논문

Many countries of the world are still undergoing fundamental, if not revolutionary, changes in the tasks, structure, and objectives of their political and administrative institutions to reflect their changing values of respective public institutions and societies. Particularly, countries in East, Southeast, and Pacific Asia are in the process of administrative reform with somewhat a different degree--some did radically for the short term, others did moderately for the long term. Korea's local government administrative reforms of '98 and '99 have been quite radical, though every reform is not so distant from radical, compared with past reforms which have been conducted since the Park's regime.
Administrative reform can be many forms such as downsizing, privatizing, streamlining, decentralizing, and most recently, "reinventing government"(Osborne and Gaebler, 1992). While the forces for reform can be from the advanced information technology, global institutions such as international rating agencies, the OECD, the IMF, the World Bank, (Economist, May 6, 1986, pp. 62-64). Administrative reforms in Korea have been implemented throughout different regimes with different values. It seems that Korea's reform values have been economic development, efficiency, and pluralist democracy since the Park's regime. In this article, Korea's local government reforms of '98 and '99 are discussed and their values are posited to understand the administrative reform in a wider prospect and concludes with a general assessment.