There are 89 local governments nationwide designated as population-decline areas. The government has been putting the Local Extinction Response Fund into these areas since 2022, and a plan to add five more sites to the rural basic income pilot program is also being pursued. The money that keeps regions holding on is increasing. Creating reasons for people to stay there remains a task of a different nature.
In Gyeongsangbuk-do, 16 cities and counties are on the list of population-decline areas. Along with Jeollanam-do, that is the largest number in the country. As of 2025, Gyeongbuk received 122.6 billion won through the basic support account of the Local Extinction Response Fund.
Neighboring Daegu is not in an easy position either. As of 2024, Daegu's population stood at about 2.36 million, more than 60,000 fewer than five years earlier. Net outflow of people in their 20s that year reached about 6,300. The share of older residents passed 20%, crossing the threshold for a super-aged society, and the population extinction risk index is 0.52, which falls in the 'extinction caution' stage.
The Bank of Korea projected that Daegu and Gyeongbuk will enter the high-risk stage of local extinction around 2040. In a city that people in their 20s are leaving, the rising share of older residents decides in advance the population of a generation later. When one young person leaves, that person is not the only thing that disappears.
Policy is shifting little by little toward people. The Regional Innovation System and Education (RISE) was introduced in full from 2025, and Daegu and Gyeongbuk were picked as pilot regions. The idea is that graduates stay when universities are attached to local industry. Japan's construction of its regional revitalization strategy around three axes of jobs, people and towns after the 2014 'Masuda Report' also started from the same recognition.
Discussion on the employment side has moved as well. The Korea Employment Information Service and the Korean Association for Regional Employment held the '2026 Regional Employment Revitalization Forum' at the Press Center in Seoul on April 1. The theme was 'Enactment of the Regional Employment Revitalization Act for locally led employment policy and future tasks,' and about 300 people were set to attend. The minister of employment and labor, job officials from the country's 17 metropolitan and provincial governments, and officials from regional human resources development committees were on the list.
At the event, Konkuk University professor Yoon Dong-yull gave a keynote lecture on 'Legislation of the Regional Employment Revitalization Act for balanced development and implementation tasks,' and the Ministry of Employment and Labor announced its regional employment policy and plans for institutional improvement. Bae Kyu-sik, president of the Institute for Regional Innovation, chaired the general discussion. The Regional Employment Revitalization Act has not reached enactment and implementation and remains at the stage of legislative discussion.
Which five areas will be added to the rural basic income program has not been decided. Whichever villages are chosen, the money people there receive each month is an amount printed in a bankbook and at the same time reads as a signal that it is all right to live here. The list of 89 places is a name tag marking difficulty, not a prescription. Keeping the student who stood at the bus stop in that village several years later, that is the work that remains.
