Administrative Decentralization: A Case Study in The South Korean Military Government

Abstract

A month following the military coup of May 16, 1961, and frequently thereafter the intention of the top officials of the central government of Korea, who were in military uniform, to decentralize certain functions to the local governments appeared in the Korean newspapers and also in the journal of the Ministry of Home Affairs. The program of administrative decentralization thus started on a relatively large scale and this program was proclaimed as a major policy of the Korean government. To the writer this move in teh Korean government was extremely interesting in view of the necessity for it and more particularly because of the following. For decentralization to succeed, a concomitant change in attitudes toward democratic behavior or the preexistence of such a behavior is necessary. However, to find a military government which is supposedly more preoccupied with the practice of a strong chainn of command, and an order-and-command orientation of supervision to initiate such a large-scale program of administrative decentralization, was paradoxical, and the writer was very dubious of the intention for the decentralization program and of the possible success of it. Because of such curiosity the writer started to follow the program.