On The Saemaul Undong In South Korea

From 1970s to 1980s,Korea launched the Saemaul Movement in the lead of President Park ChungHee, which changed Korea's binary economic structure between worker-peasant and urban-rural, promoted the coordinated development of worker-peasant and urban-rural and social harmonious progress, and changed the peasants'spiritual outlook fundamentally. It can be said that the Seamaul Movement in 1970s was not only a spiritual baptism, but also laid the foundation for Korea's modernization in many fields such as economy, democracy and education. During the movement, Korean government led by President Park ChungHee, played a vital role.According to the purpose of this dissertation, combining the historical process of Korea's Seamaul Movement, the text can be divided into five parts. The first part introduces the background of the Saemaul Movement in three aspects:Politically, Park ChungHee military government had been established, which laied the foundation for the government playing the leading role; Economically, due to the smooth proceed of the two Five-Year Plans, some wealth had been accumulated, which was necessary to the movement; Culturally, Korean peasants'lazy psychology needed to be overcomed in urge. The second part combs the historical process of Korea's Seamaul Movement in time order, which can be divided into four stages, as project screening, the first phase of the preliminary completing, the second phase of further deepening, expansion and decline, respectively. Also, the specific case of every stage's project is described briefly. The third part analyzes the role of the government during the movement. Specifically, Park ChungHee was not only the initiator and guide, but also the supporter and pusher, as well as supervisor to the movement. During the whole movement, the leading of Park ChungeHee government was strong and powerful, the effect of which was quite sound. In the forth part, according to Hayek's "Knowledge Theory" system, which is that knowledge has the nature of spatiotemporalily, subjectivity and dispersity. We preliminarily define the government function, and under the theoretical guidance of which, we analyses both positive and negative roles of the government during the movement. The positive roles of government included that, firstly, the village underwent tremendous change in appearance, secondly, the level of the rural economy was greatly improved, and most importantly, the spiritual outlook of the peasants was changed fundamentally. At the same time, because Park ChungeHee goverment could not deal with the lack in Knowledge Theory, many negative influences also existed, which are discussed in two aspects, namely decision making and decision implementation. The last part discusses the reference sense to Chinese new rural construction and resolution of rural issues, including increasing government support, developing compound agriculture, introducing competitive mechanism, making a full use of market mechanism, stimulating peasants'consciousness, fostering spirit ethics of cooperation, self-reliance and hard working, and making psychological preparation for the long and arduous new rural construction.There are many similarities between Korea's Saemaul Movement and Chinese new rural construction, such as the similar background, main role of the government, the nature of rural economic and livelihood construction following the countries industrialization and urbanization, and the objectives of narrowing the gap between urban and rural as well as the common development of the whole country.