• The Journal of Learner-Centered Curriculum and Instruction (JLCCI)
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.35-74
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• 2019

The relationship of the local unit village organizations and the commons has a very complicated character. In the rural areas of Korea, there are still many village organizations that were made during the period of Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945) and the era of the Park Chung-hee's military government rule (the early 1960s). First of all, there is a development committee which were made at the time of Park's military administration. The committee has several subordinate organizations, such as senior citizens association, youth association, women's association which are involved in the decision making structure of the community. Those organizations are related indirectly with commons, so they exercise their influence over the management and disposal of commons of the community. In each village, there are some organizations to manage commons like union of ranches, forest GYE (*It's like 'association'), fishing village GYE. In many cases, those members were matched up with the committee's and were organized at the colonial period and the period of the military regime. However, organizations linked to commons have been keeping rules and norms of resource management and have been gaining a relative autonomy for a long time before organizing them in the top-down ways. The relationship between local unit village organizations and the commons has been defined by the development paradigm. The development committees, and senior citizens association and youth association have accepted the idea of modernizing rural areas. The modernized time, they have sold the village's land to external capital. But they also took the part of a role to preserve the village's commons through the managing the asset owned by the village at times. So in some villages, the organizations play a leading role to sell a asset of the village, and in another villages, the organizations take a core role not to sell it. The purpose of this report is to explain the complex activities for the using and managing the commons of local unit villages in Jeju island which is called 'Commons Island' due to hold many commons in South Korea. Through this research, we expect to be able to provide more rich discussion on how the village's internal cultural and organizational characteristics work with commons recognition and practice triggered by changes in external conditions.