In this knowledge based society, the debate on ICT has permanently shifted from ʻwhyʼ ICT for development, to ʻhowʼ comprehensive and holistic ICT policies can unleash human potential and enhance peopleʼs capabilities to improve their lives. Recognizing this untapped potential and development strategies incorporating ICT are being increasingly promoted and launched across the developing countries. While the potential advantages of ICT for development are enormous in developed countries, national policies of developing countries are yet to adequately reflect truly comprehensive and integrated strategies for harnessing and exploiting this potential. This paper presents an analysis of National ICT policy of Bangladesh. Through the examination of ICT policy, in particular in the field of agriculture and rural development and analysis of applied policies and strategies implemented in these area, this paper identifies challenges and opportunities which provides lessons for policy-makers and practitioners involved in the field. This analysis reveals that the policy is inadequate to impact positively on the agriculture and rural development of Bangladesh. The policy places little emphasis on the integration and infusion of ICT in the countryʼs agriculture and rural development. Policy implications and suggestions are offered to ensure maximum use of ICT potentials in the countryʼs agriculture and rural development.

Information and Communication Technology is now widely accepted by developing countries as a development tool in their efforts to alleviate poverty, enhance human development, and achieve Millennium Development Goals. Recognizing this untapped potential and development strategies incorporating ICT are being increasingly promoted and launched across the developing countries requiring a comprehensive ICT policy that plays a crucial rule, in particular, in the area of agriculture and rural development. While the potential advantages of ICT for development are enormous in developed countries, national policies of developing countries are yet to adequately reflect truly comprehensive and integrated strategies for harnessing and exploiting this potential. This paper tries to provide implication of ICT policy to the agriculture and rural development in developing countries, in particular through lessons learned from European Union (EU) IT policy. Through the examination of vital projects in the agriculture and rural development sectors and case study analysis of applied policies and strategies implemented in the European Union, this paper provides tangible examples and lessons for policy-makers and practitioners involved in the field. Hence, this study provides policy-makers the necessary tools, information and knowledge to facilitate the formulation and adoption of ICT policies and strategies in the agriculture and rural development sector.

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.

While the significance and need of landscape assessment for rural area has been recognised, an appropriate method has not been established due to the lack of statutory ground and policy status in Korea. For that reason, current studies have been limited to dominantly amenity field survey in specific rural areas and stayed in academic. In particular, the majority of research on rural landscape amenity or character assessment methodologies so far has been attempted with quantitative processes. Such quantitative methods produced sometimes, heavily overlapped, conflicted, and not much meaningful characterisation and classification. Moreover, such results could not only have been reflected to policy implementation but provide vision for rural areas. Therefore, this study offers new facets for landscape character assessment methods through the lens of practitioners’ qualitative survey methods and moreover, seek a policy implementation of newly developed methodologies. In order to carry out such analysis, the study employed a case study of England’s Landscape Character Assessment and survey location was Gateshead Council, Northeast of England. The study suggests meaningful qualitative landscape character assessment method and review of its policy implementation.

For rural landscape management to run in virtuous circle, the present study has paid attention to the roles and activities of local residents and administration, which are the main sectors of managing landscape. In this respect, this study is aimed to arrange the roles of local residents and administration for landscape management and propose the basic data necessary to develope evaluation index for effectiveness of rural landscape policy. Key findings and implications are as follows. First, literature reviews of 18 landscape management studies found 37 administrative roles and 7 roles of local residents. And those roles were classified into 3 factors by similar concept: 'local government support system', 'landscape management planning', and 'promoting the participation of residents'. Second, two Delphi surveys were conducted with landscape experts to verify the validity of those evaluation items by sector. Third, factor analysis was carried out to analyze the hierarchical structure of those evaluation items. 3 sub-factors were extracted from 'local government support system' sector; 2 sub-factors from the 'landscape management planning' sector; and 4 sub-factors from the 'promoting participation of residents' sector. Fourth, the hierarchy of those evaluation factors was divided into high and low classes and sub-indexes were structured to examine the relative importance of each class and assign a relative weight on each index. The most important sub-factors were turned out as follows: 'local residents' will to practice landscape activities (0.112)', 'local government budget for rural landscape management (0.088), and 'restriction on buildings by village regulation (0.068). It indicates the viewpoints of the landscape experts that local residents' voluntary participation in landscape activities and agreement of local residents on landscape management by village, e.g. village regulation, are preconditions for successful landscape management. In addition, it is significant for a local government to secure the budget of landscape management to support local residents support.

