Cluster Life Cycles: The Case of the Shipbuilding Industry Cluster in South Korea

S<sc>hin</sc> D.-H. and H<sc>assink</sc> R. Cluster life cycles: the case of the shipbuilding industry cluster in South Korea, <italic>Regional Studies</italic>. Although South Korean academics and policy-makers have applied industrial districts, regional innovation systems and clusters both to study and promote regional economic development, these concepts have little power to explain the changing economic landscape over time. This paper tackles this question with the help of the concept of cluster life cycle and shipbuilding as a case. It concludes that the cluster life cycle concept is useful for analysing and explaining spatial industrial dynamics in Korea, but the distinction between industry life cycle and cluster life cycle is not very relevant in the case of shipbuilding.