Youth Migration, Population Concentration in the Capital Region, and Population Crisis in Non-Capital Regions

Abstract

A recent census by Statistics Korea revealed that in 2019 the population of the capital region accounted for the first time for more than half of Korea’s total population. The concentration of population in the capital region is attributed to the complex interplay of many factors including the age selectivity of migration, population aging in non-capital areas, youth issues, and the changing generational composition of population in small cities and rural towns. For a considerable period of time, however, public and policy attention to population concerns remained centered mostly on low fertility and population aging at the national level, while population changes in non-capital regions were treated as not so much an issue of population as one of regional development or underdevelopment. It is only of late that the population issues of non-capital regions have come to the fore of the public agenda; yet, they are still often treated as issues of “population concentration in the capital region” or “demographic extinction” in non-capital regions, reduced to isolated issues specific to certain individual regions. This brief attempts to look at the concentration of population in the capital region in terms of youth migration and its impact on populations in non-capital regions.