Pollution Havens: A Korean Case Study

Abstract

When we discuss development, environment, and multinational corporations (MNCs), a major concern has been that differences among countries in environmental standards and costs may cause relocation of economic activity, especially “dirty” industries, from countries with rigid standards and strict enforcement to those regulations and enforcement are lax. Perhaps the most significant change in the environmental politics of the 1990s is that environmental protection has moved from the margins into the mainstream. As such, environmental protection has become a salient issue in the global community. This paper is based on an earlier work published in the International Journal of Public Administration. The study explored the question of industrial flight by examining DuPont’s decision to locate its titanium dioxide producing plant in Korea in the late 1980s. The industrial flight and pollution haven hypotheses are relevant here to the investigation of the role of environmental factors in determining new plant location in foreign direct investment. Furthermore, DuPont’s entry into Korea illustrates the complexity of industrial location decisions involving the dynamics of international trade, the production and the investment. The international issues are of two types in this respect.