Socio-Historical Factors Driving Changes in Local Commons in Korea: Focusing on Common Pastures on Jeju Island

Abstract

This study examines the historical and social factors that have been driving the development and transformation of common pastures on Jeju Island since premodern times and categorizes those factors, helping to establish a social theory, change-inspired approach to understanding the commons and their changes in South Korea. This study holds that mainstream approaches that focus on the microeconomic choices of individual commoners-particularly the neoinstitutionalist approach-are too limited in scope to capture and explain the complex changes that have engulfed commons in Korea, a society that has a tumultuous modern and contemporary history involving colonization, civil war, decades of state violence, and a strong drive for development and industrialization. This study traces the history of pastureland in Jeju and particularly focuses on the institutional and policy factors on the state side and the industrial and technological factors on the market side that have driven the transformation of common pastures on the island in modern times.