The Korea Local Administration Review

This paper is to study the recognition changes of the satisfaction and obstacle of local assembly activities before and after the improvement of the stipend system for members of local assembly in order to verify the effect of the improvement of local assembly members' stipend system, with survey to residents, local governmental officials and local legislators. The satisfaction of local assembly activities was investigated with the whole satisfaction degree, inside activities, relations with residents, local governmental relations, and so on. And the obstacles of it were surveyed with institutional factors, behavioral factors, and specific factors of legislature activities.
On the consequence of investigation, residents group and local governmental officials group generally had low degrees of the satisfaction, and lower ones after the improvement of the stipend system. And local legislator group had the same degrees before and after the improvement of the system. The worst obstacle is the lack of legislators' expertness in all three groups. The legislators mainly presented institutional problems; however, residents group and the officials group pointed legislators' behaviors problems. For the improvement of these problems, this paper proposes the following: 1) increasing the rewards of local legislators up to the proper level, 2) reforming the election system of local legislators, 3) establishing suspension system for local legislator, and 4) founding legislature supporters, civil legislature forum, and legislature governance.