in general, influence the event, except for businessmen who were close to the
mayor. While other participants remained passive, local government actively drove the
production and promotion of the Biennale for the purposes of urban economic growth.
Gwangju civil society criticized the dominance of local government and its aggressive
pursuit of growth. Against the aims and efforts of the latter, they tried to maintain
Gwangju’s political spirit as part of the incipient image of the city as a locus of
culture-led urban regeneration. This was an instance of their struggle to overcome the
instrumentalism of the bureaucrats. During the process of producing the first Biennale,
members of civil society created the MunHwa YonDae (Culture Network) and suggested
an anti-Biennale as a form of collective action. This movement began as anti-central-
government, but later, when the central government regime shifted to one that was more
sympathetic to the movement, its role morphed into that of a watchdog.
The institutional integration of the culture side and the economy side was achieved
thanks to the struggle for autonomy from the city government. Civil society’s request for
the autonomy of the Biennale made the local government agree to recruit members for
the Biennale organization from outside its own ranks. More than half of the staff came
from outside the city government, and when the groundswell of the Biennale was
strongly influenced by progressive art activists, they came mainly from progressive art
organizations. In the first Gwangju Biennale, the anti-Biennale was so successful that the
city government became worried that the main Biennale might be eclipsed by the fringe
and decided to integrate the artists of the anti-Biennale into the official event. When a
director, six staff members from the voluntary sector, and a cultural expert were fired in
the third Biennale, staff members organized a strong resistance, shaving their heads and
occupying the mayor’s office.10 But, as a voluntary worker (interview 1) pointed out, the
civic organizations, being unable to lead, did not influence but merely initiated
movements, and the number of civil society members in the Biennale gradually declined.
Another interviewee from the voluntary sector (7) criticized the sixth Gwangju Biennale
for giving minimal autonomy to artists, and even described one of the powerful public
staff members as ‘a vampire’ who willingly exploited artists to please the mayor.

10 Some staff members were fired, but later, when the problem became serious, the firing was declared
illegal, so they got their jobs back.

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Because of the significant size of the funding, the City of Culture project attracted
attention from various potential participants. Collaboration and conflict, in this case,
became yet more complicated because interaction and networking took place not only
among different groups in Gwangju but also between the Gwangju people and outsiders
from Seoul. The construction of the Asian Cultural Center created major conflict because
the plan included the demolition of a part of the previous Jun Nam Provincial Office that
had historical significance in relation to the 18 May democratic uprising. That part of
the office was where 14 citizens were killed and 164 injured by troops sent by the
government and the US on 27 May 1980. Gwangju civil society was divided between
those who wanted to protect the place and those who supported the original plan.
The debates and demonstrations against removing the historic part of the office ended
up changing the original plan, but the conflict within civil society had an impact on
its self-perception. The culture-led urban regeneration of Gwangju, starting from the
Biennale, continued to be a place where meaning and urban identity were debated
and negotiated between the culture group and the economy group.

Diversification of civil society

Having been involved in the culture-led urban regeneration, civil society’s attempts to
produce meaning and urban culture have become diversified. Progressive artists and civil
society activists responded to the interference of the bureaucrats variously: they can
be categorized in three groups. The first consisted of individuals who lost interest in
the Biennale because they thought there was little that they could do. They were so
disappointed by the bureaucratic and instrumental approach of the government that they
gave up the attempt to rehabilitate civil society inside the Biennale. An academic said:
The Biennale was like ‘Don’t do that any longer. We will give you some benefits’. There are
500 members in the Gwangju Jonnam Artist Civic society, but they are not very interested
in the Biennale now (interview 8, 21 June 2006).

It should be pointed out that civil society’s influence is still acknowledged by the public
sector. One interviewee (a Biennale public employee) said that he was aware of the civic
organizations’ influence. He said:
Civic organizations always watch us [the city government] and if anything goes wrong, they
criticize. We are always conscious of them . . . In every other city, the city government manages
cultural festivals — only in Gwangju is resistance so strong that it is not possible. Privatization
[i.e. the move toward autonomy] was initiated by civic organizations, and they entered the
[organizational] structure (interview 5, 19 June 2006).

This statement shows that it was an achievement for civic organizations to have been
integrated into the Biennale structure. It implies that culture as an aim in its own right
challenged culture as a means, employed to promote a sanitized self image of the city and
boost the economy. The members of civic organizations contributed to constituting
‘culture as an aim’ rather than ‘culture as a means’11 by reinforcing the link between the
Biennale and the 18 May democratic uprising, as well as by the promotion of citizen
participation in the event (Shin, 2004). Later, some of this group shifted their attention
completely to the City of Culture Project12 because they believed there was a possibility
that civil society could take the lead and create a genuinely public sphere there.

