Korea's Rural Development Characteristics and the Implications to Vietnam

한국의 농촌개발 경험이 베트남에 주는 시사점

Korea is becoming a model country for the developing countries' agricultural and rural development. Drawing implications for Vietnam from Korea's experiences can help make development strategies and policies for other developing countries including North Korea as well as for Vietnam itself. Vietnam is facing an inefficiency in agricultural production and the gap between urban and rural growth has been widening. Farm sizes per household are small and farmlands are scattered. Diversification in rural industry is very restricted. To attack these problems, investment is urgently needed for rural infrastructure building as well as agricultural structure adjustment. In the process of rural development, there have been also encountered such problems as financial procurement, community's spontaneous participation, manpower development for adjusting to industrial structural change. Korea's experiences may be helpful for establishing rural development strategies and policies in Vietnam. Benchmark scopes can go beyond Saemaul Undong in 1970s. Korea's pre- and post-Saemaul Undong era as well as the Saemaul Undong era can be referred. In the wake of globalization, Vietnam has not only experienced compressed rapid economic growth but also encountered policy tasks to eradicate poverty, to realize self-reliance and income increase, and to lessen urban-rural development gap, at the same time. Korea's experiences show that priority needs to be put on the establishment of national and rural development strategies based on Vietnam-specific conditions, utilization of village's resources including community tradition and social capital, fund raising for rural development, farmland development and mobilization, production and living infrastructure building, technology transfer for farmers and vocational training for new job seekers.