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3/06 p:/ClRC/Dale0ue.indd-p.7

0......—

,-..— PLAN B PAPER
You, Byeongkwon. (1996)

W -...-_

The Evaluation of a Centralized Urban Policy in Korea
by

Byeongkwon You

A PLAN B PAPER

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER IN URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING
Urban and Regional Planning Program

1996

mam

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Introduction

11. The Planning Setting
1. The National Planning Policy Setting
2. A Local City Setting : The City of Kwangyang

III. The Impacts of the Urban and Rural Area Uniﬁcation

IV. Policy Implications

1. National Setting

2. Local Setting

V. Conclusion

Bibliography

I. Introduction

Study Purpose

With its centralized command-and-control methodology in economic

development1 , Korea has made marvelous economic success in the last several decades.
Regardless of the problems of the centralized decision making structure, the ‘economic
miracle' has been envied by many developing countries. However, since the local self-rule
of 1995, the conﬂicts between the central government and the local government are
sometimes serious. In the worst case, city councils did not try to allow the national
government to direct them. On the other hand, the national government is not willing to
lose its traditional control power to the localities.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the recent national government's rural

rehabilitation policy which was conducted in 19952 . That is, this report is to analyze the
economic impacts of economic boundary modiﬁcation policy initiated by the national
government. The aim of the policy was to rehabilitate the rural area through annexation
between localities. Since the Korean industrialization/urbanization process after WWII, the

rural area has been rapidly dilapidated because the national governmental focused on urban

 

l Eder, Norman. Poisoned Prosgrig : Development, Modernization, and the Environment in South Korea.
Armonk, New York : ME. Sharpe, 1996. p. 135.

2 Until then, there was no city councils in the cities and counties. A city of a county was managed by a mayor
who was dispatched at the national government (Minister of Interior with permission of the president)

area. The policy is the second trial for the rural revitalization aﬁer the Saemaul Movement
in 1974. The ﬁrst is diﬂ‘erent from the last in terms of policy tools. The ﬁrst uses the

annexation method rather than organizational innovation that the latter did.

Hypothesis and Methodology

The hypothesis of this paper is that simple administrative boundary modiﬁcation
can result in negative economic impacts. The independent variable is the urban and rural
uniﬁcation policy (administrative district remodiﬁcation). The dependent variable is the
economic development which can be measured by population, quality of life, and
employment opportunity, etc.

The study was mainly conducted by the statistics which were issued by the City of
Kwangyang. To look at the attitudes of the residents, the survey which was performed by
the city was reanalyzed for the study based on the ﬁrst survey result. Other planning
literature and newspapers were referred. The composition of this paper looks like Figure 1.

Figure 1. The composition of this paper

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

< Hypothesis > <Verification> <Alternative>

The negative economic No change in economic Decentralization
impact of administrative capacity
boundary modiﬁcation

. Survey

. Statistics

. Newspaper

. Literature

 

 

 

The Structure of this Paper

Out of the two parts in the second section, the ﬁrst part deals with the overall
background of the report. It comprises the planning setting of the national government and
the local governments. Because the legal context is the fundamental factor of the policy, it
will be necessary to understand the nationwide central power. National administrative
organization, planning and its related laws are mentioned at the ﬁrst part of the section. The
contents of the policy will follow in the latter part.

Major features of the City of Kwangyang will be presented in the second part of the
report. The basic reason that the city was chosen as a case is that for the last decade the
national government has experimented with rehabilitation policies twice in the city. The
ﬁrst attempt was to build the iron and steel company in 1982. The second one was the
urban and rural uniﬁcation policy of 1995. The national government plans to invest more
money to harbor construction as a third policy for regional development. This analysis will
be useful in showing what the additional national governmental intervention should look
like and in evaluating what the economic condition of the other uniﬁed cities look like after
the uniﬁcation policy. Demographics, major industries and urban planning are the major

components of the part.

II. The Planning Setting
1. The National Planning Policy Setting
Organizational Setting

Major urban and rural development policy has been made by the national
government. An understanding of Korean government structure is the ﬁrst step in
examining the policy setting. As illustrated in Figure 2, the basic rural community is the
‘Village'. ‘Front organizations', which are responsible to implement the governmental
policy directly to the citizen, are ‘Dongs’, ‘Eups' and ‘Myons’. The City or County controls
these administrative organizations. Korea has two levels of government : one is the national
government and the other is the local government. In the national government, there are two
boards, 13 ministries and 22 ofﬁces. There are two levels in local government structure:
one is major cities, including one special city and ﬁve direct jurisdiction cities, and the
other is provinces. Every province controls its cities (including districts) and counties.
Almost all counties are rural, and counties are closely dependent on neighboring cities in

the economic, cultural and educational contexts.