11 Although both groups talked about culture, the culture side emphasized an anthropological
definition of Gwangju — the politicized culture of the city — while the economy side focused on artistic
events and projects.
12 In particular, people in Mun Hwa Yun Dae were successfully involved in the City of Culture project
from the beginning.

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A second group, actively criticizing the instrumentalization and mobilization of the

Biennale from outside the structure, continued to try to create a public space for citizens
within it. They proposed the Third Sector Citizen Program, which was a combination of
progressive and practical approaches towards art in the form of an art fair. They wanted
the Program to be a part of the Biennale in the former Jolla Nam Do (provincial) hall, but
the city government did not like the location, according to an interviewee (18). The
Biennale committee finally rejected the third sector Program, and the Program’s director
resigned. The committee cut the proposed budget of 300 million Won (US$ 325,000) to
20 million Won (US$ 22,000) in order to eliminate civil society-based programming for
an exhibition that they hoped would still draw large crowds and contribute to improving
the city’s image. One interviewee (1) was involved in the Biennale citizens’ participation
programme and a citizens’ forum called ‘The Meeting of People Who Love the
Biennale’, although her idea of the Biennale is fundamentally different from that of the
city government. She emphasized the role of civil society in producing alternative values
and taking culture as an aim in its own right, saying that making the Biennale creative
is the citizens’ responsibility and that they should make ‘play’ a part of its creative
conception. She also stressed the values that Gwangju and South Korea possess because
she was proud of the Gwangju spirit of democracy, human rights and citizen
participation.
The third group consists of those who are progressive artists or activists who used
to work in the Anti-Biennale and later integrated into the Biennale. They exhibited
cooperative and positive attitudes toward the Biennale’s significance and the public sector.
They valued the Biennale’s edifying effect on audiences, who become aware of modern art
concepts and trends because of it. We will focus on this group in the next section.
To better understand the process of cultural economy adaptation, we must note that
there was a perception gap between the three groups that emerged from the struggle over
the Biennale in relation to the power held by civil society. Most interviewees from civil
society were concerned about what the distinction implied and pessimistic about civil
society’s future. In fact, a sense of powerlessness combined with individual interests
contributed to the disparity among members of civil society by reducing support for a
collective attempt to rehabilitate it through the Biennale. However, the diversified attempts
to challenge the bureaucrats seemed to enhance the rehabilitation of civil society by
creating flexible strategies. As shown in Sharp et al.’s (2005) study of urban regeneration
and public art, resistance from civil society can take various forms, including visualized
narratives on billboards (Docklands, London), vandalism and graffiti. This shows the
multiple possible routes to civil society’s rehabilitation, and the contested content and
structure of the Biennale make the three options possible for individuals.

The integration of bureaucrats and civil

society — the formation of cultural economy
The experiences of the Gwangju Biennale demonstrated to participants that they could
learn from and adjust to each other. After the second Biennale (1997), the preparation
for the third was marked by extreme conflict,13 and as a result it was delayed for one
year. By the third Gwangju Biennale, a number of debates took place on distrust of
the bureaucrats and the need for autonomy, and there were negotiations between the

13 A position of main director of art displays was created and a person with great experience
and familiarity with the arts was appointed in an attempt to resolve the conflict. But he could
not do his job because public staff were not supportive of his efforts (Dong-A Ilbo Magazine, 1999,
available at http://www.donga.com/docs/magazine/news_plus/news166/np166ii040.html, accessed
13 December 2009).

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1716 HaeRan Shin and Quentin Stevens

bureaucrats and leading representatives of civil society. As a compromise, two groups

began to form. One consisted of government staff assigned to work in the Biennale by
the city government, and the other was composed of artists, cultural experts and members
of civic organizations.
It was well known throughout the media that conflict existed between the two groups.
However, conflict between bureaucrats and civil society was reduced as the Biennale’s
management system settled down. At the same time, both sectors were concerned lest the
sustainability of the Biennale come into question (as rumours indicated every time a
conflict was publicized), their worries exacerbated by previous experience of frequent
changes in national and local policy. As a consequence the two sectors adjusted to each
other as keeping the Biennale going became a common priority.
There was integration in working styles between groups who prioritized culture
and groups who prioritized the economy, an integration that was influenced by daily
in-person contact. One interviewee who worked in the Biennale and came from the
civic group said that the gap that existed between cultural expert staff members and
bureaucrats was significant because the bureaucrats were only interested in maximizing
profits by hosting famous events and featuring famous artists. Supporting this statement,
one artist staff member said: ‘The bureaucrats have difficulty setting new goals’. Another
artist staff member described the situation this way:

The public [employees] thought that we didn’t think of the audience, and we thought they
didn’t know art.