In this research, we reappraise saemaul project which is a leading role of rural development in a present perspectives and deduct social and political implications for rural development. For deducting problems and implications, related documents and previous researches are reviewed. Administration statistics are also gathered and analyzed for monitoring detailed projects propulsion progress and results. Samaul project is reappraised based on previous researches such as rural development, regional agricultural production system improvement, agricultural distribution system improvement, leader breeding, income improvement, and governance. Saemaul project has basically positive characteristics because of decreasing growth gap of urban and rural area by empowering cooperation of rural residents, instilling leadership, making village fund, constricting networks of government and urban area for administrative and financial assistant. In conclusion, there are implications that continues interests of most powerful sovereignty and comprehensive assistant of government are needed for overcome agricultural and rural crisis. Saemaulundong is a united and systematic approach in village level. In south korea where most of farms are small size, village or regional level assistants started in saemaulundong are still needed. In regional development, we can infer that will and ability development of participated residents are most basic and important factors for successful project propulsion in saemaul project.

According to the increase of rural experience, that is important in satisfying needs of green tourism and vitalizing rural economy to use closed school in rural area as experience facility. For using closed school as experience facility, political and institutional assistants are needed in effective equipments and stable operation based on multi-perspective approach and analysis. In this study, we try to evaluate green-tourism accessibility of rural experience facility remodeled from closed school considering regional population and spatial characteristics. In evaluating process, gravity potential model are adapted with considering group size of customer and distance-friction coefficient. Distance-friction coefficient is a function of user restriction which depend on possible activity in each experience facility. Green tourism accessibility of experience facility is calculated with summation of accessibility to each region, and we analyzed it as a group by closed school type and location with application in Chungcheongnam-do. We found a correlation between green tourism accessibility of rural closed school and their income.

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.

In the rural communities in less-favored areas (mainly hilly and mountainous areas) in Japan, the number of settlements which cannot maintain the community functions by themselves has been increasing because of the progress of depopulation and aging, so the necessity for achieving mutual supplementation of the community function by the settlement reorganization has been increasing. This paper consists of the following three points. 1) General view of settlement reorganization policy in Japan. 2) Case study of the T district in Japan. 3) Possibility of the settlement reorganization by the policy measures which obligate community members to work together. Main results are as follows. 1) There are several settlement reorganization policy measures, but many are still the model project stage, and not yet spread, so it is necessary to wait and see how these measures will develop. 2) The number of the residents of small-scale aging settlements who do not hope for the reorganization, nor feel the necessity of reorganization shall not be few. This will make great difficulty in the settlement reorganization process. 3) A local area activity promotion conference which derives from a former administrative unit like a former village has many functions to the settlement reorganization. 4) In the rural communities in less-favored areas, the policy measures which obligate community members to work together have widely spread. These are expected to play the supplemental role for the settlement reorganization. It is necessary to discuss among residents the activation plan and the future vision of the community, as well as to discuss the settlement reorganization.

The present study construct a new technique that can evaluate diverse rural policies, which have been applied to the rural development programs at the village level. The method incorporates spatial econometrics models with a decomposition method that has little been utilized before. We applies the technique to evaluate the rural development programs that have been carried out by the Korea Forest Service and. Korea Rural Development Agency. The technique proved to be quite useful in that the technique efficiently separate the direct effect caused by the government policy from the effect explained by the endowment effect such as regional or area characteristics, and residual effect that cannot be identified by the models. The present study concludes with suggesting more quantitative methods need to be developed to evaluate diverse government policy programs, which enables us to discern correct policy effects.

