[Bread-Baking Typewriter] Our Hometown Is Disappearing

[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] “It may be stating an obvious fact, but unless there is some change where the birth rate surpasses the death rate, Japan will eventually disappear.” This was a tweet left last month by Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla. Having pointed out the global issue of population decline for several years, he made this comment regarding Japan’s total population.

When the tweet became known, the reaction among Korean citizens was mostly along the lines of “We will disappear even faster.” In fact, Korea’s total fertility rate dropped to 1.31 in 2001, lower than Japan’s 1.33, and has continued to decline steadily since then. The downward trend in the total fertility rate accelerated from 2016, plummeting to 0.84 in 2020. If this trend continues, Korea’s population is projected to decrease by about 16 million from the current level, reaching 35 million by 2080.

What is particularly problematic is the extinction of local areas. The extinction risk index is defined as the ratio of the population aged 65 and over to the female population aged 20 to 39. Usually, an extinction risk index below 0.5 is considered an extinction-risk area. This year, in addition to Pocheon, Sokcho, and Yeosu, Tongyeong and Gunsan were added to the extinction-risk areas. Nationwide, 113 local cities have an extinction risk index below 1.0, placing almost all local cities on the path to extinction. In response, the government has been pouring enormous budgets into various efforts and attempts for years, but no significant improvements are visible.

The book How Did Local Cities at Risk of Extinction Become Premium Cities? sheds light on Japanese cities that revived from the brink of extinction amid an irreversible trend of local extinction and suggests new directions. Japan experienced this earlier and experimented sooner than we did. Even if we go through trial and error, the only way to reduce the scale of damage is to learn from Japan’s experiences.

Maniwa City in Okayama Prefecture, Japan, is a successful case of regional revitalization by utilizing sawdust that was previously discarded amid the risk of extinction. They created a new industry by using wood, an abandoned resource left over in mountain villages. The important point here is that regional revitalization began through private sector initiatives rather than government-led efforts. The private sector took the lead in creating new industries, naturally involving local residents, and later administrative resources supported the process, leading to the revival of the region.

The Maniwa case allows us to examine the effectiveness of local-based private business models over centrally-led top-down financial input for regional regeneration. This is a point we should consider as we still have central government-led top-down projects for local revitalization. Notably, the Japanese government adopted the Maniwa case as a standard model for regional revitalization and created guidelines. They identified the success factors necessary for regional revitalization and prioritized them to apply to other regions, significantly reducing the risk of failure.

The book also presents lessons from cities that ultimately went bankrupt after numerous attempts, serving as cautionary tales. Yubari City in Hokkaido is a symbolic city of regional collapse. It went through all the wrong failure paths of local administration. In 2006, it was the first basic local government in Japan to declare bankruptcy. Fifteen years have passed since the bankruptcy, and despite numerous efforts, the population dropped from 120,000 at the time of bankruptcy to only 7,145 as of September 2021.

Yubari’s bankruptcy was ignited by poor leadership and misguided policies. The monitoring function to check these failed, the council, which should have been a check-and-balance force, turned a deaf ear and closed its eyes to residents. Focusing on civil engineering-type hardware obsessed with short-term results without differentiated software, the revival strategy from “coal mining to tourism” ended in a tragic conclusion. From demand forecast failures to excessive investment due to reckless management, debts exceeding 35.2 billion yen boomeranged back.

The book clearly states what we must learn from the Yubari case. More important than the projects for regional revitalization is the series of processes that decide and promote them. Escaping excessive administrative control, reckless financial investment, and poor monitoring systems is an urgent task. It also emphasizes the importance of projects that the region wants and that work locally. Even at this moment, our hometowns are disappearing.

How Did Local Cities at Risk of Extinction Become Premium Cities? | Written by Youngsoo Jeon, Hyesook Kim, Insook Jo, Misook Kim, Eunjeong Lee | Laeui Nun | 528 pages | 25,000 KRW

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.