The bureaucrats had an efficiency, discipline and goal-oriented working style. They
did not understand the civil society staff members, who focused on meaning and mutual
understanding and considered them too liberal to be able to work in an organization
according to rules. A bureaucrat interviewee said:

They [civil society members] don’t know about working 9 to 5. They come late in the morning
and talk about art without improving the procedure.

Interestingly, as time went on, many of the Biennale staff interviewees became
positive about the two groups working together. One bureaucrat (interview 5) explained
that mixing up staff members in every department was very helpful. While civil society
staff members were no good at work that public officers had always done, they were
creative, he said. An artist working for Biennale (interview 4) said there was conflict
between artistic concerns and administrative logic regarding how to get funding and how
to structure the budget of the Biennale. Through discussion, a dual structure was worked
out as the bureaucratic and artistic ways of thinking were integrated. The increasing
adaptation to each other within the Gwangju Biennale organizational structure shows
how compromise and integration can be accomplished between groups with highly
disparate constitutions: one group working with cultural concerns, modes of working,
language and logics, the other with an institutionalized, bureaucratic mode of operation.
It should be pointed out, though, that the adaptation was made mainly by replacing the
communicative approach embedded in the working culture and rationales of civil society
members with that of the bureaucrats. Some of the interviewees, who had been part of
that culture and were now involved in the Biennale, ashamedly said: ‘I became a typical
public staff [member]’. By this they meant they had lost the artist’s spirit and become
officials working 9 to 5 every day according to rules, with no independent, creative
thought. This pessimistic view of the changes within themselves seems to have been
projected onto the view of Gwangju’s wider civil society, which increasingly played a
more adaptive role. The two groups involved in the Biennale shared the same goal, the
success of the Biennale, but at the same time they competed and had different focuses
and priorities. Their compromise demonstrates that there was adaptation and dialectical
interaction in the given power structure.

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The politics of cultural economy in Gwangju, South Korea 1717

Self-reflection within civil society

The politics of cultural economy surrounding the City of Culture project took place
between the bureaucrats and civil society, between Seoul and Gwangju,14 and between
different generations of civil society. In ways that related to place-based urban identity
(Stahl, 2004) and landscape, and different groups’ divergent economic and political
interests, the debates on the project forced the participants to renegotiate their relationship
with each other. Competition and conflict arose within civil society and enhanced
the diversification of interests that began as a response to bureaucrats’ interference in the
Gwangju Biennale. In particular, the construction of the Cultural Hall of Asia stimulated
strong debate on Gwangju’s identity, history and urban economy.
As the funding came from central government and local government was running the
project, a power struggle arose between the two. When the designation of City of Culture
was decided upon in 2007, the central and local governments were being run by different
political parties: Uri ran central and Minju local government. Because of the tension
between them, they almost always turned down each other’s suggestions (interview 22
June 2006). The local elites were also divided. The younger and progressive members
who had been active in the political and social movements of the 1990s were close to the
party of the central government (Uri Party), while the older and conservative local elites
supported the local government (Minju Party). There was also a power struggle between
Seoul and Gwangju participants in civil society.15 As Coe’s (2000) research has shown,
it was difficult to make skilful and experienced people from Seoul focus on the project
in Gwangju. They did not want to give up the prestigious lifestyle they had acquired
through living in Seoul, so they continued to live there even though they had jobs in
Gwangju. One interviewee, an academic involved in Culture Hub City of Asia (interview
10), criticized local people in Gwangju for thinking that they could undertake such a
huge project on their own not and not being realistic. They did not like networking
with Seoul people, he said, partly because of the hierarchy between central and
local government. The Executive Agency for the project offered funding, but neither
local government nor civil society liked this arrangement because the offer came from
Seoul.
The conflict between the culture group and the economy group re-emerged. While
civil society argued for an integrative approach towards culture which included the
political spirit of Gwangju as well as high art, the local government focused on local
economic development, such as the construction of a magnificent cultural hall (interview
21 June 2006). Aware of the public sector’s view of culture as an instrument of urban
economic development from the experience of the Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju civil
society actively objected to the interference and later even isolated the city government
from the process in the initial stages. The marginalization of the city government
was possible because of the network between the central steering group from Seoul
and progressive artists including Min Ye Chong, according to an interview subject
(8 October 2009).16
What deserves special attention is a consequence, perhaps a by-product, of the
competition between the bureaucrats and civil society. Dealing with the interference of
the city government and the outsiders’ increasing involvement in various ways, critical
self-reflection took place inside Gwangju civil society. Its collective leadership was
challenged when it divided into three groups with divergent views on participation in

14 There are offices for the City of Culture project in both Seoul and Gwangju.
15 Negrier’s (1993) case also shows that importing key people from the capital city caused conflict with
local people.
16 Both the central steering group from Seoul and progressive artists were dominated by those who
participated in anti-dictatorship movements before the central government became democratized.
At the time of the movements, many progressive organizations and universities collaborated.
Through the process, the network of progressive elites became strong.

