[Market Pulse]From Grey Cities to a Green Future: The 'Great Return to the Countryside' Unlocked by AI

Silent War in the Battle for Population Among Local Governments
Urgent Need for a Paradigm Shift Beyond Cash Handouts
AI Ushers in Rural Areas as Future Hubs
From the Brink of Extinction to Spaces of Advanced Civilization

Creative

Local governments in South Korea are currently engaged in a silent war—an “all-out battle for population.” Each local authority is raising childbirth subsidies and offering settlement incentives, desperately competing to attract people from neighboring areas.

AI-generated image

But let’s be candid: this fight is little more than a zero-sum game—when one side gains, the other loses. In the end, it is likely to result in “glory” that leaves only wounds, with no real winners. Rather than relying on temporary stopgaps like cash handouts, it is time to adopt a fundamental paradigm shift that could transform the course of human civilization. That monumental turning point is the “Great Return”—a movement from concrete back to nature.

The Industrial Revolution, which began 250 years ago, brought “efficiency” to humanity but took away “nature.” Massive cities were built to confine labor to physical spaces like factories and offices. Within these limits, people effectively became prisoners under the label of “urban workers.”

According to the "World Urbanization Prospects" report released last year by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), 81% of the global population now lives in urban areas. That means four out of every five people worldwide are confined within suffocating concrete bars of the city. In South Korea, the figure is 90.4%. The urbanization rate published around the same time by the Ministry of Data and Statistics—defined as the percentage of a country or region’s total population living in urban areas—stood at 92.1%, a similar figure. As a result, rural and fishing villages have faded from the map, accompanied by the lonely word “hollowing out.”

However, the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) is creating an environment ripe for a new turning point. AI is a powerful tool for grand unification, capable of ending this tragic separation. In the past, rural communities were simply “spaces for primary industries,” but in the AI era, they are poised to be reborn as “creative hubs” where intelligence and nature converge, opening up new horizons. AI-driven innovations in transportation, education, healthcare, and culture—such as autonomous vehicles, telemedicine, and edtech—will grant people the freedom to enjoy cutting-edge civilization without being confined to cities. Now, “where you live” is no longer a shackle that determines quality of life.

Aerial View of Solar Sido Enterprise City. Haenam County Office

The designation of Haenam County’s “Solar Sido”—a strategic future city realizing industrial restructuring, balanced regional development, and energy transition simultaneously—as South Korea’s representative AI infrastructure hub goes far beyond simple regional development news. It marks a milestone in the history of civilization. Imagine the rural landscape ten years from now, where the millennial tranquility of “Daeheungsa”—a UNESCO World Heritage Site—and the cultural heritage of poet Yun Seondo’s “Ouga” and “Ganggangsullae” coexist with the data computation of super-scale AI. In fact, with the announcement of the AI infrastructure hub, Haenam’s public officials, envisioning the county as the rural capital, once participated in an exercise to pre-write news articles as they might appear in 2036. There, instead of “buying” population with cash, participants proposed a variety of visions centered on the value of “the most human way of living in the future.” It is a model that guarantees a life exceeding that of the city, with immersion in the sound of the wind through the forest instead of urban noise, supported by a perfect AI-based infrastructure. This is an attempt to move beyond wasteful cash handouts and seize the paradigm of “a more intelligent countryside than the city” and “a great life where nature and high-tech coexist.”

The vision these participants painted for 2036 prompts an important question: How long will we continue to treat rural issues solely as those of the “disadvantaged” who need help? Now, it seems time to view rural areas as the most attractive alternatives for humanity, which has reached the limits of urbanization. The “Great Return” brought by AI will unlock the bars of the city and lead people back to the earth, the trees, and the sky. The petty competition among local governments to poach each other’s populations should now be relegated to a distant memory.

Next month, on June 3, heads of local governments to be elected nationwide must, like Haenam, harness the powerful engine of AI and begin an essential race to see who can best create a “great home for life” rooted in fundamental human values.

Nature encountered at the end of technology, and the innovation that blooms within it—this is the true “pulse of industry” that we must pursue. The rural homeland of humanity must now return with confidence as the frontline of civilization, no longer a symbol of extinction.

Jongrok Yoon, Adjunct Professor at KAIST and former Vice Minister of Science, ICT and Future Planning

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