The Korea Local Administration Review

In Korea there have been increasing warning signs of a demographic cliff asserted by recent demographic and economic studies. The so-called “cliff” is normally believed to lead unprecedented impacts to the national economy such as consumption and labor drops. The cliff is furthermore regarded as a trigger for local extinction that implies the disappearance of rural localities that eventually causes the decline of central cities. It is thus urgent that the central government and local authorities in Korea prudently discuss how and what to respond against low fertility and longevity.This paper aims at providing a rich discussion of and helping central and local administrators to find an appropriate direction and instruments of local development policy toward prosperity under low fertility and aging societies in Korea. The author reviews the case of “Local Abenomics” and “Regional Rehabilitation Strategy” in Japan, and also argues that people should consider local development policy to be driven centrally with a strong political leadership, applied locally with relevance to local characteristics, and operated collaboratively with policies of other aims, and that building polycentric governance systems of localities seems to be necessary to enhance local and community resilience in a New-Normal time such as the phenomenon of low fertility and aging society in Korea.   □ Keywords: low fertility, aging society, demographic cliff, local development policy, resurrection of local economies, local resilience