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1718 HaeRan Shin and Quentin Stevens

the Biennale. The problem was exacerbated when it was decided that the historic part
of the previous Jun Nam Provincial Office should be replaced by the Asian Culture
complex.17 Those civil society members geographically based in the area supported the
plan, expecting a positive economic effect from the culture-led urban regeneration. The
18 May event-related groups strongly criticized it and organized demonstrations that
continued for 6 months, but they later compromised and supported the plan. After that,
other groups led demonstrations, but faced 20 other civic organizations that supported
the plan. Even when central government changed the plan and decided to maintain
the historical part of the previous Jun Nam Provincial Office, those organizations
and some scholars continued to support the original plan. That kind of discord
consequently allowed the public sector to take leadership of the City of Culture project
later in 2007.
Although fragmentation and cleavage made Gwangju civil society pessimistic about
its ability to lead a united front, and disorder (Sennett, 2000) among the Gwangju public
certainly provoked the impulse to do so, it brought inward self-reflection and ultimately
helped it avoid dogmatic thought and action. As a majority of the interview subjects
pointed out, Gwangju people have a conservative everyday culture18 despite there being
many politically progressive citizens. That perspective is supported by the fact that
the 1990s movement was nationalistic and anti-dictatorship, so it was distanced from the
new social movements, including the feminist movement, the gay movement and
the environmental movement. This self-reflection on the culture of Gwangju in a wider
sense was a common issue, especially among younger participants. They hinted that, in
a way, Gwangju’s spirit and tradition of resistance, which was a positive response to the
constrained situation since the 1980s, had become a barrier to developing its culture in
the context of culture-led urban regeneration. As one interviewee (10) put it, there is
a lot of energy in Gwangju, but there is a lack of ways to channel it, and civic
organizations increasingly demonstrated their limitations in applying this energy, as well
as advancing their specific economic and political interests. She also said that an internal
sadness constrained some, and she hoped that a culture of self-confidence would be
created and that, through networking, the mainstream population would be transformed
into reasonable and pragmatic people. She said: There is a leadership problem. They are
too heavy and serious; no fun’.
This does not mean that that the pressures of bureaucratic imperatives were necessary,
but rather that in some ways the consequences of the latter were positive for Gwangju’s
civil society. The existence of the historical event, 18 May, was a justification for people
to assume that they were of one mind and could fight against the bureaucrats together.
But the same civil society that voiced outward criticism against the government included
groups that had adopted local conservative values. The culture-led urban regeneration of
Gwangju and the conflicts with economic benefit-oriented bureaucrats laid this
assumption open to question, and civil society appeared complex and various. In the
process of struggling to participate, Gwangju’s civil society was able to revitalize its
communicative rationality, and was embarrassed to discover that its members actually
needed to communicate internally. While they criticized the bureaucrats for their
instrumental approach, they did not actively communicate and argue with each other,
presuming that they did not have to. Confronted with the question, ‘what kind of a
cultural city does Gwangju want to be?’, they had to start asking themselves what they
wanted instead of criticizing bureaucrats. Gwangju, previously a civil society united only
by being opposed to the bureaucrats, was stimulated to reproduce meaning and value
through difficulties in communication.

17 The design by a celebrated architect was not intended to erase the historical meaning, but the
debate was heated.
18 In terms of lifestyle and attitudes.

