The Government's First Ever 'Basic Plan for Responding to Population Decline Areas' Established

Deliberation of the Jibang Era Committee

The Ministry of the Interior and Safety finalized the '1st Basic Plan for Responding to Population Decline Areas' on the 18th, after deliberation by the Local Era Committee, in collaboration with 16 ministries to overcome the crisis of local extinction and promote new vitality in regions.

This basic plan is the first comprehensive government-wide plan on population decline areas, synthesizing the bottom-up basic plans established by 89 population decline areas and the 11 metropolitan cities and provinces overseeing them, in line with the Yoon Suk-yeol administration's Local Era policy, where local areas take the lead in development planning and the government supports them.

This basic plan sets the vision as "A Local Era Where Anywhere in the Republic of Korea is a Good Place to Live" and establishes the goal of "Overcoming the Crisis of Local Extinction and Enhancing New Vitality." To systematically achieve the vision and goals, it has prepared 3 major strategies, 16 promotion tasks, and 43 implementation tasks.

First, the three major strategies were set as (Strategy 1) Creation of customized local jobs and industrial promotion, (Strategy 2) Support for creating attractive residential conditions, and (Strategy 3) Promotion of inflow and activation of living population, considering that economic disparity (jobs), poor infrastructure (residential conditions), and population decline (people) are major threats in population decline areas.

Additionally, the plan aims to overcome the crisis of local extinction by establishing 16 promotion tasks and 43 implementation tasks, including promoting corporate relocation to local areas, attracting young population through creation of region-specific jobs, expanding infrastructure in underdeveloped areas, creating attractive residential conditions by resolving blind spots in medical care and caregiving, and establishing a living population system.

The plan also includes measures to strengthen administrative and financial support, such as providing an annual 1 trillion KRW Local Extinction Response Fund, creating a 'Regional Revitalization Investment Fund' worth 2 to 3 trillion KRW annually, and enacting customized special regulations for population decline areas.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety plans to establish annual implementation plans to enhance the effectiveness and outcomes of the basic plan and actively promote performance evaluations accordingly.

Minister Lee Sang-min stated, "This plan is the first comprehensive plan jointly established by the central and local governments amid the accelerating local extinction, reflecting policies and measures needed from the local perspective," and added, "The government will spare no support to help population decline areas overcome the extinction crisis and regain vitality."

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