Figure 2 Structure of Korean Government

 

National Govemmen

 

 

[Special City ] I_Direct Jurisdiction City

I Districts I I Districts I
we

note : Thick lines are administrative paths connecting the central government and rural
communities.

The basic characteristic of Korean government is its centralization. The Ministry of
Construction and Transportation (MOCT) plays a key role in national development, and the
Ministry of Home Affairs (MOHA) has important and strong functions for urban and
regional development including general guidance and control on local administration.
MOHA has jurisdiction over law legislation, management and supervision over
organization, personnel administration and ﬁnance of local governments. Therefore,
MOHA is directly or indirectly related to urban and regional development and planning.

Each locality holds the primary function to plan and develop its area. MOHA has

01

substantial power over the local governments as it directs their upper level organization.
The Uniﬁcation policy, which will be explained in the next part, can be adopted without
local resistance in the administrative context.

There are 234 cities and counties below nine provinces in Figure 1. Almost all the
cities have about 150,000 people or less. All these cities were rural areas before 19705
without regard to the name. In the industrialization process of Korea of the last decades,
lots of rural youth have migrated to the urban area to seek better economic and educational

opportunities. As a consequence, the rural area has suffered a labor force deﬁcit in farming.

Legal Setting for Land Planning

The main land planning law in Korea is the National Land Use and Management
Act (NLUMA). According to the act, the whole land of the nation is being divided into 5

divisions: urban, quasi-urban, rural, quasi-rural and national environmental/conservation

area3 . Except for the Seoul metropolitan area, which is being ruled by the Metropolitan
Planning Act, the rest of the land is regulated or utilized by the NLUMA. Under NLUMA,
each area is regulated by lots of acts such as in urban area by Urban Planning Act, in rural
area by Farming Act and Forest Act, natural environment by Natural Environment

Conservation Act, and in military protected areas by Military Facilities Protection Act.

 

3 As of June of 1994, the land division was divided as a proportion of urban (13.7%), quasi-urban (1.9%),
quasi-rural (26.1%), rural (51.3%), natural environmental/conservation (7.0%).

The frmdamental control of the land is zoning control. Current land use is regulated
by 43 administrative acts and the Constitution. As of 1994, there are 137 divisions. Relating
acts regulate land utilization of the divisions so that the land owner will use the land
according to the guidelines by the acts. For instance, in Quasi-Rural Area, nobody can
engage in pollution activated activities. The major characteristics of this kind of regulation
is superimposition of regulation so that a person who wants to get a permit to build a
factory in city has to get several sub-permits to satisfy relating acts such as Urban Planning
Act, Building Act, and various environmental regulation acts.

In addition to these kinds of planning acts, local governments are controlled by the
Local Self-Rule Act and have the responsibility to implement almost all administrative acts.
These acts allow the national government to control the local governments through the
ﬁnancial incentive and the appointment power of the local government ofﬁcials. The
uniﬁcation policy was possible because the national government can control the localities

with the laws and the centrality and the administrative culture.

Uniﬁcation of Urban and Rural Areas (UUR)

UUR is a policy to annex a county and a city into a city to expedite development of

rural area4 . The national government tried to revitalize the rural community through,

 

4 Ministry of Home Affairs (Republic of Korea). The First Conference of the Assistance for Local Self Rule.
April, 1994.

Saemaul Undong (New Village Movement) since the early 19708. The movement ‘sought

above all to foster development of agriculture and self-sufﬁciency in food production, to

increase farmers’ income, and to improve rural living conditions'5 . The movement started
to wither after the 19805 because of political instability.

Uruguay Round, which tried to lift the import and export barriers in regard to
farming products, made the matter worse in rural development policy because the national
government can not protect the local farm products market from being penetrated by
outside economic forces. As a result, many young rural people ﬂooded into the urban area.
‘South Korea had an annual population increase rate of 2.4 percent in 1967, which has
tapered oﬁ‘ in the 1980s to an average rate of 1.57 percent. Yet, over the same period, the

average urban population increase rate was 7 percent, of which 5 percent was directly due

to migration.’6 Everyone can now see vacant farming houses, barren land and rusty
farming machine here and there. UUR is a trial to resolve the problem through
administrative impetus.

