Local Government Function

The Functional Division

The Local Autonomy Act lists the functions of the provinces and metropolitan city governments and the basic level governments, and those that remain in the prerogative of the central government.

These are of two types; those shared between different tiers of local governments, and those shared between central and sub-national governments. It shows the close connection with the implementation of social (health, education, social assistance) or environmental policies. The sharing is intended so that each level is granted part of responsibility in a given field or in a given dimension. Article 11 of the Act specifies the responsibilities of the central government as follows: first, functions belong to the national sovereignty, e.g., diplomacy, defense, judicial system, tax administration, etc.; second, those necessarily conducted by the nationally-uniformed means, price-policy, finance-policy, export-policy, etc.; and the responsibilities that require national standard and coordination, labor standard, weight and measurement system, and the like. The tasks of the metropolitan and provincial governments are characterized by the intermediary functions which are : a. local affairs affecting more than two local governments’ jurisdiction; b. affairs requiring uniformity within the provincial and metropolitan areas; c. affairs being necessarily consistent with some unit of upper-level local government; d. affairs related to the intermunicipal coordination between the central government and the basic-level local governments within the jurisdiction; e. affairs managed by the principle of subsidiarity on behalf of the lower level local governments; f. affairs appropriate to the regional government competences in consideration of the economy of scale; for example, in the fields of amenities, local public facilities jointly managed by more than two local governments. The Korean constitution does not give autonomous and general decisionmaking authority to sub-national governments. The central government departments hold substantial prerogative regarding the distribution of competences. The amount of autonomy and freedom enjoyed by provincial and local governments in conducting their own policies depends, according to the Local Autonomy Act, on the power conferred on them by the Statutes, or Presidential Decree.