The paper is to compare two villages in Songak-myeon, Asan, Cnungnam Province in Korea. It tries to show how the joint village project, which began with the support of the same external organization, produces different results depending on the internal conditions and circumstances of the village. From the end of the 1990s, Pyeongchon-ri and Sugok-ri started developing villages under the influence of the environmentally friendly farming movement. And subsequent supports were provided by local organizations for the development of the village. However, the village project in Sugok-ri, which focused on economic performance, later turned out to be a failure, and the residents changed to pursue activities for their own economic interests individually. On the other hand, In Pyeongchon-ri, the cooperation among villagers was strengthened in implementing support projects by similar external agencies. In addition, community ties and identity have been strengthened as problems have been solved through cooperation among residents in the process of promoting the village project. Nevertheless, projects undertaken in Pyeongchon-ri for the purpose of increasing economic performance was all failed. Through these findings, the paper asserts that the neo-endogenous development approach utilizing external support on the basis of internal cooperative network among villagers must be a very useful method for rural development in contemporary societies.

This study postulates a partial mediation model(study model I) and a whole mediation model(study model II) to examine the effect on endogenous rural development of local innovation capability strengthening in the local industry promotion project, the establishment of promotion system, and the revitalization of local economy. To accomplish study purposes, 169 response samples from 85 project groups which drive the local industry promotion project were verified using SPSS 12.0 and AMOS 5.0. The results showed that in the partial mediation model, the local innovation capability strengthening had a significantly positive effect on the establishment of promotion system, the establishment of promotion system had a significant effect on the revitalization of local economy, and the revitalization of local economy had a significant effect on the endogenous rural development, while the establishment of promotion system and local innovation capability strengthening didn't have effect on the endogenous rural development. In the whole mediation model, the local innovation capability strengthening had a significant effect on the revitalization of local economy, the establishment of promotion system on the revitalization of local economy, and the revitalization of local economy on the endogenous rural development. According to the verifications of study model I and II, the endogenous rural development is achieved after the revitalization of local economy through the establishment of promotion system and the local innovation capability strengthening. From these results, this study presents suggestions, limits of study and directions in the future study.