The explanation of this policy can be associated with the ‘trickle down' effect. As
illustrated in Figure 3, human resources and socio-economic beneﬁts concentrated on the
core city area (‘A' area) before the implementation of UUR. After beginning the policy,

development will be extended to the ‘F' area.

 

5 Boyer, William W. & Byeong Man Ahn. Rural Development in South Koreu socio-political analysis.

London : Associated University Press. p. 33.
6 R0, Chung-hyun. Public Administration a the Korean Transformation : ConceptsJolicies and Value
Conﬂicts. West Hartford : Kumarian Press. 1993. p. 66.

Figure 3 Conceptual graph of UUR

 

A more speciﬁc conceptual explanation can be provided. Region ‘A' represents a
city, and region ‘F' represents rural areas. After uniﬁcation between area ‘A’ and area ‘F',
the land use type may be changed because the whole area including the rural area will be
the objects of the comprehensive plan. Infrastructure may follow the new urban planning.
The rural people will be able to articulate their interests through the political path such as
the city council and elections.

UUR is more than ‘annexation' of administrative districts in that UUR orients rural
development in the special circumstances of Korea. Uniﬁcation planning was made by the
national government to rehabilitate the rural areas. The original plan called for all cities
(excluding special city and 5 direct control cities) and counties to be uniﬁed into cities.
There are many obstacles to be crossed, however, because of political, social and economic

contexts. Some politicians who did not want to lose their political superior boundary

opposed the plan. Some residents in a region dislike the other people who live in the place
to be uniﬁed. Some people worried about economic loss entailed to the uniﬁcation plan.

In October 1994, 33 cities and counties out of 234 agreed with the uniﬁcation plan
by residents' votes. The cities started to use new names from January lst, 1995 . Beside this
name change, whether the other beneﬁts will come or not will be veriﬁed over time. It may
be too early to evaluate the effect only after passing 2 years since implementing the UUR

policy. It is not certain that all uniﬁed cities will be successful.

2. A Local City Setting : The City of Kwangyang

Demographics

As of 1993, the population of the City of Kwangyang was 126,849. Like the other

rural areas, Kwanyang suffered a decrease in population in the early 1980s as seen in Figure

4. The iron and steel companies brought new people and jobs to Kwangyang and the

population in the city sharply increased through the late 19808 and early the 19903.

10

Figure 4. The Population Trend in the City of Kwangyang

 

 

160000
140000
120000
100000
80000
60000
40000
20000
0

 

I population trend]

 

Population

 

 

 

0 LO 0 LO 0 L0
l\ l\ (X) 00 03 05
CD 05 C35 CD 03 CD
r-i H H H 1—1 H

Year

 

 

 

The population trends has different patterns in the urban and rural areas. As seen in
Table 1, the statistics show the Demographic characteristics of the transitional period in the
city. There is no conspicuous change in the population of the rural area between 1985 and
1995. On the other hand, that of the urbanized area sharply increased between 1985 and
1990. The survey, conducted in 1995, reveals another characteristic of the population trend.
The farmers who have lived in the current urban area lost their traditional occupation of
farming and some of them were employed in the iron and steel company. The rest of them
stayed at home or departed from the city. Most of people who departed ﬁ'om the city tried

to seek better educational opportunity for their children, even though the city had better

11

economic opportunity. By the survey which was performed by the city, 69% of respondents

replied that they want to live next to cities such as Suncheon, Kwangju and the other big

 

 

 

 

 

cities.
Table 1 Population Trend of the City of Kwangyang
1985 1990 1995
Urban 23,686 70,1 18 59,175
Rural 67,1 1 1 85,440 68,608
Total 90,797 155,558 127,783

 

 

 

 

 

Major Industries

The major industries in the area are manufacturing (almost all in the iron company),
service (more in the urban area) and farming (almost all in the rural area). There were no
big modern retail service in Kwangyang area in the 19705 and 19805. Upon arrival of the
new iron factory, the retail centers to serve the employees and their families located to the
iron factory. With all the modern retail centers, most of the rural people who live in the
area are still using the traditional barter market rather than the modernized ones because
they can still have as much social activities throughout the ﬁve day market as in the rural

center.

12

Manufacturing : The major industry contributing to the local economy is iron and
steel company and is located in urban area. The industry employs 8,150 as of 1995. The
population difference between 1985 and 1995 in urban area is 35,489. Those numbers
reﬂect the employees who work for the steel company and their family members.

