Currently, the global community suffers from deteriorating eco-system and various natural disasters caused by the global warming. Such sufferings are neither short-term nor temporary but sustainable and wide spread, blowing a serious disaster to manki...
Currently, the global community suffers from deteriorating eco-system and various natural disasters caused by the global warming. Such sufferings are neither short-term nor temporary but sustainable and wide spread, blowing a serious disaster to mankind. Meanwhile, our continued efforts to solve such problems through the positive and sustainable development scheme have not much been effective.
Now, there are signs that the natural disasters occurring in every corner of the world are occurring in Korea, making us uneasy. Such various natural disasters may well be equated with the revolt of the eco-system due to our negligence of the environment. Meanwhile, Korea has pursued reckless economic development policies, destroying her eco-system for economic growth only.
Since mid-1990, Yangpyeong-gun has endeavored to protect its environment and pursue a sustainable development through the environmental-friendly agriculture. Whether encouraged externally or internally, Yangpyeong-gun adminstration and people have joined hands to pursue the environmental-friendly agriculture continuously only to be designated as 'environmental-friendly agricultural zone.' Now, most of the Korean people is reminded of the clean air and water, namely the environmental-friendly images, when they hear about the county.
Nevertheless, Yangpyeong-gun is obliged to take advantage of such environmental-friendly agriculture as the engine of power for the green growth to upgrade the agriculture-based economy to a county-wide economic development through activation of the service or the tertiary industry. In addition, as farmers worry about their life due to opening of the agricultural markets or the conclusion of FTA, it is necessary to conduct a more in-depth research into the directions for our agriculture and farming villages.
Now, the green growth is being established as a grand historical current. Yangpyeong-gun administration tries to graft the concept of the green growth onto the environmental-friendly agriculture and the agricultural tourism.
The purpose of this study was to review the efforts made by Yangpyeong-gun for the green growth and explore the ways to develop its agricultural economy. For this purpose, the researcher attempted to find the ways to maximize the various advantages of Yangpyeong-gun and improve its people's life quality.
To this end, the researcher surveyed the village leaders and administrative officials as well as the tourists who had experienced the agricultural sight-seeing to collect the data and examine how the agricultural experience villages had been created taking advantage of the endowed natural conditions to attract the people from the capital areas.
In addition, this study examined the Japanese case similar to our conditions and the European cases where the agricultural tourism was more positively and diversely promoted to suggest the directions for the agricultural experiential tourism in Yangpyeong-gun.
Yangpyeong-gun is endowed with the environmental-friendly elements preserved well, while being located in a capital area 40~50 minutes away by car from Seoul. Many people agonizing over their foods and housing opine that they would like to live in this county. When the Central railway is expanded into a two-track line with various express roads expanded for convenient traffic, Yangpyeong-gun would be a center of the family-centered experiential tourism because its accessibility is most favorable for those living in the capital areas.
It is deemed required of Yangpyeong-gun administration and people to make further efforts to activate the agricultural experiential tourism as a national model. This study suggested some effective policy alternatives to make successful the agricultural experiential villages of Yangpyeong-gun by enhancing the environmental-friendly values of Yangpyeong-gun and awakening its people of them and thereupon, designing the agricultural tourism development strategies, and thereby, proposed the ways to activate the regional economy of Yangpyeong-gun through the agricultural experiential tourism.