The interpersonal psycho-social problems and burdens have increased in weight due to multiple changes in modern society and the lack of national and professional measures to support them. Further more, the functional diminishment of the family and other traditional social groups have resulted in the isolation of the person. As the consequence of this; people with difficulties to solve their physical, economical, social and psychological problems on their own have formed self-help groups in order to aid their difficulties as a group. This not only represent a solution for their problems, it also represents the awaken conscience of their social rights and the assurance of their social participation. There for it is certain that the support and the promotion of self-help groups will occupy and important place in the future society and in its health policy. Unfortunately, the support or policies for self-help groups in Korea seem to be almost non-existent; in addition there is also almost no basic self-help Infrastructure. It is for that reason that the german self-help support model is very suggestive. The objective of this thesis is to take measures for support and development of self-help groups for the upcoming days of Korea. To accomplish this, german documents related to self-help groups will be examined and a sample investigation on the korean self-help groups current situation will be made. Based on this a comparison will be made on self-help groups for disable people in both countries and examine the needs, problems and effectiveness according to the activities of the participants of self-help groups in both countries. Further more, the efforts for self-help groups support in Germany will be presented as self-help support model in Korea in order to make a realistic proposal for the self-help development in Korea. In the view of this, to satisfy the most urgent need in Korea we need to implement and expand basic and specific infrastructure for self-help support, to constantly expand the self-help friendly image in society and equip ourselves with basic primary statistics on self-help groups.
Keyword: self-help, self-help group, self-help support, infrastructure for self-help support, disabled people, social engagement, Korea, Germany