Abstract
The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of the rural community planning focusing on the stepwise empowerment system in Jinan-gun, Jeollabuk-do province. This paper also tries to examine how this system affect the awareness for community planning and empowerment of the residents. The satisfaction of the people who join this program were also investigated. The subjects of the research were divided into two groups. Group A consisted of the people who join the system from the first stage, and group B consisted of the people who joined the fourth stage directly. The differences of the recognition, capability changes and satisfaction between two groups were compared and analyzed by questionnaires. The results of this research can be summarized as follows. The first, group A recognized the community planning system in Jinan-gun more positively than group B. They thought that it's very useful and beneficial for their community and this system should be continued further. The second, group A considered that they achieved bigger advancement in community design capabilities in terms of personal, relational and social aspects than group B. In addition, group A also showed higher satisfaction for rural community planning than group B. Based on the results, alternatives for rural community planning were drawn as follows. The first, considering that group A showed more positive responses, starting from the first stage is more stable way to succeed in rural community planning. Which means the critical condition of community design is not the community business but the improving the public awareness and community mind. The second, it's considered that the number of participation is proportional to the advancement of capability in community project, so improving residents' opportunity to participation in community design might be effective. The third, community leader is another critical condition. It is needed to pay more attention to the education for the rural community leader with good experience and capability of community affairs.