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영어

This study aims to propose institutional approaches to local and regional development for the pertinent South Korean academic community. Institutions are ‘formal and informal rules in use.’ Also, they reflect specific contexts of a particular region. Based on these prepositions which mainly depend on institutional economics, the study examines the studies published on the Journal of Korean Regional Development Association in a way: 1) to clarify the meaning(s) of institutions, 2) to find out trends of studies related to institutionalism in the discipline, and by doing so, 3) to propose an institutional approach to South Korean local and regional development. The result indicates that the studies focus dominantly on formal rules and economic conditions when they adopt the notion of institutions, ignoring their counterparts, i.e., informal rules and context-specific non-economic(social, historical, cultural, and political) factors in local and regional development. The study concludes by emphasizing consistent use of terms in academia and South Korean and regional contexts for local and regional development.