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The politics of cultural economy in Gwangju, South Korea 1719

Conclusion
In this article, we proposed a reconsideration of the dynamic process of cultural economy
formation as exemplified in the making of urban futures through culture-led urban
regeneration. We found the role of different actors and discourses in the intertwined
relationship to be heavily influenced by multifarious factors, including pressure for
economic growth and historical power relations. We focused on how participants who
pursue economic growth and those who value cultural meanings struggled with one
another, but how eventually their concerns became integrated. In the process, they
have undergone mutual learning and self-realization. The Gwangju case shows that
civil society is not simply threatened by bureaucrats but endlessly communicates and
negotiates both with them and within its own constituent parts. Parts of civil society
competed with one another, which produced self-evaluation. Through that process, civil
society’s communicative rationality was tested, each part’s interest was understood, and
the power structure was reorganized. Civil society was shown to have had the strength to
produce values and meaning in opposition to the bureaucrats, but turned out to lack the
communicative capacity for meaning production.
Communication between bureaucrats and civil society is dynamic partly because the
integration of different values is not necessarily accompanied by an integration of people
and organizations. Thus, the formation of cultural economy should be approached not
only in terms of the nature of urban and regional policies, but also in consideration of
the dynamics of local urban politics. The integration of cultural economy shapes, and is
shaped by, power relations among different stakeholders over time. In the case of
Gwangju, cultural economy as a policy ideology was welcomed, but the dominance
of the local government and its strong focus on economic benefits formed a cultural
economy that was, in practice, quite different from what civic groups expected. As a
result, civil society emerged as part of the governance of culture-led urban regeneration.
Since then, the power dynamics between the two groups have constituted the nature of
cultural economy.
The dynamics observed in the Gwangju case detailed in this article can also be
reflected on in a comparative way. How do these findings relate to published work on
other cities as they attempt to tackle image problems? For instance, the experiences of
old industrial cities in the UK, such as Glasgow and Sheffield, present a contrasting
picture. The economic decline of Glasgow gave a strong impetus for the city’s industrial
transformation from a manufacturing centre into a cultural and tourist attraction. The city
as European Capital of Culture19 in 1990 constituted the main thrust for this rebranding.
On the one hand, the process presented problems similar to those of Gwangju, according
to studies of culture-led regeneration there (Paddison, 1993; Leadbeater and Oakley,
1999; García, 2004a; 2004b) that criticize the lack of citizen engagement and lack of
development of local artistic and cultural practices. On the other hand, as the relationship
between government and civil society in Glasgow was less hostile than in Gwangju, the
politics of cultural economy among various actors appeared to be more collaborative.
Glasgow’s urban regeneration was economically motivated, so the growth coalition that
emerged there was less challenged by motivations that were at cross-purposes with
one another. In Gwangju, the motivation for urban regeneration was suspected by a
number of civic groups to have been the depoliticization of the city’s image by the city
government and conservative local elites, and therefore a consensus on growth through
culture was strongly critiqued. Besides this, private businesses did not emerge as active
participants in Gwangju’s case, and so their interests were not seriously at stake either.
We conclude that a consideration of the politics of cultural economy enables us to see
the ways in which different participants challenge and negotiate new cultural economies.
By exploring how local actors resist and adapt to one another and to actors who are at
least partially ‘outside’ the organization and practices of local civil society (including,

19 Sponsored by the European Commission.

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1720 HaeRan Shin and Quentin Stevens

most importantly in this case study, bureaucracies both local and national) through
reaction and negotiation, this study demonstrates how we can position cultural economy
within the urban politics surrounding policies of urban growth and identity. Practically,
the politics of cultural economy suggests that culture-led urban regeneration has a strong
potential to recreate the public sphere (McInroy, 2000) through a variety of media or
face-to-face interactions (Taylor, 1995: 295). This does not mean that culture and
economy should be integrated normatively to provide a public sphere. Rather, it means
that there is a possibility that even a disturbing interaction can create a synergy leading
to the creation of a strong public sphere.

HaeRan Shin (h.shin@ucl.ac.uk) and Quentin Stevens (q.stevens@ucl.ac.uk), The Bartlett

School of Planning, University College London, 22 Gordon Street, London WC1H 0QB, UK.

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Appendix — Summary of the interviewees

Interviewee Position* Date Place

1 Biennale (voluntary worker) 15 & 20 June 2006 cafe, office
2 Voluntary sector 16 June 2006 office
3 Voluntary sector 18 June 2006 office
4 Biennale (artist) 19 June 2006 office
5 Biennale (public servant) 19 June 2006 office
6 Biennale (academic) 20 June 2006 office
7 Voluntary sector 20 June 2006 office
8 Academic sector 21 June 2006 office
9 Voluntary sector 21 June 2006 office
10 Academic 22 June 2006 office
11 Voluntary sector 18 July 2006 office
12 Media 19 July 2006 office
13 Biennale (public servant) 19 July 2006 office
14 Artist 20 July 2006 cafe
15 Artist 21 July 2006 office
16 Public 18 July 2006 office
17 City of Culture (voluntary sector) 22 June 2006 office
18 Former staff member of City of Culture (public servant) 8 October 2009 phone
*Interviews were carried out by HaeRan Shin

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37.5

© 2012 Urban Research Publications Limited