Rural Community Experiencing Future Problems in Advance

By Choi Jung-sup (崔正燮)
President
Korea Rural Economic Institute (韓國農村經濟硏究院)

Our rural community is moving ahead of its time. If I say that it is moving 30 years ahead of time, one may wonder in disbelief. However, this is true in terms of the aging of society. When the percentage of the population over 65 years of age reaches 7%, the society is referred to as “aging,” 14% as “aged,” and 20 percent as “super-aged.” Korea became an aging society in 2000. According to the National Statistical Office, it will be an aged society in 2018 and reach the super-aged status in 2026.

The rural community has already entered the super-aged society with the age group over 65 years taking up 29% of population as of 2004. The rate is higher than what the country as a whole will reach in 2037. This means the increase of the long-living population and decrease in the number of newborn babies in the rural society. A small village in Chungcheong-namdo where 11 households live shows a typical example. Among 20-odd villagers, only three are younger than 60 years of age. Among them, two are a couple in their 50’s who have service jobs in the village, and the last one is an elementary school student who has been left with his grandmother after his parents divorced.

In the super-aged Korean rural areas, brides from foreign countries are on the increase. Among the men in rural communities who got married last year, 36% wed women from abroad. More than half of the brides were Vietnamese.

The advertisement frequently seen in the agricultural regions, “Marry a Vietnamese woman,” shows the reality. We can simplify the statistics. In 2004, out of every four men who got married in the rural areas, one entered into international marriage, as compared to the national ratio of one out of every 10 men. And then, last year, the ratio changed to one out of seven for the whole country, and one out of three in the rural regions. These numbers show that the agricultural regions are truly moving ahead of the time. However, if we put it more correctly, we should say that they are experiencing the future problems of our society in advance.

Korean people have a rather strong preference for pure-bloodedness. In a society where domestic adoption is rare and many children are sent abroad for adoption by foreign families, marrying a foreign bride means that there is no other way. If we think differently, however, getting spouses without considering their nationality means the advancement of globalization.

Then, the pressing concern for the present is to provide a good environment in which members of the families generated from international marriage can adapt to the society and raise their children without difficulty.

Recently, the importance of human resources is being emphasized, and the focus of the government policy is moving towards retaining and retraining a competent workforce. Concerning the current situation in which the aging of society is reaching a serious level and international marriage is rapidly rising, it will be timely and appropriate to switch the main focus of agricultural administration from business to human force.

In this relation, the “custom-made agricultural administration” is rising as a key approach for the government policy. Under this approach, rural households are classified into specialized farming households, aged farming households, small and medium farming households, etc., and goals suitable for each category are set up and support is given accordingly. The agricultural administration in the past applied the same standards to all agricultural families nationwide, so it was hard to expect fruitful outcome and there was often distrust between farmers and the administration.

Specialized farming households for each crop are the main force that will lead the future of Korean agriculture. It is necessary to provide management support for them so that they can build competitive power in preparation for the opening of the agricultural market. For the aged farming households, the government should work out measures to help them retire according to their wish. The problem is that there are too many aged farming households to be covered with the country’s limited welfare budget.

There needs to be a great deal of research to support small and medium farming households. Nevertheless, if we look more broadly and take into account the kind of secondary and tertiary industries possible in rural areas, there can be some nice ideas. For example, in the village of Buraemi in Icheon, Gyeonggi-do, each of the 28 households raised between 7 and 25 million won last year from the “farming experience programs” they provided, in addition to their usual agricultural income.

For our rural regions, which are going through problems ahead of the time, there should be researches and solutions that also go ahead of the time.