50 Years on From the Saemaul Undong Movement: A Long-term Economic & Environmental Analysis

South Korea (KR) boasts one of the fastest periods of economic growth ever recorded after
the Korean War (1953). It has progressed from a poverty-stricken nation to a mass exporter
of technology in under 50 years. During this half-century, KR has utilised seven 'Five-Year
Plans' used by the government to increase wealth and provide clear structural goals. The
first of the five-year plans was implemented in 1962 and sought to expand the energy
industry, with investment in growth-based infrastructure.
A fundamental aspect of the initial Five-Year Plan was the Saemaul Undong (pronounced
'say-mowl un-dong') movement (SMU) - a government initiative introduced by President Park
Chung-hee which contributed to the reduction in the developmental gap between rural and
urban areas. This was the basis for infrastructure for a more efficient agricultural industry. It
was introduced in 1970 and is known as the New Community Movement. The programme
involved the selection of 33,267 villages and provided them with 335 sacks of cement
(Pohang Municipal Government, 2017). The villages were then told to
develop their area in a collaborative and efficient way. Those villages that
showed the most promise (cooperated and demonstrated leadership) were given
a further 500 sacks of cement and a tonne of iron bars, a total of 16,600 villages
progressed to the next wave. The objective of this movement aimed to improve
rural infrastructure, promote organisation and community-based leadership, in
addition to instilling values of self-help and cooperation as driving forces for
development (Whang, 1981). The achievements seen in the SMU are now
praised and utilised by modern development policy-makers, making it an
appropriate scheme to study and assess its credibility in a modern context (So,
2018).
This thesis aims to highlight the long-term impact this development scheme has had on
these areas, identifying the eventual development differences between those villages who
were successful in the initial stage of the SMU and those who received no more support in
the scheme. This is with the aim to identify how this success could be emulated with current
New Community Movement schemes that KR is applying, to developing Asian and African
countries.
This study utilises regression discontinuity methods to examine the long-term economic and
environmental impacts comparing two elements of the SMU: First, comparing the long-term
development impact on those areas who did not receive the treatment (due to being too
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developed) compared with those who received it; the second comparison is between those
who received further treatment after the initial wave with those who did not progress.
The study aims to identify the long-term transferability of this scheme due to its current
implementation in African and Asian developing areas, whilst considering the modern
context. The study extends to the examination of how lags in development implementation
impact different areas relationship with environmental degradation. This will be conducted
by providing an interaction term, identifying how the timing of development impacts the
turning point on the Environmental Kuznets Curve, where economic growth no longer leads
to an increasing rate of environmental degradation.