The Political Geography of Climate Policy Contention in South Korea:Organized Climate Action and Political Triggers (2018–2024)

As South Korea advances its transition toward carbon neutrality, climate and energy policies have increasingly generated localized social contention. While much of the existing literature focuses on economic costs or public attitudes toward climate action, less attention has been paid to how organized climate-related actions emerge through the interaction between structural policy pressures and political mobilization. This paper examines the spatial and temporal patterns of climate policy contention in South Korea between 2018 and 2024, conceptualized as organized, nonviolent collective actions that express opposition to, or conflict over, the implementation and consequences of climate and energy policies.

Using the Geo-referenced Climate Policy Conflict (GeoCPC) dataset, the study conducts a GIS-based statistical analysis at the administrative level 2 (si-gun-gu) by year. The dependent variable captures the annual frequency of contentious climate-related events, representing a subset of organized climate action that is explicitly conflictual in nature. Key explanatory variables include regional carbon emission levels and changes, the presence and operational stages of major power generation facilities (solar, hydro, thermal, and nuclear), local economic conditions and inequality, and changes in energy costs. Crucially, rather than treating political factors as mere controls, the analysis explicitly examines political triggers—such as major election years and levels of non-environmental political protest—as moderating conditions that shape when and where climate policy contention becomes visible.

The paper argues that climate policy contention in South Korea cannot be understood solely as a reaction to environmental or economic grievances. Instead, such contention emerges when the structural pressures of decarbonization intersect with political opportunity structures that facilitate collective mobilization. By integrating spatial analysis with political economy and contentious politics, this study contributes to broader debates on the politics of decarbonization and just transition, highlighting the inherently political and geographically uneven nature of climate governance.