부산대학교 도서관

By taking the case of ‘the urban regeneration activist training programme’ of Seoul, this paper examines the changing features of the state-civil society relation and its implication for urban regeneration policy in Korea. Seoul Metropolitan Government launched the training programme aimed at nurturing ‘urban regeneration activists’ in 2015, and allocated the activists in designated areas as tools for facilitating citizen participation. Based on analysis of the programme contents and in-depth interviews with trainers and trainees, we find that the role of activists is more focused on effective policy implementation than advocacy of citizen’s interest. The metropolitan government has constructed ‘participating citizen’ to implement the citizen-oriented urban regeneration scheme in a context where civil society is too weak to produce participating actors, and the activists are key tools for doing this job. Consequently, the recent rise of the collaborative relation between government and civil society in Korea cannot be understood as a sign of the growth of civil society. Even though government and civil society are increasingly penetrating into each other, this is far from an equal partnership. In this new dynamics, government become sophisticated and delicate in its manner of delivering policies, whilst civil society is newly constructed in alliance with pre-given policy schemes.