Saemaul Undong Archives : Saemaul Undong>Methods of Operation

Saemaul Undong

Methods of Operation

Methods of Operation

The core task in promoting the SU movement during its initial stages was to encourage the voluntary participation of villagers. To that end, the government pushed the movement forward under the principle of preferential support to outstanding villages and succeeded in achieving tangible outcomes such as community participation,rural development and increase in income through community reinvestment projects and Saemaul Undong Training.

The “First Support to Better Villages” Principle

In 1970, the first year of the SU movement, the government supplied 335 sacks of cement at no charge to 33,267 villages nationwide under the condition of promoting common village projects. However, only half of them – i.e. 16,600 villages – managed to achieve positive results, while the remaining 16,667 villages without accomplishments did not receive any government support the following year. During the second year of the SU movement, even those villages that had failed the first year began participating in Saemaul projects again after witnessing the kinds of benefits given to neighboring villages that had been successful the previous year. Some villages promoted Saemaul projects by mobilizing their own funds.

It was the Saemaul Undong Training that enabled the SU movement to move beyond its village-based state and expand into a nationwide movement participated in by public officials, local community leaders and academia. The Saemaul Leaders Training Institute, formerly named the Exemplary Farms Training Institute, instilled a “can do” spirit and yielded practical achievements by teaching the Saemaul spirit, conducting life and practice education, undertaking session discussions and resolutions for problem-solving.

In the third year of the SU movement, the government came up with community reinvestment projects, a policy to facilitate the development of the rural economy by encouraging villagers to save and reinvest those savings in future income projects, thereby creating a virtuous cycle of saving and investment. By promoting community reinvestment projects, the government provided both financial and technical support for village development projects and encouraged villagers to save a certain part of their wages in the village fund.