The main issue in the rural geography of Korea has been the regional impacts of rapid rural-urban migration. In the process of industrialization since the 1960s, rural areas lost more than half of their population during the period 1970-90. Depopulation rates were about 25% in the 1970s and 35% in the 1980s. As a result, almost all of rural Korea, excluding areas near metropolitan areas, have been undergoing depopulation at rates in excess of 3% per year.
In this paper, the current research on rural depopulation of Korea has been reviewed with three sub-themes, that is, its cause, the pattern of rural-urban migration, and regional impacts.
The rural areas in Korea were transformed to scarce population areas as a result of the rapid rural-urban migration since the 1960s. The main cause of rural-urban migration has been the urban-oriented national policy, the so-called growth centre strategy. The national planners selected a few metropolitan areas as growth centres and fostered a regional disparity. This led to the migration of, particularly, highly educated rural youths to urban areas seeking non-agricultural occupations and increased incomes. In addition, remote mountainous areas in which most of the underground resources are found, have been experiencing more severe depopulation since the 1970s, due to the new energy policy, namely, the transfer from a coal-oriented to a petroleum-oriented policy and the restrictions placed on utilization of forest areas. In this process, the most severe depopulated areas in Korea shifted from plain agricultural areas near metropolitan areas (1960s) to remote mountainous areas (1970s and the first half of the 1980s) and agriculture areas remote from metropolitan areas (after the latter half of the 1980s).
With this background, the pattern of rural-urban migration in Korea can be characterized as follows from the current research:
First, single migration and chain-migration has been the mainstream of rural-urban migration in Korea, especially after the 1970s. Seasonal migration is rare. Second, the high selectivity of age and education is conspicuous due to the aforementioned characteristic. Third, rural-urban migrants by reason of educational objectives show a trend towards step migration.
And also, the regional impacts of rapid rural-urban migration on the rural areas can be characterized as follows from the current research:
First, the elderly and the female agricultural labour force have replaced the young generation, owing to the absolute deficiency of the young labour force.
Second, despite the severe shortage of labour force, the use of agricultural machinery har not been adopted by the peasants due to the lack of financial capabilities and low cost-benefit efficiency.
Third, rural-urban migration in Korea has never led to an increase in cultivated landownership of remnant farmers. The migrants' lands were leased for tenant farming by the remnant farmers at high rent (almost half of the harvest). At the same time, a great increase in landownership by urban residents was witnessed.
Fourth, in contrast with Japanese cases, the increase of tenant farms have brought about the standardization of farm size with an increase in cultivated land of remnant farmers. In spite of the increase of cultivated lands through tenancy, those farmers however have never been considered as belonging to the middle class, and their agricultural revenue has more often than not been less than their living expenses during the last thirty years.
Fifth, the lack of labour force in rural areas has led to extensive but partially intensive land use. While the farmers changed their management to less labour-intensive farming, they had to adopt a market-oriented and labour/capital-intensive farming method in order to meet the increasing demands for cash.
