[Anchor]

While populations are rapidly declining, some rural areas are being left out of the rural basic income program simply because they belong to administrative cities. Calls are growing to expand the basic income scheme—currently centered on county regions—to rural areas within urban-rural complex cities.

Here is a report from JTV's Kang Hoon.

[Reporter]

Vast fields and paddies stretch out.

Osan-myeon in Iksan is administratively part of Iksan, but it is a rural area mostly composed of agricultural land.

Its agricultural land alone spans approximately 1,800 hectares, equivalent to 2,500 soccer fields, making it the largest in Iksan.

The population here dropped from 7,240 in 2023 to 6,572 in 2025.

That is a decrease of 668 people over two years, meaning roughly 1 out of every 10 residents has left.

[Song Ha-young / Osan-myeon, Iksan (Cafe Owner): There used to be people coming to buy coffee and things during the farming season, but the number has dropped a lot. I'd say it has decreased by about half out of every 10 people.]

Osan-myeon's population decline rate is more than double that of Muju-gun's Seolcheon-myeon, which recorded the highest decline rate among areas implementing the provincial rural basic income program during the same period.

There are 10 township-level (myeon) regions in the province that belong to city areas and boast higher population decline rates than any township or village in regions implementing the rural basic income nationwide.

While the rural basic income project is being implemented in Sunchang, Jangsu, Jinan, and Muju within the province, rural-urban city areas featuring agricultural and fishing villages have been excluded from the open competition.

President Lee Jae-myung stated during a Cabinet meeting on October 6 that the government would increase the rural-urban cooperation fund to over 1 trillion won and strengthen income safety nets for rural areas.

If the government expands its support for rural communities, institutional supplements should be swiftly pursued to extend the basic income to rural areas in urban-rural complex cities experiencing population decline, going beyond administrative boundaries.

(Video by Kwon Man-taek / JTV, Design by Won So-jung / JTV) JTV News, Kang Hoon