'Rural Population Movement' Visualized in Maps and Graphs... Now Available on the Korea Agricultural and Food Statistics Service

by Ju Sangdon

Published 18 Aug.2025 11:17(KST)

The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and the Korea Agency of Education, Promotion and Information Service in Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries announced on August 18 that they have developed a new 'Rural Population Movement' feature on the Korea Agricultural and Food Statistics Service (KASS) website to support in-depth analysis and policy applications regarding changes in rural population structure. The service will be officially launched on August 19. The mobile app version will be released after further improvements to its interface, scheduled for after September.

This new rural population movement feature is based on resident registration population statistics from the Ministry of the Interior and Safety. Rather than simply quantifying population structure, it provides an integrated visualization of time-series changes, migration flows, and spatial distribution, allowing users to grasp the characteristics of population structure at a glance and access more multidimensional analyses.

Rural Population Migration and Migration Map provided by the Korea Agricultural Statistics Service (KASS). (Photo by Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs)

Through this, the Ministry expects that it will become easier to identify and respond to changes in rural population structure, such as the intensification of regional imbalances caused by aging and population outflow, particularly in rural areas where administrative districts are classified as eup or myeon.

An official from the Ministry stated, "Until now, rural population statistics have mainly been provided as numerical data, making it difficult to intuitively understand overall migration trends or regional differences. By providing structured information on a single platform with comprehensive visualizations such as charts and maps, this will become a highly useful information infrastructure for local governments, research institutions, and policy makers. It will help them develop a wide range of policies, including improving settlement conditions, attracting young people, and revitalizing local communities."

First, the 'Dashboard' menu visualizes the rural and national population, age and gender distribution, rural-urban migration, birth registrations, and death removals on a monthly basis through charts and tables, making it easy to grasp the overall population status and changes at a glance.

In the 'Regional Population' section, users can select specific regions down to the si, gun, or gu level on a national map to view time-series charts of population and changes, age group distributions such as youth and elderly, and the regional extinction risk index.

The 'Population Movement' menu provides data on migration into rural areas from cities by major age groups. For the top 10 regions with the largest population changes, it offers more detailed information and visualizes the flow of interregional in- and out-migration data.

Additionally, the Population Migration Map menu visualizes monthly interregional in- and out-migration data between si, gun, and gu on a geospatial map, making it even easier to intuitively understand current migration trends.

Kim Jungjoo, Director of Policy Planning at the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, stated, "This new rural population movement feature is an example of further advancing the data capabilities of the KASS platform. We plan to continue expanding agricultural and food statistics content to make a tangible contribution to rural policy development and improvement of public services."