1. Study Objectives and Method

￮ Recently, there has been a growing sense that Korea’s rapidly shrinking population and aging society may accelerate regional extinction. Thus, the authorities are under increasing pressure to formulate region-specific customized plans to effectively counteract this regional extinction crisis.

With decentralization gaining momentum, the central government has handed over many of its rural development projects to local governments and will continue to do so at a faster rate.

￮ For example, local governments now have full authority over community-based agricultural and rural projects, such as establishing villages, overhauling basic living infrastructure, and restoring rural environments. These governments aim to maximize project effectiveness by planning and implementing comprehensive and viable region-specific policies that focus on regional conditions and characteristics. However, many local governments find it difficult to break away from existing policies that rely on subjective judgment as they lack detailed information and data on agricultural and rural communities. Furthermore, relevant region-specific project support systems are scarce.

￮ This study aims to leverage rural community border maps to identify agricultural and rural community data pertinent to policy decision-making and present a plan to build systems where community-level spatial information can be gathered and utilized.

￮ The scope of this study encompasses 1) assessing the current status of rural development policies, 2) analyzing the current status of the systems and databases tailored to agricultural and rural communities, 3) promoting the detailed design and pilot construction of rural communities’ spatial information, and 4) presenting plans to construct spatial information utilization systems at the community level. The proposed pilot construction targets are Iksan City, Jeongeup City, and Wanju County.

￮ The research methods include analyzing information systems and datasets applicable to agricultural and rural communities, a literature review and case studies of the pilot construction of community-level spatial information systems, spatial analysis in ArcGIS, and expert advisory sessions.

2. Conclusion and Policy Suggestion

￮ To seamlessly transfer rural development projects from the central government to local governments, community-level spatial information and utilization systems must be developed so local governments can proactively devise and implement corresponding policies. More importantly, this challenging task must be approached and promoted as a national policy.

￮ Local governments must establish a collaborative mechanism through which Statistics Korea’s raw data is channeled in real time to secure community-level spatial information as a precondition to successfully completing the above systems. This, in turn, necessitates cooperation from Statistics Korea and the loosening of the Personal Information Protection Act to facilitate the provision of raw data.

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