The iron company was constructed over the Kwangyang Gulf. The traditional
seashore farming died and area farming was afﬁliated into urban areas as residential,
commercial and industrial areas. So there is little space for farming in urban area. The
central government, however, has a plan to complete a big harbor facility construction in

the rural area till 2010.

Based on only the economic base theory7 , the iron and steel company, contributes
to the local economy by bringing money into the city. In spite of these contribution, the
geographic boundary of the iron and steel company is immune from local urban planning
because the big company project was decided by the national government. Because there
are big difference between the urban and rural residents in culture, income level and
geographical distance, it is not easy to combine them altogether through the policy.

Service : The major characteristic of service industry is its small size. As seen in
Table 2, average numbers of employees are at least 2.1 and at most 33.7. Business activities

tend to concentrate in the urban hub (Kwangyoung Dong district).

 

7 Blakely, Edward J. Planning Local Economic Development; Theory and Practice. Thousand Oaks : SAGE.
1994. pp. 54~55.

13

Excluding retail service, all other service industries are located in the urban area.
Considering its size, the rural area has suffered from the inconvenience in the daily life. In

effect, rural areas are now dependent on the urban area.

Table 2 Number of Employees in the Service Industry of the City of Kwangyang (1995)

 

 

 

 

( Employees)
Electric Construction Retail Transit Bank social
Rural 50 656 3,795 483 800 1,979
Urban 50 1,686 2,761 2,045 2,144 2,241
Total 100 2,342 6,556 2,528 2,934 4,210
(5) (174) (3,123) (75) (228) (992)
[20] [13.5] [2.1] [33.7] [12.9] [4.2]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

" ( ) denotes the numbers of businesses and [ ] does the average employees.

A bigger service industry has not grown in Kwangyang but in neighboring cities
such as Suncheon. Suncheon, the neighboring city, 30 km distant from the City of

Kwangyang has lots of economic opportunity with its 170,000 population, better economic

facilities than those of Kwangyang and convenient transportation8 . As a result, more
people use the service industry in Suncheon than in urban Kwangyang.

Farming and Forestry : As of 1993, farming population reached 32,312 in the
current Kwangyang city boundary, which is 25.4% of the total population. Comparing with

that of 1988 (28.9%), it decreased 3.8%. This phenomenon was from the construction of the

 

8 The City of Suncheon is the provincial train transportation hub with the regional train office.

14

iron and steel company. More employment opportunity was made by the expansion of
manufacturing and service industries as well.

The total forest area reached 30,623 ha which is the 69.4% of total area. The forest
produces chestnuts in the fall. Twenty eight percent of the forest was owned by the nation
(Seoul National University), so economic activities are being restricted to some extent
there. The forest owned by the university composed a variety of trees in which students can

study the ecosystem of the area.

Urban Planning

The current Urban Planning Act, which is controlled by mainly the Ministry of
Construction and Transportation, regulates the planning activities of each city. The act is
mainly in effect in cities rather than counties. According to the act, the rural area of a
uniﬁed city can become the object of consideration of planning. It is not obligatory to apply
urban planning to the rural area by the latest Local Self-rule Act, which controls
administratively the uniﬁed city. As illustrated in Figure 5, it is natural that the ‘dotted’
rural area is not the object of urban planning. By the current Urban Planning Act, the
‘vacant’ urban area should make a comprehensive planning. The reason why the new Local
Self-rule Act designed the reuniﬁed city in this way is to decrease the construction
regulation burden. In the non-urban area, construction regulation such as density, height,

bulk and use is not applied.

15

Figure 5 The Uniﬁed City of Kwangyang

 

    

. -. .. 'K: . I ) \-—\ .‘-/’
( Rural Area {' '
...'- . I ".- I. '\./"' 1 ' ./‘
2 I. ' w: M’. g
'- " K' . ,t l .. '3
._ -'.| ‘f. ' '.\.,:_’; n ‘ . .
{ " “If” Urban Area
. .,, L,

£ng

Even though manufacturing became the major industry in the city, the industry did

not contribute the quality of life of all residents. The major responsibility of the central

oriented policy is to make the factory immune from the city planning. The national

government tried to annex the administrative boundary because they might expect to boost

the economic development on the basis of the good company.

111. The Impacts of the Urban and Rural Area Uniﬁcation

Even though the national government allowed local self-rule after 1995, the real

self-reliance is far from realization because the national government still has lots of power

16

to control the localities through law-making and ﬁnancial assistance, etc. After adoption of
the UUR, the national government can control the localities in a number of ways.

Like the other policies, the national government is responsible for planning,
implementing and evaluating the national policies. Central oriented government structure
becomes a basic obstacle for the success of the policy in terms of restricting local initiative.

