Seoul, Feb 2 (IANS) South Korea’s farming population has dropped to less than three million, decades after the country moved towards rapid industrialization, a media report said Thursday.
According to the government-funded Korea Rural Economic Institute (KREI), the number of people dedicated to farming was estimated at around 2.96 million, dipping below the symbolic three million mark just a decade after falling below four million, The Korea Times reported.
Farmers and their families accounted for 5.9 percent of the national population in 2011, which represented a 0.2 point drop from the level the previous year.
The proportion of the farming population to the total is expected to decline to 5.1 percent in 2017 and 4.4 percent in 2022, according to government reports.
Over 14.42 million South Koreans relied on farming in 1970 and the number was still above 10 million in 1980. However, the population in farming communities declined to 6.66 million in 1990, 4.03 million in 2000 and 3.06 million in 2010, the newspaper said.
“The news simply keeps getting worse for Korean farmers as the country inked a slew of free trade agreements with major economies such as the US and Europe that flex bigger muscles in agriculture,” the daily said.
Aside from its deal with the US, South Korea has so far signed FTAs with a variety of economies, such as the European Union, Chile, Singapore and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Next on the to-do list are deals with China, Canada and Australia.
