논문

This study is an attempt to respond to the question of what kind of additional measures to local autonomy are needed in order to actively materialize localization. Local governments can be viewed as the wheels of national development and could be great contributors to regional development and the advancement of local welfare. So far, localization in Korea has been promoted in a public administration-oriented perspective. Accordingly, Korean local autonomy could not overcome its own limits because it was mainly focused on democratization and decentralization in the public administration arena. Full-scale local autonomy will only fully blossom when democratization of the central government's power is established through activation of local politics and when locality is independent from central politics. In order to improve these kinds of problems in localization, it is necessary to review the roadblocks experienced in localization at present and to suggest possible strategies for the promotion of localization currently taking place in Korea in terms of a political science perspective. Studies of Korean "local" politics have been underdeveloped in a comparative perspective. Accordingly, this paper proposes to establish new classes such as "local politics" and "local governments" at the colleage level or to restructure existing political science classes to include more components of local politics. Nonetheless, the lists of possible suggestions in this paper are not comprehensive. Instead, the more realistic purpose of this paper is to activate discussions on Korean local autonomy in a holistic view and to propose to develope possible long-term strategies for advancement of overall Korean politics.