On the 19th, South Chungcheong Province and Gwangju Metropolitan City confirmed their 2026 youth policy implementation plans on the same day. South Chungcheong put 506.3 billion won into 121 tasks, and Gwangju 449.9 billion won into 94 projects. Both held youth policy coordination committees to discuss and approve the plans. Around the same time, Hadong County and Gimje City also released their youth projects for this year, bringing onto one screen the fact that youth policy has grown in size at both the metropolitan and the basic local level.
As the scale has grown, so has what needs checking. In Jeju, the youth population turned to a net outflow from 2022. The net outflow, 142 people in 2022, swelled year by year to 1,961 in 2023 and 2,400 in 2024. In a region that took in more than 4,000 people every year from 2015 to 2017, the flow reversed in less than a decade.
Jeju's registered resident population fell by 4,884 in 2024. The 2,400 young people who left that year account for half of the decrease. It means departures of people in their 20s and 30s explain half the size of the population drop. The youth population within Jeju is about 162,000 as of 2024, and a projection that it will fall to around 106,000 by 2050 was presented in a keynote presentation at a recent forum.
Statistics that hint at why they leave came out along with it. By 2024 statistics, 41.5% of Jeju's young people earn less than 20 million won a year. Over the same period, consumer prices in Jeju rose 21.8% compared with 2014. It is the story of a stretch, now in its tenth year, where earnings stay put and only living costs rise.
Setting the budgets of regions side by side for comparison is difficult. South Chungcheong's 506.3 billion won and Gwangju's 449.9 billion won are metropolitan-level totals, while Hadong and Gimje disclosed only individual project amounts. The division into fields also differs from place to place.
All three local governments use the expression 'five major fields,' but Gwangju groups them as jobs, housing, education, financial welfare and culture, and participation, Hadong as housing, jobs, culture and leisure, education and welfare, and participation, while South Chungcheong lists seven, jobs, housing, education, welfare, culture, participation and rights, and still labels them five major fields. The age up to which a person counts as a young person is also set differently by region.
So attention turns to attempts to measure effects in place of totals. The Seoul Metropolitan Government said on the 13th that the policy effect of the Seoul Youth Center was analyzed as a monetary value of 108 billion won, about 5.02 times the budget put in. By sector, workplace adjustment support was the largest at 49.44 billion won, followed by 20.01 billion won for shortening the time spent searching for policies, 8.87 billion won for increased personal time, and 5.07 billion won in savings on the cost of providing youth spaces. The absolute budget figure used to produce the 5.02 times, and the conversion method, have not been disclosed.
The analysis was carried out by Impact Research Lab on project results from January 2024 to September 2025. It surveyed and interviewed 1,404 young people who had used the centers and added in-depth interviews with staff to build 31 measurement criteria in three areas. One figure that came out of it stands out. Young people who used a center cut the time it took to find policies suited to them by an average of 1.48 hours a month.
Projects by basic local governments are small in amount but clear in their terms. Under Hadong County's 'Hadong-style Youth Account,' if a young person puts in 100,000 won a month for three years, the county adds the same amount. After recruiting 300 people in 2023, it will take another 150 this year. Leisure activity funding was increased by 80 million won to support 500 people with up to 300,000 won a year, and club support was raised from 10 teams to 15 teams, with 1 million won given per team.
Gimje City is starting the 'Gimje Youth Hope Road Project' newly this year. The newly created support for language and certification test fees is for young people aged 18 to 39 with resident registration in Gimje, who receive up to 100,000 won once a year. Support of 10 million won for early-stage startup facility improvements, and 'Gimje in-chak!', which repairs empty houses and hands them to young people and newlyweds from outside the county
project, are being pushed forward together as well. Gimje City explained that it has kept the share of the youth population at around 17% since the eighth popularly elected term began.
Gwangju newly allocated 756 million won to the K-ART young creators support project. Youth monthly rent, interest support for housing lease deposits, the Youth Tomorrow Savings Account (청년내일저축계좌), and the Youth Challenge Project were included by both South Chungcheong and Gwangju. South Chungcheong was named an outstanding institution for two years running in the evaluation of metropolitan local governments' youth policies overseen by the Prime Minister.
The gap between the side that makes the policies and the side that receives them has not narrowed. South Chungcheong and Hadong put 'policies that can be felt' at the front of this year's tasks, but at the Jeju forum it was pointed out that young people do not feel the policies and that participation is low. Neither side has a figure that actually measures how much is felt. Like Seoul's 1.48 hours, indicators that measure what has changed and by how much in a young person's day are rare.
There are figures to watch this year. Whether Jeju's net youth outflow in 2025 bends at the 2,400 line, and whether each local government discloses the number of recipients and the rate at which they settle in the region after receiving support. The first maturity of the Hadong youth account comes soon for those who signed up in 2023. Checking whether the 300 people who put in 100,000 won a month for three years stay in Hadong after maturity comes ahead of the tallies of 506.3 billion won and 449.9 billion won.
