Traditionally, community space implies a small-scaled geographic area mainly hinged upon face-to-face contact. Nowadays, however, owing to the breakthrough of mobility equipped with the combination of high-speed internet and mobile phone, the social interactions occur in a wider area and the community extends beyond the conventional space, stressing the non-space world. Korea is no exception: the village is now at the center of community discussion, which has been strengthened by a series of "Maeul(Village)-Making-Movement" since the 1990s. Different from the past, however, as activities related with housing, labor, culture and leisure are separated each other, more people have to spend most of time outside the village. If community policies are confined to village, nowadays communities of people who do not spend their daily lives in the neighborhood are invisible and consequently it is not possible to support their communities.
The key purposes of this study are to understand the reality of the community, drawing out reliable implications from the in-depth analyses of the intimate network of ordinary people. It examines 3,985 network data of 572 Cheongju people in Korea, applying the Social Network Analysis (SNA) methods. The followings are major findings. Firstly, neighborhood networks occupy only 6.1 percent, consisting of housewife and the aged. Secondly, 77.1% of the total networking occurs within Cheongju proper. The second position is given to connecting with Seoul Metropolitan Areas and nearby cities including Daejeon and Sejong. There exists a weak connection with other cities within Chungbuk Province. Thirdly, 85.12% of the total networking is geared towards a huge cluster, and main connectors are the unemployed, artists and activists of non-governmental organizations. These results imply that there are limitations in supporting the actual communities of the people within a village unit. With development of transportations and communication, accessibility is more important than propinquity to form a community, locally and regionally. In order to restore the community, various communal spaces which can be intertwined with places of labor, culture and leisure should be on the discuss table. Also, it is necessary to strengthen activities-based communities such as artistic activities and local movements. In this context, the unemployed group would be treated as precious social capital rather than insignificant social surplus.