The Korea Local Administration Review

This paper is to analyze actual states of committees of local government inJapan and Korea with a comparative approach and to suggest recommendationsthrough research implications. Several key findings are as follows. First,governmental committees in both countries are established by by-laws of localgovernments which are based on Local Autonomy Act and each statutoryregulations. Second, committees of local governments in Korea are mainlyinstalled by statutory ordinance, those in Japan are chiefly created by by-laws.Third, Korean local governments have relatively many committees regardinggeneral public administration and land planning, but Japanese ones operatescommittees on the issues of everyday life of local residents. Fourth, localgovernments in both countries have more deliberative and adjudicativecommittees than advisory ones. Fifth, committees in Korean local governmentshave more members than Japanese ones in terms of their composition.Finally, most committees in both nations hold less than one session a year,and ratio of those committees are higher in Korea than in Japan. This studyrecommends that Korean local governments need to improve through measuresof abolishing committees which are sleeping or not reaching goals. In Japan,governmental committees in local governments have been invalidated orintegrated in cases that original goals are accomplished, necessities arecritically reduced, functions are inactive, alternatives are able to be introduced,and so on. Korean central and local governments are necessary to improvelegal framework to encourage efficiency and effectiveness in operating andmaintaining various types of committees of local governments. In particular, it isnecessary to stimulate to install and operate everyday-life-related committeesrather than ones on general public administration and land planning which aremainly based on laws and ordinances in a national level.
□ Keywords: committee, local government, comparison of Japan and Kore