Reinventing Alternative Ways of Community Regeneration

The former mining areas of Gangwon Province had to sacrifice their coal and other resources in order to supply energies for rapid industrialization. In face of the crisis of the whole community, mining cities had to struggle with the alternative ways of local regeneration. This research is a trial to reevaluate community movements, development strategies, and a new search for the possibility of social economy as an alternative development model. Reflecting on the historical experiences of former mining areas, community revival was found to be a long way because it is not just another investment, but overcoming intangible obstacles and barriers including reconstruction of society itself. The former mining areas of Gangwon Province have undergone two decades of large scale social and economic experiments. Massive social and economic restructuring from coal to tourism has brought about fundamental changes which turned the social characters of the community upside down. However, it had to sacrifice autonomous local economy and independent civil community. It is very hard to determine what kind of factors may have decisive effects on the different trajectories and consequences. Different revival strategies may be the combined results of complex interplay among economic conditions, historical legacies, and patterns of social compromise. Different regeneration strategies may result in permanent consequences on the long lasting fabric of social capital including the nature of trust, common pool resources, economic interdependence, collective mindset, and culture of local communities. In that sense, the social experiments, which are still going on in Gangwon area may provide significant lessons for local people who had to suffer from industrial changes, declining communities, and disaster areas.