As South Korean villages empty, more primary schools face closings

[stutterflies.livejournal.com]

Chung Jeong-su, above, at Nogok Primary. He spends recess throwing paper planes. Farmers sent children to the school hoping they would escape their backbreaking work.
Credit: Jean Chung for The New York Times

NOGOK, South Korea — The post office pulled up stakes and moved away years ago. The police station is long gone. And so is the bank. Over the years, the residents of Nogok have watched almost every major institution disappear, victims of an exodus of young people that is emptying villages and towns across much of rural South Korea.

Now, Nogok is about to lose an important symbol of youthful vitality: Next spring, the local primary school will close when its only student, a 12-year-old named Chung Jeong-su, graduates.

“Villages around here have no more children to send,” the school’s only teacher, Lee Sung-kyun, said recently, looking over an empty, weed-filled playground surrounded by old cherry trees. “Young people have all gone to cities to find work and get married there.”

Nogok, which lies 110 miles east of Seoul, is typical of many rural South Korean towns. An idyllic cluster of 16 hamlets, it is nestled in a series of narrow valleys surrounded by lush hills. In the hills and valleys, farmers tend crops of potatoes, beans and red peppers; in town, persimmon and apricot trees grow in the well-tended gardens of every home. But the town also bears scars from the country’s rapid industrialization, a great transformation that places like Nogok helped unleash.

Credit: The New York Times

And the primary school itself played a large part in those changes.

Like countless other parents in the aftermath of the Korean War, the slash-and-burn farmers of Nogok saw education as the ticket for their children to escape lives of backbreaking work and poverty. Every morning, they would send them to study at Nogok Primary, with some of the children walking as many as five miles each way.

Later, the children joined streams of rural youths migrating to cities to seek higher education or factory jobs from the 1970s and onward, providing cheap and disciplined work forces to fuel the economy.

Many children from Nogok Primary, for instance, moved on to work as welders and painters at shipyards on the southern coast of South Korea, earning wages their fathers could hardly have imagined as they toiled on their hardscrabble plots in the hills around Nogok.

This exodus also overlapped with a government birth-control campaign that started in the 1960s and continued into the 1990s. In Nogok, married men reporting for mandatory army reserve training would receive condoms or exemptions from serving if they agreed to free vasectomies. Across South Korea, birthrates dropped from 4.5 children per woman in 1970 to 1.2 last year, one of the lowest rates in the world. Over the same period, the number of primary school students decreased by more than half to 2.7 million.

Hardest hit by this demographic shift were rural towns like Nogok and their public schools. Since 1982, nearly 3,600 schools have closed across South Korea, most of them in rural towns, for lack of children.

Chung Jeong-su with his teacher, Lee Sung-kyun, at Nogok Primary in Nogok, South Korea. The school will close after Jeong-su, its only student, graduates.
Credit: Jean Chung for The New York Times

Today, many villages look like ghost towns, with houses crumbling and once-bustling schools standing in weedy ruins, windowpanes cracked or full of cobwebs. In Nogok, the only store in the town center was closed during a recent visit in the afternoon.

“There are only old, useless people left here,” said Baek Gye-hyun, 55, a farmer here. “If we come across a young woman with a child, we stop and stare as if they were an endangered species.”

In 1960, Nogok had 5,387 people, 2,054 of them age 12 or younger. In 2010, the last year the government conducted a general census, the town reported a population of 615. Only 17 were 14 or younger.

Jeong-su, the Nogok Primary student, is the youngest child, and his 52-year-old father, Chung Eui-jin, the youngest married man in their village of Hawolsan-ri, which is part of Nogok. The school has not had a first grader since Jeong-su enrolled there five years ago. After two sixth graders graduated this spring, he was the only student left.

“It’s cool to have all the school to myself,” said Jeong-su, a shy boy with glasses, who said he wanted to become a veterinarian.

When asked what he would remember the most from his school days, he mentioned playing table tennis with his teacher, Mr. Lee.

An empty classroom at Nogok Primary, which will close next spring after Jeong-su, 12, graduates.
Credit: Jean Chung for The New York Times

Mr. Lee said the personalized attention was obviously good for Jeong-su. But he said he felt bad that the boy had no classmates with whom to share school memories later in life.

