The Rural Development Under The Domination Of The Government

Saemaul Undong was a movement led by South Korean government which summoned peasants to construct their villages with the spirit of "Industry, self-help, cooperation". It aimed to improve the rural environment, narrow the gap between city and village, increase their income, and also inspire people's spirits. During the process, the central government played a predominant role, meanwhile, the local governments and peasants threw themselves into the movement. Through the construction, South Korea has gained great momentum, the rural infrastructure has been ameliorated, and villages have taken a new look. The Saemaul Undong helped Korean country-sides transit the modernized period reposefully.The paper reviews the development of Saemaul Undong in South Korea in 1970s, and clarifies the multidimensional evolvement of this movement. In Saemaul Undong, the governments at all levels and peasants exerted in different ways. The paper aims to reveal the roles of governments at all levels played in the process, the relation among the central and local governments, villages and peasants. This paper also deals with the way in which Saemaul Undong was organized and brought in effect, as well as the means by which resources were invested and distributed. You may also find the movement's practical effect, experience, lessons, and enlightenment for the construction of the new countryside in our country at present.The author argues that, at the beginning , the governments used administrative measure to push Saemaul Undong. After it stepped into mature phase, the influence of governments was weakened while the NGOs had been growing more and more strong, which accelerated the development of Saemaul Undong. The author aims to evaluate the governments' success and failure by describing their behaviors in the movement. Because of the similarity in their backgrounds and orientations, the author intends to compare this movement with the construction of the new countryside in China. In the way of learning the experience and adjusting it to the rural social structure of our own, we would provide some useful suggestions for forming social structure that adapt to the development of villages in China.