SPACE September 2025 (No. 694)
Rapid population decline is shaking the fabric of small and medium-sized cities to the core. To rebuild these cities, we need to move away from the inertia of regeneration and take a perspective that acknowledging change. This is where the Mid-Size City Forum comes in. They look at phenomena outside the metropolitan area and seek urban and architectural alternatives to the crisis.
[Series] The Possibilities Inherent in Extinction, Mid-Size City Forum
01 What is Happening Outside the Metropolitan Area
02 Thinning Phenomenon
03 Urban Perforation
04 Erasing Plan
05 Ad-Hoc Architecture 1
06 Ad-Hoc Architecture 2
07 Global Mid-Size City
08 Temporary Mid-Size City
09 Mutation of Facilities 1
10 Outside the Mid-Size City
11 Mutation of Facilities 2
Beyond the familiar opposition of capital and province lies a deeper story—that of the provincial small and medium sized (hereinafter mid-size) city. In rural areas, the shadow of decline is even more pronounced. Where people have grown scarce, architecture no longer serves its original purpose. The houses and schools abandoned following the collapse of communities is giving way to what might be called the architecture of the non-human: livestock barns, rice mills, and solar power plants. Built with efficiency and utility in mind, these facilities are expanding in scale and becoming increasingly mechanised. The picture painted by the Mid-Size City Forum leaves one wondering whether this is a snapshot of our reality or an extract from near-future science fiction. Quietly but decisively, the rural landscape is entering unfamiliar territory.
Large-scale, mechanised architecture of the non-human—a large livestock barn in Yongdam-ri, Jucheon-myeon, Namwon-si, Jeollabuk-do
Mid-size cities are divided into urban areas at the ‘dong’ and ‘eup’ level, and the rural regions at the ‘myeon’ level. This issue turns its focus to the changes taking place outside the urban sphere, in the countryside. Here, population decline and ageing are advancing at a far steeper rate than in the urban districts of mid-size cities. What kinds of changes are unfolding in these rural areas, and what landscapes are emerging as a result? By examining these recent cultural shifts, we seek to glimpse the future of rural areas where depopulation is accelerating at an alarming rate.
With populations shrinking so dramatically, many villages will be left with only a handful of elderly residents and are expected to gradually disintegrate, with a significant number of households disappearing after 25 years. The consequence will be numerous vacant houses, gradually erased over time, dismantling the collective form of villages once made up of clusters of buildings.
The Countryside: The Frontline of Rapid Disappearance
Within mid-size cities, population decline is unfolding far more sharply in rural areas than in their urban counterparts. Looking at urban districts within these cities, we see populations rose from the 1970s until around the 1990s, after which they began to fall. Rural areas, by contrast, have been in steady and steep decline since the 1970s. The result is a widening gap between the two. Take the cases of Namwon, Jeongeup and Gimje in Jeollabuk-do; Sangju, Gyeongsangbukdo; Miryang, Gyeongsangnam-do; and Gongju, Chungcheongnam-do. From their urban peak in the 1990s, populations in these city districts have fallen by 224%, 30%, 18.9%, 25.5%, 19.1% and 8.8% respectively. Yet in the same cities, rural populations have plummeted since 1970 by 81.4%, 84%, 83.1%, 79.5% and 77.4%. This collapse is directly tied to the decline of the farming population. As of 2024, the total number of people in farm households nationwide stands at around 2 million—a drop of 81.5% from some 10.8 million in 1980. In Seobukmyeon, Mungyeong, Gyeongsangbuk-do, the farming population dropped from 7,277 in 1980 to just 766 today. Similar patterns can be found across much of the rural area: in Nasan-myeon, Hampyeong, Jeollanam-do; Gabuk-myeon, Geochang, Gyeongsangnam-do; Sangjeonmyeon, Jinan, Jeollabuk-do; and Sayang-myeon, Cheongyang, Chungcheongnam-do, populations have shrunk by 75.5%, 72.7%, 86.1%, and 76.9%, respectively, compared with rates in the 1980s. The ageing of the farming population is advancing at a striking pace. In the 1970s, only 4.3% of all farm households were headed by those aged 65 or older. By 2024, that share had risen to 55.8%. In Euncheok-myeon, Sangju; Sanbuk-myeon, Mungyeong; Sandong-myeon, Namwon; and Hwangjeon-myeon, Suncheon, Jeollanam-do, the proportion of residents over 65 now stands at 54.2%, 49.6%, 49.7% and 54.7% respectively—more than ten times higher than the 4.4%, 4.6%, 4.7% and 4.8% recorded in the 1970s. This acceleration is far more dramatic in rural myeon districts than in urban dong or eup districts within mid-size cities. In Namwon, for example, the proportion of over-65s is 25.5% in the dong and eup areas, but 46% in the rural myeon areas—a gap of 21.5%. The same trend holds elsewhere: in Jecheon, Chungcheongbuk-do; Goheung, Jeollanam-do; Hapcheon, Gyeongsangnam-do; and Geochang, the rural ageing rate exceeds that of the urban districts by 23.2%, 22%, 24.1%, and 28.4%, respectively. Both population decline and demographic ageing are thus progressing far more rapidly in the rural myeon than in the urban dong and eup of mid-size cities. Unless there is a significant inflow of new residents, the population density of rural areas is expected to fall to less than half its current level within the next two decades.▼1
The Crisis of Eup, Myeon and Ri
The administrative geography of mid-size cities consists of dong and eup in urban areas and myeon in rural areas. Below these lies the ‘ri ’ – the smallest administrative unit – usually made up of a cluster of small villages. In rural regions, several ri combine to form a myeon, with its administrative centre (myeon centre) at the heart. Here public facilities are concentrated: the myeon office (administrative welfare centre), schools, police substations, post offices, public health centres, branches of the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation, and welfare centres. This hierarchical system of governance stretches back to the Joseon dynasty and was further reinforced during the Japanese colonial period.▼2 It has long provided a spatial framework for subdividing the national territory, maintaining order across the land and guiding the distribution of public services. Yet the rapid depopulation and ageing of rural areas are shaking this structure to its core. Village communities at the ri level are breaking apart. Schools in myeon centres face closure due to collapsing enrolments. Even basic amenities are shutting down, leaving these centres increasingly unable to function as service hubs for daily life. This trend is expected to accelerate further. According to spatial analysis by Lee Bokyeong, a research fellow at the Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements (KRIHS), who projected future populations using a 1km grid nationwide, ‘by 2050, compared with 2020, populations will increase in the capital region, the northern part of Chungcheongnam-do, Sejong, Daejeon, and the outskirts of certain metropolitan cities—but in most other parts of the country, they will decline.’▼3 In other words, growth will be confined to the capital and selected metropolitan areas, while depopulation will deepen elsewhere. As a result, by 2050, the population density gap between the capital region and the rest of the country is forecast to widen significantly. In most rural areas, the population will have fallen by at least 50%. A closer look at Imsil, Jinan in Jeollabukdo and Haman, Gyeongsangnam-do shows that in many rural districts, density will drop below 50 residents per km2. The same study also estimates that by 2050, so-called ‘uninhabited black spots’ – areas where no one is expected to live – will account for 3.9% of the national territory.▼4 (...)
_
1 Statistics on population decline in mid-size cities, farming population, and ageing rates were referenced from: Statistics Korea, ‘Population Census’ (1970 – 2024); Korea Statistical Information Service ‘e-Regional Indicators’; Han Seokho et al., A Study on Development of the Korea Agricultural Population Model, Korea Rural Economic Institute, 2010.