Community participation is imperative for effective local management because it can

. . . . 9
increase democracy and economic/technological efﬁcrency .

A Survey on Economic Activities after U UR ﬂ‘he City of Kwangyang)

A survey, which was done by the City of Kwangyang on the occasion of the
uniﬁcation of the urban and the rural area, shows the economic activities and attitudes of
the residents who live in the new uniﬁed city.

The ﬁrst important result of the survey answers the question of why the residents
keep living in the city. As seen in Figure 6, 41% of the respondents responded that they
want to live there because they perceive the city is promising enough to live in. But still

16% of the respondents claim that they don’t have better alternatives.

 

9 Saunier, Richard E. & Richard A. Meganck. ed. ConservaItion of Biodiversig and the New Regional
Planning. Washington, DC. : Department of Regional Development and Environment Executive Secretariat
for Economic and Social Affairs General Secretariat, Organizations of American States. p. 76.

17

Figure 6 The reason why people live in the City

 

Like their No
Satisfy the communities alternative
Current Life 5% 16%

 

Hometown
19%
Promising
Development
41%

 

 

 

The second issue is the reason why the residents want to depart from the city. The
main reason why he or she wants to leave the city is the quality of their children’s education
(69% of the reply). Even though the city has good middle and high schools, better schools
are being operated by the iron and steel company. The residents who reside in the rural area
can hardly access the educational facilities because of the distance.

The third attitude survey is the question about ‘whether this city is livable or not’.
31.67% of the respondents replied ‘inconvenient’ and similar to the other places (29.3%),
good (27.89%), very inconvenient (5.9%), and very good (5.2%). Approximately, 37.57%
of the residents feel uncomfortable living there. Urban residents show more pessimistic

responses than rural people. For instance, in case of CBD of the city area, 66.7% of the

18

respondents said living in the CBD was ‘inconvenient’ and ‘very inconvenient’. Those
residents have lived in the area long before the iron and steel company was built. The result
shows that those residents seemed to be underprivileged ﬁ'om the new industry. They have
already lost their traditional farm because of the condemnation and they have little
opportunity to be employed in the iron and steel company because they don’t have the skills
to work there. To make the matter worse, they endure air pollution and noise that the big
monster emits year round.

The fourth question which is helpful to evaluate the UUR is that ‘which area is your
frequent drop-bys in the city?’ Around 6% of the respondents said that he or she visits
frequently the new city area. To sell their farm products, they don’t go to the city (only
5.78% go to the CBD area to sell farm products) rather than the City of Suncheon (22.33%
of the respondents). The reasons to visit the new downtown are ‘to visit the city hall for
getting permits and licenses’ (22.67%) and ‘to purchase things’(11.22%). Otherwise
‘vegetable purchase (31.67%)’ and ‘go to banks’ (29.33%) showed higher scores in the
traditional rural hub rather than the new downtown.

All in all, the survey shows some phenomenal points. First, the new downtown is
not an economic attraction other than in an ofﬁcial visit. Second, the traditional rural hub
has remained the economic attraction although the neighboring city has more economic
power. Third, many people who live in the downtown don’t want to live there because they
don’t believe in the promising future of the city and low educational opportrmity for their

children.

19

Some Positive Eﬂ'ects

As the national policy intended, the previous Kwangyang City before uniﬁcation
had more ﬁnancial potential than the rural area with the great contribution of the iron and
steel company. As illustrated in Table 3, the total tax revenue collected in the urban area in

1993 reached 2.7 times that of rural area. Considering only reallocation effect, the rural area

has beneﬁted from the uniﬁcation.

Table 3 Difference in tax revenue between urban and rural area

 

 

 

 

(million won)
General Revenue Rent & Fees Total
Urban 14,195 277 14,472
Rural 4,747 539 5,286

 

 

 

 

The city has more land to expand its boundary without administrative conﬂicts
between different localities. Because of the industrialization and high land price, the urban
area has not enough land to use for cemeteries and parks, etc. Water conduits will also

extend to the rural area. Garbage collecting and immunization service will be given to the

rural area.

20

 

The new city can absorb the non-basic sector into basic sector. For example, the
residents in the rural area pay bus tokens to the bus company operated by the urban area.

The new city now has ‘economy of scale’ and larger system capacity.

