Key Factors to Successful Community Development: The Korean Experience

The Saemaul Undong of the Republic of Korea has been world-widely recognized as a successful model of rural community development. The Saemaul Undong was a pure Korean way of community development program which was initiated by the political will of the top national leadership in order to escape from poverty. There are several key factors to the success of the Saemaul Undong. First, the national government's guidance and support for the movement played a very important role in the whole period of the movement. Second, there was a wide range of people's participation in the implementation process. Third, the Saemaul Undong could make a big success by nurturing community leadership which was selected by rural residents themselves. Finally, as a movement for the spiritual reform, the Saemaul Undong imbued the people with the spirits of diligence, the self-reliance, and cooperation.

Is prohibiting land reallocation enough to promote development of farmland rental markets in China?

Prohibiting land reallocation improves tenure security, but it remains unclear whether this sufficiently facilitates the development of farmland rental markets in China. To fill this gap, we investigate how farmland rental activities are influenced by full-scale land reallocation (FSLR) and partial land reallocation (PLR), which differ in scale and imposition. Employing the instrumental-variables and the difference-in-differences approaches, we find that PLR substitutes relation-specific contracting in the markets, while FSLR complements arms-length contracting. The different impacts are attributable to the difference in imposition rather than scale. These findings suggest the need for further reforms.