Basic Report

South Korea has been facing the grand challenges of population decline, chracterised by low birth rates and an ageing population. This issue is exacerbated by the uneven distribution of population across regions in South Korea, with urban areas experiencing overpopulation while peripheral and rural regions suffering from depopulation. To address this issue, the central government has designated 89 regions as “depopulation areas”, where population shrinking with consistent out-migration of young people to prosperous cities offering for better liveability and more job opportunities has significantly weakened local vitality and its resilience for future recovery.
   The central government has recently shifted approaches from population policy to population strategy. In order to response to short-term demographic challenges and embrace longer-term adaptation to ongoing population shrinking. Designating demographic decline areas can provide special administrative and financial support based on the Special Act on Support for Demographic Decline Areas and the Enforcement Decree of the same Act. Additionally, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety (MOIS) is actively endeavoring to address demographic challenges by improving living standards, attracting more visitors, and rehabilitating local economies through job creation initiatives. The concept of the “monthly living population“, which encompasses (registered) usual residents, (non-registered) visitors with a temporal residence, and registered foreigners, has been adopted as an alternative population outputs allowing to guide tailored policy interventions for depopulation areas. However, effective implementation of this policy requires the identification of "daily activity-spaces" beyond administrative boundaries, along with a comprehensive examination of the regional characteristics of the monthly living population based on scientific evidence. This approach is anchored in Article 11 of the Enforcement Decree of the Special Act on Declining Population Areas, which enables and emphasises sub-regional partnerships between depopulation areas with additional financial support from the central government. The overall policy aim is to foster collaboration between depopulation areas to develop shared solutions to tackle population decline together.
   Despite the existing institutional setting, there remains a lack of clear guidelines for policy implementation, particularly regarding the definition and support mechanisms of delinating spatial extents of depopulated areas. To address this gap, this study aims to propose a strategy for fostering inter-regional partnerships among depopulation areas accounting for their living boundaries delineated by daily activity-spaces of their ambient populations. Specifically, the study aims to (1) crystallising the concept of spatial extents of depopulation areas through a theoretical review, (2) assess inter-regional connectivity and interaction levels using novel data sources to facilitate regional groupings, (3) develop an advanced community detection algorithm considering spatial adjacency and temporal consistency, and (4) propose effective policy recommendations to bond sub-regional partnerships among depopulation areas.
   This study is structured as follows: Chapter 2 provides a comprehensive literature review to establish the concept of daily activity-spaces of monthly living populations and their role in promoting sub-regional partnerships among depopulation areas. This includes an analysis of policy changes aimed at addressing population decline and an examination of population characteristics of depopulation areas. The analysis of the current status of inter-regional population movement and population outflow in the selected depopulation areas confirms that population stability is significantly reduced with a more serious crisis expected. Chapter 3 examines domestic and international policies to extract insights applicable to the application of daily activity-spaces of depopulation areas. In Chapter 4, analysis results has shown that grouped 1st-tier and 2nd-tier spatial extents for depopulation areas using novel data resources and an advanced community detection approach, and presented the findings of the analysis. Finally, Chapter 5 discusses the policy implications of the research findings and offers recommendations for fostering inter-regional partnerships to tackle population decline effectively.