“Until last year, when we had several students, we used to play mini-soccer,” he said, referring to a stripped down version of the game for small numbers of players. “Now, that has become impossible.” At recess, Mr. Lee said, he and Jeong-su now spent their time throwing paper airplanes.

Most South Koreans now live in the tall apartment buildings that are spread out like dominoes across South Korean cities, but many still bemoan the shrinking of rural communities. The slow death of rural schools is particularly poignant in a culture that cherishes hometown and school ties.

Even decades after leaving rural hometowns, many urban migrants stay connected through “dongchanghoe,” or school alumni associations, whose bonds are so strong that politicians often use them as vote-gathering tools.

“It’s a sorry sight,” said Mr. Baek, a graduate of Nogok Primary, pointing at the weeds in the school’s playground. “When I was a student here, 300 children were crawling all over there, giving weeds no time to grow.”

In 1990, for the 60th anniversary of the school, graduates pooled money to build statues of an elephant and a lion, as well as a monument that urges students to nurture their “dreams into the future, into the world.” But by 1999, the school had lost so many students it became a branch of another school, Geundeok Primary School, in the nearby town. Today, the monument stands forlorn, overlooking a basketball hoop, slides and soccer goal posts rusting in the school field.

Nogok Primary School earlier this year. Industrialization and urban migration hollowed the town.
Credit: Jean Chung for The New York Times

Inside the two-story concrete school building, it is oddly silent.

The wooden floors creaked when Jeong-su, Mr. Lee and the school’s janitor, Lee Dong-min, walked in on a recent school day. Walls lined with crayon drawings and origami created by former students bore witness to a busier past.

Gathering dust in empty classrooms were big-screen TVs, table tennis tables, computers, a drum set, a piano, telescopes, anatomical charts, book-filled shelves, and desks and chairs, all empty.

Painting and guitar instructors visit the school twice a week to give Jeong-su lessons. A yellow van operated by the local educational office delivers lunch for the boy and his teacher.

It cost more than 100 million won (about $87,000) a year to run the school, Mr. Lee said.

“You can’t say all the excess is justified by one student,” said Kim Bok-hyun, 71, a Nogok villager.

Mr. Kim used to sell pencils, gum and toys to Nogok Primary students from a shop in front of the school. But he closed up years ago because of a lack of customers. He now spends most of his time sitting on a chair on the roadside, watching the few buses and trucks that pass by.

Some rural towns started campaigns to save their schools, hiring buses to transport children from neighboring towns and even offering free housing for couples moving in with school-age children.

Similar efforts did not work for Nogok, said Kim Jong-sik, 58, a village chief in the area.

“There is no one coming in to live here, only people moving out,” said Mr. Kim, who said all his own children lived in cities. “With all the best schools, jobs and shopping malls concentrated in big cities, their attraction for young people has become irreversible.”

By Choe Sang-hun for The New York Times

Comments

[typhlogirl.livejournal.com]

I've heard this is becoming common in Japan, as well - all the young people moving away to the cities, leaving the villages stripped of the next generation. It's quite sad, really.

I'm curious if this is going to become a phenomenon all over the world (if it isn't already, of course). I remember when I was in Budapest, I learned that 20% of Hungary's entire population lives there, and more and more are moving there from the countryside. They said it was basically the same problem - young people moving to the big city, rather than staying in the smaller towns/villages.

[4minutesluts.livejournal.com]

it already very much is

[typhlogirl.livejournal.com]

Holy shit! When put into graph/infographic form it's fucking confronting, jfc

[bomsnose.livejournal.com]

that's not only hungary, though we take every trend to the max. it's really freaking hard to go to school in hungary anywhere that is not budapest or one of the few other towns.
at least in the korean village in the article they kept the school open (in hungary they close them much earlier.)

[kjc48.livejournal.com]

“There are only old, useless people left here,” said Baek Gye-hyun, 55
Please, tell me how you really feel.

As Caribbean Canadian this issue always interest me. My family obvious moved very far away from home for better opportunities~, but at the same time, those who stayed in the Caribbean choose to live in their small villages and commute to work their jobs in the big cities.

