Spatial Investment Patterns of Venture Capital Firms in Korea : focusing on small business start-up investment companys investment

The venture capital industry is one of recently emerging financial industries. Recently, prominent attention has been paid to the venture capital by related industries and governments of the developed and developing countries, because it can support and promote the formation and development of new small firms, especially ones which introduce new products and processes. Korean venture capital industry has begun to arise significantly since the middle 1980s. The purposes of this paper are to examine 1)spatial organization of the venture capital industry, 2)regional flows of venture capital funds and 3) spatial patterns of venture capital investments. The findings of this study can be summarized as follows: First, in the beginning, Korean venture capital industry has developed unevenly with many of venture capital firms in the Capital region, but recently this conspicuous spatial uneveness has reduced considerably due to the restriction of the establishment of venture capital firms in the Capital region by the government policy. Since 1989 the establishment of venture capital firms in the non-Capital regions has been affectded a variety of loction factors, including the development of Western Coast, the construction of technopolis, the attraction of the Namdong region as the Second demand region, and the owner's office. Second, major characteristic that appear in the regional flow of venture capital is a high level of regional parochialism in investments