The purpose of this study is to propose the policies for preservation, formation and management of Korean rural landscape. For this, the current rural landscape policies are examined and recent legislative changes are also surveyed. The Landscape Law and the Comprehensive Countermeasures for Rural Landscape Improvement are the most significant changes. The proposed issues are as follows: 1. the establishment of rural landscape planning system, 2. the arrangement of the criteria and guideline for rural landscape planning and design, 3. the re-arrangement of the rural landscape index and landscape map, 4. the survey and management of the rural landscape amenity, 5. the revitalization of the landscape projects for rural area, 6. the pragmatic connection with other law and system(especially the Landscape Law), 7. the education and cultivation of the rural landscape expert groups.

According to the growing concerns of the public with efficiency and effects of regional policies, their assessment works have become an important issue. Up to now, several studies have been carried out on economic effects of policies using conventional cost/benefit analysis, while there have been few studies on assessment of amenity oriented policies. From the above consideration, this study tried to develop An Annual Expenditure Assessment Model (AEAM) for amenity-oriented policy-making in rural area. As a pre-work for model development, the hierarchical indices system for rural development and the classification system of expenditure were designed. Being based on high significant relationship between rural amenities and local government expenditure, a linear optimization model for maximization of regional amenity was constructed. Through a case study of Sunchang-gun, Chonbuk-province, the model applicability was ascertained.

The problem of outdated and surplus facility-items in existing Rural Living Environment Renewal Program(RLERP) makes this study focus on restricting the range of facility sorts for the purpose of coㅁins with the changing rural living environment. In the four aspects of plan establishment, project implementation, comprehensiveness and linkage between programs, this study made an analysis of the existing RLERP that has 4-stage hierarchy, namely, Gun(county), Myun(primary administrative district), village and project site level Firstly, Myun and upper level policy programs fulfill the comprehensiveness and planning aspects, but have defects in the implementation and linkage aspects. Secondly, the village level programs satisfies more or less the four condition, but give rise to the problems of equity between the project target village and the non-target, and of generalization of the planning method applying to a specific village. At last, project level programs, controlled by several ministries, have defects in comprehensiveness and linkage aspects, exposing the sectoralism of central government. Above all, the existing RLERP has so many facility items, which have led to inefficient investment till now. Therefore, it's necessary that the environmental facilities should be selected(simultaneously reduced ), referring to following 5 criteria. (1) Exception of facilities relating to agricultural production. (2) Confined to public facilities to be constructed by government support. (3) Common-use facilities located in small town and below level area. (4) Consideration of not only the present need but also the future need of rural residents. (5) Reflection of a regional difference of mountain, plane and suburban area. Just 13 kinds of living environmental facilities are finally selected as the result of the selecting work, which can be an new alternative for RLERP. Concludingly, the selected facility items should be integrated into a designated project site by the prepared plan in order to enhance the efficiency of RLERP, investment and also to satisfy the four analytic aspects mentioned above.

The objectives of the study are to identify the issues and problems encountered in Korea's current integrated rural regional development(IRRD) program and to suggest policy remedies to cope with them. Secondary data and materials ate mainly used for the study. Since the mid-1980s, rural settlement planning has been carried out in the Republic of Korea, In the planning process,'scale of economy'perspectives and settlement policy have been emphasized for increasing the efficiency of investment. During the 1990s, rural settlement and major village development projects have been implemented under the rural structure transformation programs. Agricultural structure adjustment projects for land consolidation and sizable farming have been separated from the rural settlement and mojor village development projects. Based on the evaluative analysis for the rural structure transformation policy and program, some problematic issues were raised as follows: (a) lack of integrative control function in the program'(b) weak linkage between living environment improvement and agricultural development projects: and (c) lack of comprehensive village development planning and implementation system. The policy issues to solve the problems were suggested as follows: (a) adoption of bottom-up approach in new IRRD planning and project system : (b) projection of comprehensive development planning and project at the village level; and (c) introduction of new regional agriculture development projects such as direct payment system for farming in less favorable areas and organic farming.