earticle

영어

A series of policy initiatives has been implemented to meet the basic needs of rural people and improve their quality of lives. Despite of such policy efforts, there still exist much disparity in public services provision between Urban and Rural Korea, as well as between rural areas of Korea and the advanced countries, which is still to be solved by Korean rural policy-makers. To top it off, it has been taken up that the established rural policy approaches need to be renewed to steer policy directions in rural development as a whole, and manage the objects of rural policy initiatives in detail, as well. Recently, introducing rural services standard is being considered as one of such new approaches in rural policy. This article proposes in rudimentary level of discussion Korean Rural Services Standard be introduced. Such a proposition is based on the fact that it is very important to set up the national minimum levels for provisions of certain core public services, so the government can make more accurate investment plans for rural development, and manage and supervise the outcomes of the policy investments. First, from the review of the preceding studies, we derive some common items as potential public services to be given national minimum levels of provision. Second, through data analysis of the common service items, we analyze the conditions of public services provision of rural areas in Korea. Third, we check up the problems concerned with current policy ways of public service provision. Fourth and lastly, we propose introducing Korean Rural Services Standard.