Colonial Legacies and Resistance Voices in Energy Production: A Critical Analysis of Samcheok, South Korea

Background and Purpose: Despite global net-zero pledges, many economies remain heavily dependent on fossil fuels, exacerbating climate change while causing environmental degradation, economic instability, and social fragmentation in affected communities. The energy industry is characterized by multifaceted power dynamics that extend beyond mere production demands and profit incentives to encompass geographical contestations over resources, asymmetrical relationships between energy producers and consumers, and territorial politics of extraction—all requiring critical analysis during fossil fuel phase-out efforts. Energy colonialism illuminates how persistent colonial structures within the energy sector perpetuate territorial and resource dispossession, explaining not only extractive relationships between economically advanced nations and resource-rich developing countries but also domestic power asymmetries within national borders. This study examines Samcheok, South Korea's primary energy production hub and site of the country's most recently constructed coal-fired power plant, through the lens of energy colonialism, analyzing its imperial and domestic historical contexts while highlighting community resistance narratives in the pursuit of environmental justice.

Methods: This research combines historical literature review, including historical newspaper archives, with fieldwork conducted by the authors as climate activists. The collected data were aggregated for analysis using a decolonial theoretical framework. Employing critical discourse analysis, we draw on Müller's (2024) four facets of energy colonialism—materialist, psychosocial, political ecology, and abolitionist perspectives—to explore the historical, epistemic, geopolitical, governance, and sociocultural dimensions in Samcheok.

Results: Samcheok's extensive exploitation history has rendered it a sacrifice zone of both internal and external energy colonialism. From a materialist perspective, colonial extraction of coal resources began during the Japanese occupation period as part of transforming the Korean Peninsula into a military supply base. During Park Chung-hee's dictatorial regime and industrialization process, the colonial logic of forced labor mobilization and resource extraction was reproduced in the region. From a psychosocial perspective, the historical subjectivity of coal miners—once valorized as national heroes crucial to the country's economy—has been profoundly reshaped by the coal industry's decline, rendering them economically obsolete. As the coal industry declined, Samcheok experienced rapid hollowing out, with residents continuing to view their region's future pessimistically. From a political ecology perspective, the dependency on the energy sector remains strong, with local governments continuing to promote Samcheok as an energy complex through greenwashed hydrogen economy initiatives. From an abolitionist perspective, resistance narratives from anti-nuclear and coal phase-out movements reflect sustained efforts to challenge colonial entanglements and achieve environmental justice. These resistance efforts among local residents and climate activists also represent emerging movements that recognize, problematize, and confront the internal colonial relationship between metropolitan areas and Samcheok regarding energy production and consumption inequities.

Conclusions and Implications: Understanding a region's political, environmental, relational, and historical contexts is crucial for amplifying local resistance voices. Communities long targeted by colonial logics often struggle to act independently from these entrenched historical imprints, necessitating interventions within a decolonization framework. Environmental justice remains inseparable from exploitation history, with colonial structures in the energy sector frequently concealed by greenwashed development discourses today.