The big problem here is that national governments are choosing to pool all resources and opportunities into only the biggest cities.

Who's going to replace all these retired farmers???

[ariellm13.livejournal.com]

That's actually a big contributor, that these farmers don't really need replacing. In America at least, big companies own their own farms and such or they are out least partnered with a farm. Meanwhile small town farmers can self sustain for a long time but other professions can't. The farmer produce can be picked up and shipped. The farmers can live off of their crops and live stock. Ultimately, if everything goes south, they can sell land. The other people though? They need business. A teacher needs students. A doctor needs patients. A gas station needs residents who own cars.

[keki7.livejournal.com]

Child we must talk more, I'm originally from the Caribbean myself!

Canada's maritime provinces face a similar reality. Every year the number of young adults shrink. Everyone's heading out west to make some bucks, and you can't really blame them when there are so few job opportunities here.

[adlyeith.livejournal.com]

This is sad, and it almost makes me feel guilty.

I live in a small village, less than 7,000 people live here, but it is a suburb of a little bit larger city (roughly 100,000 people). However, there still really are no job opportunities here for people that have the sort of interests that I do (linguistics, something that enables me to travel, something that pays a living wage). Full-time employees here are expected to live on $8.25 (roughly) an hour because housing isn't entirely outrageous.

And yet, I am desperately trying to escape to a sprawling city with millions of people and endless opportunities.

However, we don't really have the problem of people moving away and never coming back. Many of the kids I graduated with have returned to raise families here, the schools are being updated...but more and more of our farmland is being sold off to make room for housing developments that are eating up the "country" and causing many people to sell their homes to get away from it.

[episkia.livejournal.com]

Oh this breaks my heart.

I once went on exchange in Japan and I homestayed with the most wonderful family (truly, they were the most beautiful souls) in the country. Their primary school was shutting down the year after too, because there were not enough students - perhaps 20-30 of them? The grounds were huge, the kids were really smart and talented, but it wasn't cost efficient. The closest shopping complex was 1.5 hours away, further for entertainment - and yet they wouldn't bat an eye taking us out to eat or karaoke or bowling. Their two daughters did ballet there, twice a week. It certainly is a long drive, but it was so normal for them. And they would borrow like ten DVDs every week, and the whole family (minus the dad) would just sit around under the warm table and watch TV all night while cooking and eating and chatting.

I thought it was idyllic, but only because we were there for three weeks probably. I understand parents' hearts for sending their kids to the city, and even kids who rebel and run away asap to the city, but it really is creating a lot of problems.

[9celcius.livejournal.com]

As a person who grew up in the suburbs and will most likely end up working in a city (well, ideally end up working in a city since my goal profession has to do with natural resource policy...) I can't say I have personally witnessed this. But, I don't really see a solution for this other than maybe time? There has always been trends of generations of young people moving into areas due to circumstances. For example the influx of young adults into urban areas with lower rent, which eventually might lead to gentrification of these areas as the income of those moving in grows. As these areas get more expensive the next generation of young adults find places that are more affordable for them, etc.

I feel like what might happen is that city living will somehow become too expensive or un-ideal and people might move outwards perhaps? Although I can't say if they would move all the way back out to rural areas rather than suburbs.

[mamamoos.livejournal.com]

your last few points about cities is exactly what's happening to london actually. young people are being forced about bc it's just too expensive and more and more of the rich are buying property. i actually find that really sad bc it's destroying london's diversity and culture (eg. historic buildings being knocked down to make way for expensive high-rises) but maybe it'll help this issue. people i know are just planning to up and move to cities in other countries though...

[sand-nicky.livejournal.com]

I was just about to comment on that. Everybody here after years and years of renting want to get a proper house, one they actually own and so they buy the houses outside London. If you've got a car or there is a train line, it's much more cost-effective to buy a property in the suburbs. I recently had started renting a one-bedroom flat from my young brother and me in the North West, and omg it costs me quite a bit of money TT____TT

[mamamoos.livejournal.com]

london is ridiculous. luckily our family bought a flat in inner north london like ten years ago and it has literally doubled in value about four times. definitely it's much more plausible to live in the suburbs, it's really sad people are growing up in the city then having to move out. it's really sad the direction london's going in.

