The Korea Local Administration Review

The experiences of Saemaul Undong (hereafter SM) in Korea in 1970s hasbeen valued high from ‘governance’ and ‘social capital’ points of view in theworld even in 21st century. In addition, the demand for the experience of SMhas been increasing as ODA practice in developing countries. In this context,this paper aims to review reinventing local administration through SM in Korea.Reinventing local administration, in this paper, is approached by three pointssuch as its function (missions or jobs), its structure (organizations ordepartments), and connecting its function and structure, in other words,cultivating or resetting new organizational cultures. To identify the functionalreinventing local administration through SM, resetting the relationship betweenthe public sector and the private one, role sharing between the centralgovernment and local administrative agencies and those interactions betweenlocal administrative institutes or agencies and the community are analyzed inthis paper. To identify the structural reinventing local administration through SM,establishing new departments or divisions in charge of SM and restructuring theexisting organizations are reviewed. And to identify cultivating neworganizational culture, the change of public officials’ attitude and recognition, theways of doing public affairs, the management system of the achievements andvarious reward system are reviewed. Three new missions had been given tolocal administrative agencies to support SM in Korea in 1970s; administrativesupport and people’s capacity building at village level, providing technical advicesand equipments and finding and disseminating best practices of SM. Koreangovernment restructured local administrative agencies and established newdepartments in charge of SM from the early of 1970s to support SM moreefficiently at all levels, at the central, regional and local public agencies. Inaddition, Korean government began to provide more incentives for the betteraccomplished villages, and began to give national medals to those SM leadersand public officials in charge of better achieved village, thereby made ‘asustainable environment’ for SM. This reinventing local administration through
SM contributed to building ‘a circular causation process’ for expanding Koreaneconomy by building ‘local governance’ and by accumulating social capital atvillage level. The most important factor to make SM in Korea successful mightbe ‘a grid type governance’ cultivated by mixing ‘a vertical governance’ connectinglocal administrative agencies with the central government, and ‘a horizontalgovernance’ based on those interactions among ministries at national level, amongregional or local administrative agencies or communities, or among various usergroups within a village.
□ Keywords: Saemaul Undong, reinventing local administration, grid typegovernance, social capital, local administrative function, localadministrative structure, organizational culture