Negative Effects

The survey result which was done in the city was not as positive as the national

government had expected in this city. A newspaper10 reads:

The traditional rural hub suffers economic deterioration with population decrease
and commercial decay. Fifty four households for the public ofﬁcers who worked in
the county hall remain vacant long before. Restaurants and bars neighboring the old
county hall are come closer to closing with no additional demand. Aﬁer the
uniﬁcation, the other public ofﬁces like the electric supply company and national

insurance cooperation left there with the new city hall.

Urbanization can bring NIMBYism in urban area. The urban area doesn’t have
enough space for garbage disposal and cemeteries. The rural area may provide the non-

aesthetic facilities on behalf of the scenic rural atmosphere. In a sense, urbanization can be

 

1° The Joongang Daily (Korean Newspaper). Seoul. Oct. 27, 1996.

21

accompanied with alienation in that the traditional rural community with cooperation and
intimacy can be destroyed.

In economic sense, the traditional ‘trickle down’ effect has a serious fault in this
case. This is structural unemployment. The rural people can’t work for the advanced
technical jobs because they have worked for the farm for such a long time. Latent
unemployees in the rural area are being employed in simple jobs such as garbage collection.

Did welfare improve through use of the UUR, with all the increase of income?

Evaluation

Based on the survey and the yearly statistics of the City of Kwangyang, some
evaluation on the dependent variables can be inferred. The problems of the UUR policy can
be exposed through the analysis. The temporary conclusion looks as following :

First, there is no change in economic capacity aﬁer the uniﬁcation policy in the
city.

Second, there is no change in the economic dependency to the City of Suncheon.
Third, the economic dependency is not dependent upon big retail centers and job
opportunities but educational opportunity for their children.

Fourth, iron and steel company is separate ﬁ'om the urban planning and economic
development of the city geographically, even though the city and the national
government think about it as economic engine of the region.

Simple administrative boundary uniﬁcation has the means nothing more than the

annexation between two or more administrative entities.

22

The economic boundary can hardly be modiﬁed artiﬁcially. More people go to the
downtown than before the uniﬁcation but the purpose to visit there is mainly because there
is the city hall. Little or nothing related to economic activities has been changed. Still most
of the people go to the City of Suncheon to sell farm products and to buy necessities. It can
hardly expected to promote the local economic activity without understanding the economic
boundary.

The goals of the national government and the local government concerning the UUR
are different. The national government wanted to promote rural economic development
with the policy. The national government thought that UUR does not allow any additional
money to implement the policy and, instead, the policy would bring organizational
efficiency.11 Even though the uniﬁcation was decided by the residents’ votes, the political
leaders and opinion leaders initiated the uniﬁcation in the city. Local residents have no
opinions in the uniﬁcation policy. With or without the uniﬁcation, they had expected there
wouldn’t be a signiﬁcant change in the city. The uniﬁcation, in the case of the City of
Kwangyang, was initiated by the local opinion makers for their political purpose. This
results in the low economic relationship between the rural area and the urban area excepting
the public affairs.

A policy does not exist of itself, which means that a policy should be supported by

the other contextual factors. Legal contexts are the basic for the successful and effective

 

11 Two different administration will be one uniﬁed administration. Accordingly, the operational budget will

be lessened and the administrative ofﬁcers also be curtailed down.

23

implementation of a policy. The Urban Planning Act should have been revised to give more
power to the uniﬁed cities. The other acts to regulate the local initiative should be revised
with the implementation of the policy. The localities can be more efﬁcient through
contracts and partnerships for economic development but the policy overemphasized the

national govemment’s capacity.

IV. Policy Implications

For the sustainable development of the city, it may be more important to provide

economic Opportunities for people who live outside the iron and steel company boundary.

The new industries and city planning should be focused on those points.

1. National Setting

Decentralization of Planning

The ﬁrst mistake was the urban planning for the iron and steel company area

initiated by the national government, which tried to seclude the company precinct from the

indigenous residential and commercial area. The next one was that the national government

tried to revitalize the city on the basis of the big iron and steel company. And the last fault

could be followed by the big harbor facility construction.

24

The major fault of the reuniﬁcation policy, as seen in the City of Kwangyang case,
is that national government didn’t consider respective local circumstance that each local
government confronts. Some uniﬁed cities can be successﬁrl, and on the other hand, other
cities can have more faults than those of the city of Kwangyang.

Like the other policies, UUR should be renovated or implemented ‘in ways that are
both consistent with the basic principles of participation and equitable and sustainable’ in
terms of ‘people-centered development' when many policies disregard people and

environment rather than quantitative growth12 .

