A Study on the Regional Diversity of Rural Communities : a Comparative Study on Two Rural Communities

농촌 커뮤니티의 지역별 다양성에 관한 연구 -아산시와 청도군 농촌마을 사례-

This study ultimately aims at suggesting the improvements for community development policy in Korea. In order to do so, this carried out field surveys for two rural villages and tried to find out the current institutional situation of rural villages. Reviewing conceptual debates on rural, village, community and organisation theory, it sets up a typology of four groups as follows: voluntary expressive group, involuntary expressive group, voluntary instrumental group, and involuntary instrumental group. Based on this typology, this study conducted field surveys for two rural villages; Pyeongchon-Ri in Chungnam and Noolmi-Ri in Kyoungbuk. From the analysis on the field surveys, it finds some features on Korean rural groups. First, the residents in rural villages have very strong identity for their living areas. Second, the number of rural groups are tend to decrease recently. Third, the actions of instrumental groups are determined by the organisations operating nearby. Fourth, the function of groups within rural villages only carry out some village festivals, but other friendly relationship among rural residents are expanded out to wider areas called Myeon. As a result, this study suggests that we should recognize the diversity in rural communities in Korea and deals with them in different ways of public policies.