Presentation on social implication of young rural returnees in Korea under Pillar 2B at the 12th OECD Rural Development Conference on Delivering Well-being, 24-26 September 2019, Seoul Korea. Presentation by Chul-Kyoo Kim, Korea University. More information: https://www.oecd.org/rural/rural-development-conference/

1. Social Implication of
Young Rural Returnees in Korea
Chul-Kyoo Kim
(KOREA UNIVERSITY)

2. Are we/you happy?

3. Population pyramid of rural Korea
1980 2020
-10.0 -5.0 0.0 5.0 10.0
0-4
10~14
20~24
30~34
40~44
50~54
60~64
70~74
80+
연령
구성비
남
여
-15.0 -7.5 0.0 7.5 15.0
0~ 4
10~ 14
20~ 24
30~ 34
40~ 44
50~ 54
60~ 64
70~ 74
80+
구성비
연령
남자
여자

4. Farm Households(農家) etc.
1998 2000 2005 2010 2015 2017
# of farm
households
(000)
1,413 1,383 1,273 1,177 1,089 1,042
# of farm population
(000)
4,400 4,031 3,434 3,063 2,569 2,422
% Farmers of total
population
(%)
9.5 8.6 7.1 6.2 5.0 4.7
65+ Farmers
(%)
19.6 21.7 29.1 31.8 38.4 42.5

5. Recent changes
 Post-materialistic world views
 Alternative life style
 Various communitarian experiments
 Baby boom generation (born during 1955 – 1963; 7.1 million;
14.6% of total population)
 Back to the Land Movement (歸農歸村運動)

6. Back-to-farm(BTF) and Back-to-Rural(BTR)
population & household

7. BTF farmers by age

8. BTR population by age

9. 홍천 밝은누리
(Hongcheon Balgun Nuri Community)

10. 홍성 젊은협업 농장(Hongseong Youth
Cooperative Farm)

11. What do young farmers/people want?
 Work-Life Balance – culture, learning,
leisure
 Economic infrastructure – land, marketing
channels
 Cultural changes – gender sensitiveness,
equality, respect for different life style
 Diverse people – non-farmers

12. Korean society today is not sustainable
Industrial-urban bias needs to be amended
Re-ruralization & Re-peasantization
- Re-connecting nature, work & life, community
BTR & BTF are important change for rural communities &
sustainable Korean society in general

13. Thank you!
감사합니다!