A Study on the Mountain Village Income Increase Project : Focused on the Mountain Village Development Projects of Gyeonggi Province in Korea

Abstract

Since the Mountain Village Development Projects (MVDPs) initiated in 1995 by the Korean government for the purpose of developing poor mountain villages, 138 mountain villages have been built as of 2006, and 450 more mountain villages are expected to be constructed during the period of the Mountain Village Promotion Plan Plan (2008~2017). However, MVDPs implemented so far have shown a variety of challenges such as inactive participation of local communities and failure of taking into consideration regional characteristics when promoting the projects. Therefore, this study examined basic production facilities and the operation, focusing on community leaders and residents in six mountain villages in Gyeonggi Province, Korea, where the MVDPs were complete. As a result, it was found that it is necessary to provide continuous technical guidance and financial assistance for the villages of which MVDPs had been completed, explore strategies to promote active participation of the leaders and sharpen their leadership, and select types of projects after thorough examination by regional experts on the basis of regional characteristics to induce active participation of residents in the basic production facilities