Industrial Parks, Dispersed Industry and the Encroachment of Rural Settlement Space: An Industrial Effect-Zone Analysis of 1232 Townships in South Korea

Abstract

Korean local governments promote industrial parks as a response to depopulation, yet their effect on existing rural settlement space remains unmeasured. Transferring the road-effect-zone framework to industry, we separated industrial occupation, the exposure of settlement land (residential land and farmland) within 100 m of industry, and the contiguity reduction (a scenario measure: shrinkage of the largest contiguous settlement patch when settlement land within that zone is excluded, not actual loss) in 1232 townships of 121 non-capital counties. Unlike roads, industry rarely subdivided settlement space; it encroached on it. In 2025 the median park township had 2.0% of settlement land exposed, against 0.4% elsewhere, and a contiguity reduction of 2.1%, against 0.2%; it was 20% or more in 10.1% of park townships, against 2.9%. Per percentage point of township area, industry dispersed outside park boundaries was associated with a 4.6-point contiguity reduction, whereas industry within parks showed no detectable association. In 2000–2007, half of new industrial land replaced settlement land. Of 116 county ordinances retrieved and reviewed, only three set a distance for factories in general, against 100 for solar power facilities. Park-related industrialisation is associated with spatial encroachment on existing settlement that population or employment outcomes alone do not capture.