Research Reports
Measures to Expand Basic Living Services in Depopulated Rural Areas
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AuthorHan, Yicheol
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Publication Date2023.03.02
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Original
Background of Research
Although the rural population has grown slightly for the past 10 years, the population increase has been concentrated in the capital area, the suburbs, and eups (towns), while the population has been stagnant or decreased in myeons (townships) that account for most of rural Korea. The population decline reduces residents’ economic activities and purchasing power, which decreases the demand for basic living services, that is, services necessary for living including education, health care, transportation, and retail trade and lowers the quantity and quality of the services. Particularly, population aging and outflows are more serious in remote and myeon areas, which makes it difficult to maintain local communities and leads to the possibility of local extinction, i.e. the unsustainability of the provinces as living space in demographic and industrial aspects.
Now is the time to prepare for “adaptation” to the depopulated rural society. It is necessary to acknowledge the problem of rural depopulation and come up with measures to identify and manage facilities and services that can improve the quality of rural residents’ lives. The government should seek ways to expand facilities and services suitable for the social and economic system that has changed in this era of depopulation, not just considering a fragmentary reduction in living services and facilities or the supply of them through financial support. For this, it is needed to figure out changes in the supply of basic living services and facilities due to population change in each area and devise measures to expand long-term services that respond to residents’ demands and to the expected population change.
(For more information, please refer to the report.)
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