Background and Purpose
○ An inspection into microscopic changes in villages is essential to precisely diagnose sustainability issues in rural areas and respond to them appropriately. In particular, a long-term approach based on village panel data is required to track changes continuously. Isolated studies on specific topics have fundamental limits in understanding various phenomena and their causes in rural communities. Therefore, making up for previous statistical research and accumulating grounds for policy establishment are required by monitoring changes in villages and the factors driving them based on panel data.

○ This study aims to monitor changes in villages every year by selecting representative rural communities. Also, it intends to grab new and significant changes in rural villages and suggest policy direction based on an in-depth analysis of those changes. Furthermore, it plans to gain implications through yearly research to supplement prior statistical studies and prepare grounds for rural policy setup.

Research Methodology
○ This study is a ten-year project, and 2021 is the second year. We maintained the mainframe of the first-year research but made up for it through primary panel surveys. We used the results for actual state analysis. Also, we conducted a separate study on sustainability issues by inspecting unique changes in rural areas, including depopulation and the emergence of the linked population (urban people linked to rural areas through regular visiting or residence for a certain period). We interviewed the heads of the selected 102 panel villages using the structured questionnaire and visited them for observation. We surveyed residents of 23 villages and the linked population who visited those villages for our in-depth research.

(For more information, please refer to the report.)