Figure 7 Planning Process

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ities Counties

noel : MOAF is responsible for rural farming development farming development.
noe2 : Left arrows are the extent and direction of power, and the more shaded the part, the stronger the
power is.

 

'2 Korten, D.C. & R. George Carner. Planning Frameworks for People-Centered Development. West

Hartfordeumarian Press. 1984. p. 201.

25

With all the contribution of the iron and steel company to the local ﬁnance and
employment, the planning failed as seen in the survey. The urban dwelling people wanted
to depart from the city because they can not be employed at the company. In a centralized
government like Korea, efficiency can suppress the democracy.

As illustrated in Figure 7, a ‘top-down’ or ‘top-oriented’ decision making process is
general in Korea. Planning is made mainly by the national government. UUR is a policy
related to MOHA, MOCT and Ministry of Agro-forestry and Fishery (MOAF). The UUR
was initiated by the national government. Little public participation can be a factor for
‘policy failure’. Who then can stimulate the retarded rural area?

In the planning process, without understanding local circumstances, the central
government can fail to understand the achievement of the policy. In many cases, the
national government can misunderstand the achievement and, in some cases, local
government has a tendency to hide information.

There are other communication limitations between national and local government
because the difference of capability and knowledge. It is difﬁcult to get over the
communication limitation even in a short run. Even though there are institutional problems
to get over this problem, as Antholt suggested, ‘farmers organizations, NGOs and private

ﬁrms can be expected to take on greater responsibility for the direction as well as support of

26

those institutions involved with agricultural technology identiﬁcation generation, and

. . . 13
dissemmatron’ .

National-Local Partnership

The economic capacity expansion policy like UUR can be useful in the Korean
situation as mentioned above (positive effects). In a sense, however, it can be useless as far
as the national government did not consider the respective condition of localities.
Partnership policy is from vertical way of thinking rather than the traditional centrality of
the Korean government.

More effective policy can be made by the local initiative, sometimes national-local
partnership. But the whole current law system is a command and control oriented one
because of the conventional centrality plus the national tax superiority. Weak local ﬁnances
make the localities dependent upon the national government even though the local self rule
system was secured in 1994. The innovation of a legal system in regard to the urban and
regional planning should be followed for the local ﬁnancial self-reliance.

The major obstacles for the efﬁcient land use in the city is the nation owned forest.
The forest, located in the rural area, has been owned by Seoul National University for the

forests experiment. Considering its beauty and diversity, the area can be designated as

 

13 Antholt, Charles H. Getting Ready for the Twen_ty;First CentrJuy-Techn_ical Change and Institutional
Modernization in Am’culture, World Bank Technical Paper Number 217, Asia Technical Department Series.
Washington, D.C.:The World Bank. 1994.

27

national forest or eco-park. The development of the forest can be made by the partnership
among the City of Kwangyang, Seoul National University and MOHA, which is
responsible for national park, or Forest Administration, which is responsible for national
forest.

The partnership with the participation of the local people will bring economic
beneﬁts. The new tourist industry, a basic sector of the economy, will directly contribute to
the local people not associated with the iron and steel company. For example, the local

people can sell peanuts and chestnuts to the tourists without transportation costs. The new

industry will increase more tax base, employment rate, and the land price 14

To conclude, unlike the centralized and the unilateral policy like UUR, the

partnership will be more local oriented and have more potential to be successful.

2. Local Setting

Rural Area Planning

Urban Planning is made in urban area only. In some sense, political power can

decide the future use of the non-planned area. Who shall be the target of the city council

members’ inﬂuence the rural area development?

 

" Lyons Thomas S. & Roger B. Hamlin. Creating and Economic Development Action Plan; A Guide for
Develoment Professionals. New York: PRAEGER 1991. pp. 8~14.

28

Traditional zoning has been criticized because of its static, parochial, low-quality
development and administrative problems15 . If the rural land is used relentlessly, then it is
even more difﬁcult to recover it because lots of the legal conﬂicts that may turn up.

To back up this idea, overall urban planning should be made locally. The current

urban planning boundary should be divided to be ﬁt for the long term development purpose.

Sector Plan is necessary

‘The planning of urban land uses in each municipality utilizes 4 basic zones
(residential, commercial, industrial, and open space-further divided into 12 subzones as of
present) and identical restrictions regardless of the size or character of each individual
municipality’ 16 .

