Integrated approach for rural community development : the case study of Saemaul Undong during 1970-1979

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to study South Korea’s rural development program or Saemaul Undong with the focus on the integrated approach strategy for rural development, by analyzing the secondary academic data for Saemaul Undong and other related information collected through various sources including finding from research studies, books, journals and online articles. The study is concentrating on the early phase which is during 1970-1979 since it had the most impressive outcome. The findings of this study reveal the significant integrated approach of Saemaul Undong’s strategy which is, the combination of bottom-up and top-down, a profound factor to achieve impressive outcome of South Korea’s rural development in 1970-1979. However, culturally, under Asian rural conditions, it may be difficult for rural people to start the development project. Investment and development in rural areas would be inefficient if the rural people were not ready to make effective use of such investment. Therefore, to successfully achieve in rural development and investment, the Korean government employed a top-down approach in the initial stage to shape a basic groundwork for the bottom-up approach from rural people in the latter stage. There are negative perspectives towards the program, such as it could not stop the rural-out migration and it was established as political apparatus for President Park Chung Hee. In spite of that criticism, it succeeded in the improvement of life and better standard of living and increased rural household income as it was first proposed with the strong support for the government and the participation from rural people.