논문

Historically Korea has kept an extremely centralized system of governance. The
central government monopolized politico-administrative power and subordinated
all local governments so that both diversity and autonomy of local communities
became weakened and the whole country uniformed literally. High degree of
centralization in Korea’s governing system has further strengthened during the
rapid economic development period from the 1960s through the 1980s.

Throughout the 1980s, however, Korean began to demand autonomy to the
localities as a way of democratizing the country. What they wanted was to
introduce a so-called ‘grass-roots democracy’ by reviving the system of local
self-government which was ended abruptly by the military coup in 1961. After a
long tug-of-war among political elites, the local council election was held again
in 1991 and the chief executives of local government began to be elected by direct vote since 1995.

The current Kim Dae-Jung government vowed to increase the level of
decentralization when it started at the end of 1997. Among other efforts to prove

its commitment for a full-fledged system of local autonomy, it enacted a special
law to accelerate the decentralization in 1999. And as required by the law, the
Presidential Committee of Promoting Devolution (a.k.a. PCPD) was established
so that lots of administrative functions delivered by central government could be
devolved to local authorities.

This paper reviews the progresses of Kim Dae-Jung government’s
decentralization efforts with a special focus on the PCPD activities since its
establishment in late 1999. It analyzes critically the actual performance of PCPD in
terms of the changes in assignment of functions between different levels of
government and draws an implication for its future prospects.