Journal of the Korean Geographical Society ISSN:1225-6633(Print) 대한지리학회지

This study attempts to explore the current status of resilience in the Gumi IT industry cluster in terms of the production domain, technological innovation domain, and institutional domain, and to suggest methods of improvement for resilience. The Gumi IT industry cluster has entered a period of decline because it was unable to respond to and adapt to external shocks such as the crisis in its major industry and the outflow of large enterprises since the 2010s. In this regard, in terms of the production domain, the industrial structure specialized on the IT industry for production capability, the local and closed supply chain, and the weak capital of the SMEs have weakened the cluster’s resilience. In the technological innovation domain, the limitation of supply and demand in high-quality human resources and a weak R&D network have not strengthened the resilience, despite increased interest and investment in R&D. In the institutional domain, improving resilience has been impeded by the low companies’ reliability on institutional actors and the low ripple effect of the regional embeddedness of institutions, even though the Gumi City and the Korea Industrial Complex Corporation have actively promoted policies and projects. Therefore, in order to improve the cluster’s resilience, it is necessary to construct integrated platform for crisis response, and to attract and operate ‘Special Area for Responding to Industrial Crisis’ that allow each domain to enhance their functions and three domains to complement each other’s functions.