The Korea Local Administration Review

There are geographical differences in regional recovery and response the several economic crises since 1997. In this study, the concept of regional economic resilience is employed to explain the regional variation. The purpose of this study is to analyze the changes of the number of employees of 15 Korean regions for the period 1990-2015 based on the concept of economic resilience. From the engineering resilience perspective, the empirical results show that Korean regions show differences in the initial resistance to the economic crises, but not in recovery. In addition, this study also finds the negative hysteresis effect, which means the permanent effects of economic downturns from the ecological resilience concept. The hysteresis is more obvious in regions where the portion of manufacturing industry is higher than other regions.
 
□ Keywords: economic recession, economic resilience, regional economy