Teaching Regional Geography in a Region: Taegu

It is said that we can hardly distinguish one region from the other. Rural and urban landscapes are homogeneous, not much different from place to place. Greater differences are between an urban center and a rural periphery. We have experienced homogeneous culture on different geographical features. This is mainly due to the spatial orgainzation of modernization. The modernization, industrialization, and urbanization in the recent history of Korea have evened out the regional differences over the national territory. . Contrary to the trends, there is a strong motivation among Koreans to identify themselves in their home towns. They gather under the name of their home countries in many cultural occasions and took names of restaurants, hotels, and even businesses named after their home places. The motif of regionalism is getting stronger with more national development. The demands for regional geography be come high waves tide of municipal autonomy near future. Re search puts emphasis on the matter of how regional characteristics have disappeared and how it possible to revive a sense of regional identity. However, we, geographers are forced to explain and describe something about their own regions in terms of political shifts and a changing educational climate. We suggest that geographers explain a region as a personality. A national model of development cannot be applicable to regional level in the same manner, because regional individualities have rooted in native places for thousands years. We may attempt to explain regional identity as cultural adaptation and its regional institutions in the process of modernization.