The Korea Local Administration Review

Since its resumption in the early 1990s, despite promising progress especially
in an enhancement of local democratization, local autonomy in Korea has exhibitedproblems such as its overly process-focused paradigm, limited decentralization, localresponsibility, alienation of residents etc. In this vein, it can be characterized as suchimage as inversion of goal and means, perfunctory, conflictual, uniform, dependent,citizen-absent, and fragmented local autonomy. In this regard, this paper proposesseveral tasks for the next stage towards a mature development. Above all, the paradigmfor local autonomy should be transformed from a process-centered paradigm whichfocuses on decentralization and participation, towards a more goal-oriented onefocusing on the ultimate purpose of local autonomy: the enhancement of public happinessor wellbeing. In addition, several tasks for strengthening the foundation of localautonomy are necessary. These tasks include decentralization of functions and financialresources, strengthening local responsibility and functional integrity, diversificationof organizational forms, consolidation of metropolitan cities and provinces,empowerment of grassroots community, enactment of local autonomy at the loweradministrative strata(Eup, Myun), and cooperation between local governments. Finally,this paper calls for a more careful evaluation of the performance of Korean localautonomy that explicitly recognizes its shorter history compared to other liberaldemocratic countries.
□ Keywords: local autonomy, local autonomy paradigm, decentralization