Legal action against population decline and local extinction
Authors:   National Public Law Review, Kim Nam Wook 
Published: June 2024

Korea has been implementing a policy of restricting birth from the 1960s to the 1990s amid explosive population growth after the Korean War. In the provinces, the rural population and the population of small cities have been concentrated in large cities and metropolitan areas due to lack of jobs, infrastructure, and capital. Korea's population began to decline in 2021 after peaking in 2020, and in 2023, it became a country with the lowest birth rate in the world at 0.72, and will soon become a super-aging society.
The government has enacted the Framework Act On Low Birth Rate In An Aging Society, the Special Act on Local Autonomy Decentralization and Balanced Regional Development, and the Special Act On Support For Depopulation Regions to promote balanced regional development and to prepare legal policies to cope with population decline and local extinction. In Korea, there are many places where baby cries have stopped, and the equity of the burden of tax and social security costs between generations is a problem due to the low birth rate and the aging society, and the burden of social welfare costs is increasing in local governments.
In this paper, after analyzing the current status of Korea's legislation on population decline and regional extinction response, we propose a plan to enact the Regional Revitalization (Regional Revitalization) Act since there are many population decline response laws, but there is no general law on regional extinction response. In addition, although encouraging immigration is not a fundamental measure to respond to population decline and regional extinction, the promotion of flexible local immigration policies in countries such as Australia, the United States, and France is becoming a major factor in population growth, so a regional-led local immigration system must be devised. do. In addition, in the case of Europe, when a city is created as a smart city, it is common for the population to concentrate, and as the population decreases in cities or rural areas with underdeveloped social infrastructure due to ICT convergence technology, cities in population-decreasing areas We review the issue of smart city creation within the city. In addition, when population decreases and regions disappear, there is no need to continuously expand and create cities as is currently the case, so the issue of introducing an appropriate location planning system to create a compact city (compressed city) is reviewed. In addition, we examine the expansion of the scope of use of the living population support introduced by the Depopulation Area Act and the concept and requirements of the related population, and review the issue of introducing a corporate hometown love donation tax to respond to population decline and regional extinction. Lastly, since population decline and regional extinction cannot be resolved through financial support alone, implementation of institutional guarantees for marriage and family community guaranteed under the Constitution, establishment of a livable local environment and infrastructure, provision of sufficient jobs and guaranteed income, transportation, education, and culture. I hope that the Constitution will be amended to create an equal living environment in the metropolitan area and local areas by guaranteeing accessibility to medical care, etc.