• Survey Research
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.75-101
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• 2005

This study introduces and analyzes the data from Directory of Korean NGOs, which was published in 1997 and again in 200, to conduct a quantitative research on the growth of civic organization in South Korea. This paper focus on the information on membership size and founding year which are essential indicators for the growth of organizations. Missing rates on those two indicators are checked to evaluate the quality of data. We examine the changes in membership size between the two time periods, 1996 and 1999. It shows that there is a considerable decrease in the membership size for civic and advocary organizations that are oriented to national issues. It suggests the competition among the organizations over limited resources, which is consistent with an assumption of ecological theory of organization on non-linear growth pattern. Using founding year data from 1945 to 1996, we estimate pseudo growth curves of civic organizations based on logistic growth curve model to discuss different growth patterns of organizations across areas of activities.