• Authors: Suk-Ki Kong, Hyun-Chin Lim
• Publication Date: June / 2020
• Publisher: Zininzin

Villages Have the Answer: Recovering the Region in Korean Society has been published, a study that suggests ‘villages’ as an embodiment of ‘social model of interested parties’ which is a new sustainable vision of social development that substitutes the loss of Utopian energy which led to the collapse of communism and crisis of welfare states. Suk-Ki Kong and Hyun-Chin Lim, the two authors of this book, have postulated that the ‘recovery of villages’ is an important factor in the sustainable development of Korean society based on their long social scientific research on global civil society and NGOs, and summarized their decade-long research on Korean rural and urban realities in this book.

Villages Have the Answer: Recovering the Region in Korean Society consists of an introduction that suggests the basic concepts of recovering regional communities oriented toward ‘light community’ centering around the ‘social model of interested parties’, the main body of two sections, and a conclusion that summarizes the prospects and realities of villages as a sustainable future. Section 1 ‘Keywords for Harmony and Cooperation of Regional Communities’ explains the major elements of perseverance, innovation, governance, communication, and engagement, each in a separate chapter with concept, history and case studies. Section 2 ‘Experiment and Task of Village Communities’ analyzes six tasks such as fair trade and shared economy, energy conversion and regional community, and extinction of region and decentralization in three chapters. While section 1 presents cases that reveal the concept of a ‘light community’, section 2 develops with challenges to regional community and cases of overcoming those tasks.

Villages Have the Answer: Recovering the Region in Korean Society is a valuable achievement of two authors who have transcended a generation gap and collaborated for five years from 2015 to 2019 on literature review, field research in regional sites and interview research related to various regional communities at home and abroad. In Korea, field research on seven districts and 24 regions as well as interviews on over 30 people were conducted, and overseas field study and interviews were conducted in Tokyo, Kyoto, Miyazaki in Japan, London in the UK, Bologna and Trentino in Italy, and Bilbao, Spain.

Villages Have the Answer: Recovering the Region in Korean Society has been published as the 29th book in the SNU Asian Studies in a Global Context Series. Each chapter has been published in a series on JoongAng Monthly from March to September 2017.

To civil activists and policymakers who seek the recovery of new ‘communities’ under the shades of the aging rural population and urban individualization, the suggested concept of ‘light community’ and abundant case studies based on the ‘social model of interested parties’ in Villages Have the Answer: Recovering the Region in Korean Society will present new visions and inspirations.