"The reason for people's leaving rural areas"

by Shin Suk-young

Mother of Mencius, who is famous Chinese philosopher, moved to better areas three times for Mencius' education. It's common that parents want their children to be educated in better circumstances. Especially in Korea, most parents prefer their children to be educated in urban areas rather than in rural areas so they migrate to urban areas. Korea's rural areas are suffering from underpopulation caused by migrating to cities for their children's education.

In rural areas of Korea, underpopulation due to migrating to cities is getting more serious. According to a Korea National Statistical Office report, the figures for the farm household population have decreased since 1970s. As of December 1, 2001, the farm household population is 3933 thousand. This figure decreased by 2.4 percent compares with 2000. Especially the farm household population over 65 years old has grown, whereas the population under 15 years has decreased. Therefore rural areas are suffering from a shortage of labor. The KNSO report showed us that aging situations of rural areas is progressing rapidly -the average age of farm households is 45.7 years old, representing a much higher figure than the average age of the total population with 31.3 years old. Therefore this rural problems must be solved without delay.

There are many causes of migrating to cities, but people have migrated mainly because of their children's education. Ministry of Education announce that most of rural offices of education are in financial difficulty because the education budget is distributed according to number of students and the number of students in rural areas has decreased. So there is a shortage of institute, welfare facility, and cultural benefit in rural areas and parents of the areas have difficulties of their children's education. In addition, most teachers want to work in urban areas' school because of poor working conditions of rural areas' school so they have left for cities. Therefore scholastic achievements of students in rural areas remarkably low compared with the scholastic achievements of students in cities. For this reasons, more and more people have left rural areas to be educated in better circumstances.

To improve the situation like that mentioned above, government has to expand investment in education of rural areas. There is a good example that Korean government's trying to improve this situation. The Ka-pyong Office of Education announce that they will establish a rural modernization model school to attempt to revive the education circumstances in rural areas. First of all, middle school and high school will combine to provide the students of rural areas convenient educational circumstances. Also they announce that they will improve the poor working conditions in rural areas' school and engage teachers who have outstanding abilities. Expanding facilities for education and managing various kinds of education programs can make the educational circumstances of the areas better, they announce. If these policies work out well, students in the areas will be educated in better circumstances, the quality of education be higher than now, and the migrating to cities for their children's education will stop and maybe rural areas population will be increased slowly.

For the last three decades, the population of rural areas is decreasing continuously. The main reason for this situation is migration to cities for children's better education because the education circumstances in rural areas isn't as good as those in urban areas. In order to improve this situation, the Korean government has to expand investment in education in the areas. When the educational circumstances are getting better, people might return to the areas.