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Along with the literature on the ‘social construction of nature’, some scholars have recently emphasized the role of the state in the construction of nature by arguing that among various social forces and actors, the state plays a key role in making the discursive and material construction of nature. Based on this argument, and by focusing on the water resource policy of the Park Jung-Hee regime in South Korea (1961–79), this paper aims to explore the ways in which the state–nature relationship is materially and discursively produced by social forces that pursue their political and economic ends by acting in and through the state. Based on these analyses, this paper emphasizes the significance of the the state's role in hydropolitics, and suggests that hydropolitics should be seen in terms of materially and discursively contested interactions among social forces acting in and through the state and nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]