YEONCHEON — Yeoncheon County in Gyeonggi Province has finalized its blueprint for countering population decline over the five years from 2027 to 2031. The plan covers 13 projects funded with 60 billion won from the government's regional extinction response fund.
The county said on the 2nd that it convened the second Yeoncheon County Population Decline Response Committee meeting of 2026 at the county office situation room on Aug. 31 and reviewed and approved the Second Basic Plan for Responding to Population Decline. Attendees included committee chair and Yeoncheon County Mayor Kim Deok-hyun, county council members and experts from universities, research institutes and the welfare sector.
The basic plan for responding to population decline is a statutory plan under Article 6 of the Special Act on Support for Population Decline Areas. Cities, counties and districts designated as population decline areas draw up the plan every five years, and the projects it contains feed into annual implementation plans and investment plans for the regional extinction response fund.
The second plan sets out a vision of "a settlement city where everyone enjoys today together and dreams of tomorrow." It is built around four strategies and 35 action projects: realizing a basic society that embraces the lives of all generations; improving the living environment to support safe and convenient daily life; building a foundation for future growth and a regional circular economy ecosystem; and strengthening local content to encourage visits and exchange.
Rather than identifying new projects, the county focused on realigning projects with a high likelihood of completion from a population policy perspective. The move follows an analysis of the first plan, which ran from 2022 to 2026 and was criticized for including too many projects and for low execution rates.
The regional extinction response fund will provide 12 billion won a year for five years, or 60 billion won in total, across the 13 projects. The money is concentrated on programs residents can feel directly, including projects linked to basic income for farming and fishing villages, integrated care, an education innovation ecosystem and solar income villages.
The county has designed its living population policy in stages, aiming to go beyond simply drawing more visitors to encourage repeat visits, longer stays, local spending and community ties that ultimately lead to permanent residence. The idea is to move away from competing with neighboring local governments for residents and instead prompt people who have experienced Yeoncheon to buy a second home there or become permanent residents.
The county is also overhauling how it measures results. Instead of stopping at how much of a budget was spent or whether a facility was completed, it will manage eight core indicators combining quantitative measures such as the resident population, net inflow of residents, living population and employment rate with qualitative measures such as resident happiness and the share of residents intending to stay.
Projects will undergo quarterly and semiannual reviews and one self-assessment a year, with underperforming projects adjusted and strong performers given priority for fund investment the following year.
At the meeting, members also raised suggestions on improving the educational environment, assessments reflecting the distribution of students, closing gaps in care for people with developmental disabilities, expanding places where local currency can be used, supplementing performance indicators for individual projects and quantifying the effect on population. The county plans to reflect those suggestions in stages in the implementation plans it draws up each year.
"Population policy now requires a scientific and multidimensional approach grounded in data," Kim said. "This plan has to be able to explain which generation's outflow each project is preventing and how much inflow it is creating, and that becomes the basis for persuading the central government and securing state funding." He added: "The first goal of population policy is for Yeoncheon to build a local structure that holds on to people on its own, so that the population growth that began with basic income for farming and fishing villages does not turn out to be a temporary phenomenon."
