The Korea Local Administration Review

The paper examines the performance of restructuring of local government system through various articles and papers. The consolidation of rural and urban areas in 1995 has been adopted in their regions during long years. However, The Performance of Jeju special self-governing province and Changwon city must be carefully evaluated because of the short duration of new systems. It is essential that the evaluation of new restructuring of local government system is temporarily concluded in terms of new stage of discussing about local government system.
The paper explores the performance of the restructuring of local government system in terms of adapting the consolidation of rural and urban area, the Jeju special self-governing province and Changwon city with preceding articles and papers.
Even though the results are temporary conclusion, the performance of the restructuring of local government system is generally poor. The origins of the poor performance are the deficiency of decentralized orientation about local government system and the over-focused orientation of efficiency and economy, instead of the democracy and characteristics of the local governments.
However, the temporary conclusion must be carefully insisted because nobody knows what performance might be accomplished in terms of long-term stage about the restructuring of local government system. In the future, it is requested for central government and various stake-holders to support and understand new consolidated local governments.