The Korea Rural Economic Institute performed a survey titled `Research on the Public’s Conception of Agriculture and Farm Villages’ on 1,500 urban residents and 852 farmers from January 2 to January 25, 2008.
According to the survey results, farmers had the most interest and expectations on the enactment of a special law on subsidizing the income of farmers and fishermen as pledged by the new government. The survey results showed that farmers had great interest in income security-related pledges: the two issues of concern with the second and third-highest interest among the farmers were `the enactment of a law freezing the debt of farm households' and `the deregulation of farmland transactions,' respectively.
On the question of investment and financing for agriculture, farmers asked for the expansion of investment on ‘direct payments’ (29.3%), ‘farm village development’ (13.7%), and ‘development of non-farm income sources’ (13.5%), while urban residents wished that the agricultural budget could be invested to ‘reinforce the competitiveness of agriculture’ (33.7%), ‘raise the food self-sufficiency rate’ (21.9%), and `secure food safety' (19.1%).
On the government's pledge to deregulate farmland transactions, 73.2% of urban residents and 68.5% of farmers agreed while 26.7% of urban residents and 25.8% of farmers stood against it; therefore, it can be said that one out of four respondents wished a careful approach to it.
Farmers chose the top-priority tasks of the new government in the field of agriculture and they are ‘preparing countermeasures against agricultural damages derived from market opening’ (47.4%), ‘preparing countermeasures against income instability’ (17.4%), and ‘providing solutions to the urban-rural polarization’ (15.0%).
Over half of the urban respondents (57.9%) said that the most serious problem facing rural Korea today is ‘the hollowing of rural villages due to the ageing of rural population.’ Other problems the urban residents were concerned about were ‘failure of food supply,’ ‘environment destruction,' and `safety of agricultural products.’
On the ratification of the Korea-U.S. FTA, a majority of farmers were against it while the opinions of urban residents were varied. Forty two point six percent of farmers and 31.9% of urban residents thought the bill should be reexamined from scratch while 31.6% of urban residents and 24.2% of farmers thought that a referendum is needed to confront the issue. The ratios of respondents who thought the bill should be ratified as originally written were 36.5% for urban residents and 26.6% for farmers.
As for future trade negotiations such as Korea-China and Korea-EU FTAs, it was shown that more than 7 out of 10 people think the agricultural industry should not be damaged any further by trade negotiations. The opinion that `the new government should protect agriculture' was expressed by 73.0% of urban residents and 76.8% of farmers.
The urban residents thought that ‘safety’ is the most important criterion for purchasing agricultural products, followed by ‘quality’ (taste) and ‘country of origin’ in that order; and 74.6% of urban residents thought the beef imported from the U.S. are not safe. The urban residents’ trust on domestic agricultural products was high as 86.5% of urban residents agreed that ‘home-made agricultural products are safer than foreign products.’
Most of the urban respondents (85.8%) thought that agriculture is still important in the national economy; however, only 39.1%, a decline of 13.7% from last year, agreed to the additional tax payments to maintain the ‘public-good’ functions of agriculture and farm villages.
Only about a half (45.9%) of the urban residents who had spent time in farm villages for tourism purposes expressed satisfaction from their stay. Therefore, it is necessary to set up a policy for attracting more urban visitors to the countryside by reinforcing the infrastructure for rural tourism, such as transportation, accommodation, and cleanliness which were shown to be unsatisfactory.

Researchers: Dong-Weon Kim and Hye-Jin Park
E-mail address: dongweon@krei.re.kr, frog78@krei.re.kr