The purpose of this study is to figure out the current condition of local governments (Si or Gun) to implement rural development policy in the face of the central government’s drive for increasing devolution. Since late 1990s or early 2000s when scope of rural policy began to expand quantitatively, there has been considerable increase in rural residents’ participation into community projects as a whole. Nevertheless, there exists regional differentiation in local governments’ efforts to systematically support rural development projects (CRDP: Comprehensive Rural Development Programme) and community activities by setting up intermediary organizations or hiring rural development professionals in a public office. According to this survey on local government officials, regions that have made such efforts to support rural policy at a local level, show more advanced level of institutional capacity than other regions in local decision making process for CRDP, role of strategic rural developmental plans, vitality of community actors, etc. In the era of increasing devolution, these differences can be expected to result in diverging performances of each area in regionalized rural policy. The central government needs to introduce EU’s LEADER-type rural development programmes to support community acitivities by various local actors and at the same time promote local governance building for rural policy, adopting institutional rewarding system such as rural planning contract.

The study was intended to identify the effect of the rural development projects (comprehensive improvement of the seats of Eup and Myeon and regional unit comprehensive development projects) on the quality of life in rural areas against local residents living in areas subject to those projects by means of structural equation modeling based on covariance structure analysis. The result indicated that perception factors affecting the quality of life for residents in rural areas by the projects included ‘improvement in spatial environment’, ‘increase in vitality of rural areas’, and ‘promotion of community activities.’ It was also suggested that ‘improvement in spatial environment’ and ‘increase in vitality of rural areas’ have significantly positive effect on the quality of life for residents in rural areas while the former has relatively higher correlation. In comparison between comprehensive improvement of the seats of Eup and Myeon and regional unit comprehensive development projects, it was analyzed that all the perception factors of the comprehensive improvement of the seats of Eup and Myeon have effect on the quality of life for residents in rural areas indicating that comprehensive improvement of the seats of Eup and Myeon is more effective than regional unit comprehensive development projects in promoting the community activities. It means that existing rural development projects have been promoted to improve spatial environment rather than improving the quality of life for residents in rural areas. Thus, it is considered that the rural development projects in future should seek for a sense of community so that they can induce voluntary participation by local residents.

This study is intended to prepare an revitalization plan of region where rural development project is completed through an analysis of the actual condition of facility operation and maintenance in the region where the project is completed. The results of survey of actual condition of facility operation in the region where rural development project was completed showed that the facilities were not self-sufficient in terms of operation and maintenance cost. Therefore, a prerequisite to the revitalization of region where the project is completed is to prepare an alternative plan for increasing the efficiency and applicability of currently already prepared facilities. Second, a project operation organization system should be streamlined and the competency of operation personnel should continue to be strengthened. Third, it is necessary to prepare a support system and establish cooperation networks for increasing the extensibility of project and continuing to induce community revitalization in the region where the project is completed in the future.

The existing standard cost of project management of empowerment sector in general rural development project has problems with standard cost system without considering characteristics of empowerment project and unclear division of works. These problems are a lot of trouble to fulfill the project. Thus, it needs an arrangement of standard cost considering detailed characteristics of project management in the empowerment sector. The contents and results of this study can be summarized as follows. 1) To set accurate standard cost, we carried out three-step processes, such as elicitation of standard works, calculation of workload and determination of standard cost. (1) In an investigation of 30 rural area dividing 8 parts about an workload of empowerment project, an average workload is 1,499 hours. (2) Based on this results, the standard cost is calculated at 15% of project cost in over 600 million won, at 28.75% of project cost in under 500 million won, by standards of empowerment project cost. 2) It set the responsibility management cost to 15% of empowerment project cost considering existing awareness, workload and work professionalism of project management. Based on the results, It suggested the practical use as basis for efficient management of the future empowerment projects. To achieve this, It needs to promote maximizing results on the whole project through the legalization processes including amendment of existing regulations.