Social conditions of Village Democracy in South Korea

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the social conditions for autonomy and democracy in the context of villages. In particular, it emphasizes village democracy as a new model of promoting civic participation while critically examining the existing community building model in Korea. As an alternative, village democracy has emerged to provide solutions for the problem of community building lacking democracy as well as resident autonomy with limited participation. Village democracy is a new model of citizen autonomy that has been experimented in Seongbuk-gu for the past two years. However, the determinants and the extent to which it has achieved socio-political success at community level of its achievements are yet to be further explored. Accordingly, the paper tries to examine the social conditions for village democracy as the most important foundation for autonomy and democracy. © 2018, Institute of Social Development and Policy Research, Seoul National University.