[hyunbiased.livejournal.com]

I live in the middle of nowhere (my town is just under 5000 people but we are the biggest town for 45mins drive in any direction, the next biggest town is only around 10000) and one of our elementary schools just closed, fortunately there are still a couple others left

This is a big problem in a town about half an hour north that has less than 1000, the mine just closed so there are almost no jobs there anymore, the town will probably soon die with no prospects for employment beyond family dollar

I have to be honest though, I will not be living in my town in the future once I graduate school, there are no career prospects here besides service since our main industry in tourism, I have worked all over town and people pretty much just shuffle between different similar jobs, and because of low pay waiters and waitresses might be working at 3 different restaurants

The Western US is highly urbanised and I think that this is actually a good thing (except when places have not enough water to support the population...California...) it is much more environmentally friendly to live in a city. You reduce much of the transport emissions, the footprint (excluding suburbia) is smaller, etc

In the future there will be even more urbanisation and I think that is a good thing, but I hope that I will be able to return and help my small hometown in the future

[senshicalico.livejournal.com]

I mean same shit happens here in America. In my town of about 1000 people (30 miles in either direction to a bigger town of... 2000 people lol) the main industries that brought people in were fishing and lumber. Lumber died decades ago taking all the jobs with it. Now fishing is long past dying and struggling to maintain. The only people who make a living there are retirees or trust-fund types who want to live in the natural~ area.

It's a beautiful place, but hell to grow up (epic boredom) in and there is absolutely no reason to stay. I left for Japan and then the biggest city in my state as soon as I could. I need a social life. I need a reason to leave the house more than once every two months. (Seriously.) I need food that doesn't cost 3x as much as the norm and yet we have no money. The city is about as expensive, but at least here I am making friends and having a fucking life.

This is the problem though. These small rural areas can't keep up with the demands of current economies. Young people are sent to school and... then go to where their education will pay them. It's not that I hate my hometown. It's very beautiful and some people are really nice there. It's a great place to raise small children because of how safe and clean it is. But once you're past puberty you're begging to leave and actually see the world.

Since I was in HS 10 years ago (public school and grad class of 24 students) the school board has been selling schools and combining them all into one building. When I went to elementary school 20 years ago there were about 150 students. now I think there are about 50. And this went from being kids from one town to two combined. Eventually I think everyone is going to be just in the high school building. and they'll close the elementary school. It's so sad, but... what is there to do? Unless these towns find SOME WAY to start actual careers and offer better transit to more populated areas for things like day trips, they will continue to die.

Although I see "110 miles away from Seoul" and boggle because that's such a tiny distance to me. But I'm from Oregon so we drive three hours just to go shopping lol. (three hours = 150 miles.) Then home again in the same day. It's all geographical perspective I guess.

ETA: Also the thing about rural areas is that they hinge almost completely on agriculture and the like. As societies develop, they take over more and more agricultural land to turn into something else, either moving the farms farther out or importing food from countries that are still hamlet and village-based. Being a farmer is a hard, HARD life for many with so many uncertainties. The only people who become farmers either were born into it (although every generation more children say FUCK THAT) or they're a rare unicorn who feels passionate about it. It's in no way what it used to be.

[http://users.livejournal.com/reminisce__/]

I go to a university that was formerly rural, but is now turning into a suburban-city due to its productivity. Unless national governments and states wise up that it's important to attract diverse and growing industries, and give them cheaper places to start up (ala Detroit and its many industries), it will continue to be a concentration overflow into large cities for opportunities. This results in a skyrocketing price of living that cannot be kept up to pace, and then eventually, those who "make it" might come back to their original hometowns to set up businesses, but most likely, they will be struggling to make enough money in the city.

Vicious cycle ;(

[xxhna.livejournal.com]

I actually do something similar to this. I work/rent in the city during the week, but go back to my town for the weekend.

