Constructing Local Government System for the Era of Unification
The Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom and the Korea Research Institute for Local Administration (KRILA) recently co-organized the international conference entitled “Constructing Local Government System for the Era of Unification". As the main title says, the focus of the conference was to discuss and elaborate on what should/could be done at the local government level to facilitate the unification process and also to achieve a successful social integration after the unification in the Korean Peninsula.
Before the main sessions, Mr. Siegfried Herzog, Regional Director for the FNF South and East Asia delivered congratulatory remarks on behalf of FNF, mentioning Korea could draw lessons from the mistakes and success stories made by Germany during the unification process.
During the conference, overseas experts from Germany and Vietnam shared with more than 200 participants the experiences in their respective countries, whose history underwent a national division and later unification. A roadmap to build the local administrative system for Korean unification was also proposed by the Korean expert.
A special interest was given to Mr. Kai Abruszat, the Member of the State Parliament of the North Rhine-Westphalia, who presented on how Germany managed to unify its administrative system of the cities and municipalities in the East and West Germany after the unification. He pointed out that the unifying the two systems was one of the most important tasks during the unification process. Indeed, the local governments played a major role for that. He emphasized that an essential prerequisite for the success of administrative reforms were the existing channels of communication that were in place well in advance before the unification through the German-German twining between municipalities. Without the intensive inter-municipal exchange and the support of the national municipal associations, the creation of local administrative in the former East Germany would not have succeeded or certainly not this fast.