Four functions of a land use planning program, Intelligence, Advance Plan-making,
Problem Solving and Managing Development, are being suggested17 . These functions
comprise the planning process comprehensively. It is important to understand that each sub

stage of the planning process needs participation. The participation can alleviate, even

though it needs lots of time and conﬂicts, the possibility of policy failure and can guarantee

 

‘5 Porter, Douglas R & Patrick L. Phillips & Terry J. Lassar. Flexible Zoning : How it works. Washington,
D.C.:the Urban Land Institute.l988. pp. 8-10.

16 Koppel, Bruce & D. Young Kim. ed. Land Policy Problems in East Asia; Toward New Choice_s_. Honolulu
: East West Center. 1993. p. 220.

17 Chapin, F.Stuart, Jr. & Edward Kaiser. Urban Land Use Planning. Urbana:University of Illinois Press.
1995. CH3.

29

effective implementation because policies are based on the citizen and for the citizen in this
democratic society.

The City of Kwangyang needs sector planning, which can be developed according
to the characteristics of each sector. The current urban planning does not include open space
including harbor parks even though the city has very good opportunity for the seashore.
Later, it may be difﬁcult for the city to secure harbor parks because once the seashore is

sold to the private developer, it will be difﬁcult to require.

Other Economic Incentives

Free trade zones can be suggested as a development alternative. The harbor will
bring value added to the city. Considering that the downtown area has little good affordable
housing, the rural area should be developed for residential use backing up to the connecting
road. New organizations like the Downtown Development Authority and regional planning
commission which can promote economic development A formation of Downtown
Development Authority can be suggested.

A large tax-exempt retail center can be provided in the rural area rather than in the
urban core to avoid the trafﬁc congestion and to not lose the customers going the Suncheon
area. Unlike the manufacturing industry, service can be more helpful for the current

residents who are not involved in the iron and steel company.

30

V. Conclusion

UUR can not be found to be totally unsuccessful, but this study tried to ﬁnd better
policy tools than the central oriented planning policies. Under the society in which politics
dominates the economic sector and the public controls the private sector, the equilibrimn of
the power is necessary for the better allocation of resources.

As the iron and steel company hurt the local sustainability, UUR can be harmful to
the localities. A community is delicately woven culturally and economically. Arbitrary
reorganization of the administrative structure and economic boundary can be detrimental to

the sustainable development of localities.

31

Bibliography

Antholt, Charles H. Getting Ready for the Twenﬂ-First CenM-Technical Change and
Institutional Modernization in Agg'culture. World Bank Technical Paper Number 217, Asia

Technical Department Series. Washington, DC. : The World Bank. 1994.

Blakely, Edward J. Planning Local Economic Development ; Theory and Practice.
Thousand Oaks : SAGE. 1994. pp. 54~55.

Boyer, Willam W. & Byeong Man Ahn. Rural Development in South Korea : a socio-
political analysis. LondonzAssociated University Press. p.33.

Chapin, F. Stuart, Jr. & Edward Kaiser. Urban Land Use Planning. Urbana : University of
Illinois Press. 1995. CH3.

Eder, Norman. Poisoned Prosperig : Development. Modernization. and the Environment in
South Korea. Armonk, New York : ME. Sharpe, 1996. p. 135.

Koppel, Bruce & D. Young Kim. ed. Land Policy Problems in East Asia; Toward New
Choices. Honolulu : East West Center. 1993. p.220.

Korten, D.C. & R. George Carner. Planning Frameworks for People-Centered
Development. West Hartford : Kumarian Press. 1984. p. 201. ‘

Lyons, Thomas S. & Roger B. Hamlin. Creating and Economic Development Action Plan;
A Guide for Development Professionals. New York : PRAEGER. 1991. pp.8~14.

Ministry of Home Affairs (Republic of Korea). The First Conference of the Assistance for
Local Self Rule. April, 1994.

Porter, Douglas R & Patrick L. Phillips & Terry J. Lassar. Flexible Zoning : How it works,
Washington, D.C. the Urban Land Institute. 1988. pp. 8~10.

Ro, Chung-hyun. Public Administration & the Korean TrasnsformationzConcepts, Policies
and Value Conﬂicts. West Hartfordeumarian Press. 1993. p. 66.

Saunier, Richard E. & Richard A. Meganck. ed. Conservation of Biodiversity a_n_cL the New
Regional Planning. Washington, D.C.:Departrnent of Regional Development and
Environment Executive Secretariat for Economic and Social Affairs General Secretariat,
Organizations of American States. p. 76.

32

The City of Kwangyang (Republic of Korea). The Comprehensive Plan. 1995. p.93.

The Joongang Daily (Korean Newspaper). Seoul. Oct. 27.1996.

33

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