村落社會における過疎の問題- 韓國と日本の比較をめざして -

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the sparseness of rural population in Korea and Japan, by comparing Korea's national policy for this problematic phenomenon with Japan's. Both countries seem to approach the sparseness of rural population, which resulted from a rapid economic growth, in considerably different ways. Korea has taken an indirect action, encouraging rural communities to deal with the problem of the population sparseness on their own by initiating a social movement. On the contrary, Japan has made direct efforts to handle it in a governmental and administrative aspect by pouring enormous budget into the alienated life in rural areas, and so on. Nevertheless, neither of them has still solved the problem of the rural population sparseness. So, it is necessary to clearly understand the realities of it in order to find out its cause and solution in a diverse fashion. Given my belief that a comparative study of the sparseness of rural population in Korea and Japan functions as an effective means of finding a good solution to the problem, in this paper, I have presented the primary data relevant to the population sparseness problem.