[mamamoos.livejournal.com]

mte. my mum got made redundant and we moved from london to a little town in france and she started working for herself. she commutes to london every month or two for work stuff. the internet has made this kind of life much more plausible and it seems more and more popular, to be self-sufficient too etc. there are a lot of people who'd kill to do it but esp when you have kids i guess there's this fear of not being somewhere where you can make enough money

[mamamoos.livejournal.com]

yep, you need a safety net really, like my family owns a property in london that we rent out and could sell if things got rough. problem is most people don't have something like that, especially younger people. the whole cost of living is indeed much higher in cities, the rent from our 1 bedroom flat there covers nearly all the rent and bills of our 3 bedroom house here lmfao and then food and everything is so much too

[ashiva.livejournal.com]

This is happening in the countryside almost in all countries. All I can say that most young people don't want to live in the country side permanently so you better develop summer cottage culture to keep the countryside alive at least to some extent. I know that at least in my country most grocery stores etc. in the countryside couldn't survive without the business they get from people spending their vacations and weekends on their summer cottages.

[mamamoos.livejournal.com]

this. i guess as the populations of cities grow, the more people there are who then long to spend time away from it when they can, so i'm sure it's tourism and the summer season especially that keep a lot of places alive

[ariellm13.livejournal.com]

Honestly, it's expected. Small towns get to a point of stabilization and then they have a major fall off if they don't have a way to gain new residents. Kids don't want to stay for a variety of reasons and the ones that do end up having to leave because of the small number of job/academic opportunities.

[xxhna.livejournal.com]

Working in the city is a major thing in my area. A great majority of people commute from smaller towns to work in the city. But then again, most of the commute varies from 20 minutes to 1 1/2 hours each day (depending on traffic, accidents, etc). But I did find the further the distance from the city, the rate at which people worked in the city would decrease because of the distance. These towns had jobs and support though. I guess because America is highly urbanized, these kinds of problems do not happen too often. I have seen many smaller towns grow from developments and increase in population. My parent's town had a population of about 10k when they reached the area; it is now around 16-17k.

It seems that the heart of the economy stems from the city areas in SK. Which is driving the reasoning for people to want to work there. Without support from people and industry, towns that lack either one would stop growing when they reach that point. Hopefully, that expands to those other areas as well.

[shineebambi.livejournal.com]

I used to have drive and hour and 15 one way to go to work which was long for me but where I was living there really was nothing for at least 45 minutes if you didn't work on a boat or in a mill

[shineebambi.livejournal.com]

I grew up in a small fishing village in the us and not gonna lie the second I had a chance to run and go to a bigger city ( and by bigger I went from under 2k to 6k) I did. I think part of the problem is that small towns and villages have little to offer for those of us that grew up in the digital age.

[anon1997.livejournal.com]

This is sad. That school looks a lot more prepared and professional than mine. There are 700 students in my school, and it lacks a lot of things! Even though, we are not in the city but if there's this much students, it needs more attention.

[madielou.livejournal.com]

the town i live in has 4k people living there and a few years back there was a huge debate on closing one of the elementary schools because there weren't enough kids there. im pretty sure my entire grade in elementary was less than 100 kids, probably maybe 50? in high school the total was like 245.
it's very rural here and so there's a lot of farmers/ migrant workers who work and live here so i don't see the population plummeting too soon but you never know.

[chibi-rei.livejournal.com]

I used to live in a big city in Korea, but my first teaching job was outside of the city in the boonies. My workplace had students, but there was a very small village with a decent sized school in it. I wonder how many kids actually went there? Because the city was only about a 20 minute bus ride away, and idk the nearest school might have been closer. I can't decide if this is sad or progress? :\

[kyokomurasaki.livejournal.com]

This is definitely sad but also kind of inevitable as many comments have said. People, especially young people, will always migrate to wherever the jobs are. Plus it's become a cultural expectation in many places for young people to pursue higher education, which is generally geared toward more white-collar jobs. Not to mention the fact that not many people are keen to pursue farming work anymore and small farming itself is dying due to large-scale agribusiness. As long as urban areas remain the main centers of employment, I think rural populations are going to continue to shrink (which is going to affect rural businesses, which will cause more people to seek jobs elsewhere, etc. etc.)

Also I had no idea about the birth control program; I guess that has to be a contributing factor to why SK's birth rates are so low.