The number of farmers and fishermen in South Korea continued to fall in 2018 amid the fast aging population, customs office data showed on Wednesday.
The number of farm households was 1,021,000 as of Dec. 1, 2018, down
two per cent from a year earlier, according to Statistics Korea.
The population of the farm families declined 4.4 per cent to 2,315,000.
The figure for fishery households fell 2.5 per cent to 51,500 in the cited
period, while the number of fishery families reduced four per cent to 116,900.
It came as young people in rural areas continued to flock to the capital Seoul
for attending universities and getting jobs for the past decades.
The combined number of farmers and fishermen accounted for 4.5 per cent of the
country’s total population as of Dec. 1, 2018, down 0.2 percentage points from
a year earlier.
The rural communities were hollowed out amid the aging population, which
increased the number of aged farmers and fishermen giving up their farming
and fishing.
The biggest age group in the farm households was those aged 70 or higher,
which stood at 745,000, or 32.2 per cent of the total, in 2018.
Those aged 65 or higher made up 44.7 per cent last year, up 2.2 percentage points
from a year earlier.
For the fishery households, the biggest age group was those in their 60s which
accounted for 28.6 percent of the total.
Those aged 65 or older took up 36.3 per cent of the total in 2018, up 1.1
percentage points from a year ago. (Xinhua/NAN)