Number of urban households turning to farming hits record in 2012

The number of urban households in South Korea that moved to regional provinces to take up farming rose to a record high last year, a parliamentary document showed Monday. The number of such households reached 11,220 at the end of 2012, up from 10,503 families tallied the previous year, according to the document by Statistics Korea submitted to parliament. It also marks the second consecutive year that the number of such households has surpassed 10,000, the document said. It has become a common social phenomenon in Korea that urban households, consisting of couples in their late 50s who have most likely retired from their jobs, leave the city and settle in a provincial area to take up farming as a fresh way of spending their later years. In recent years, there have been an increasing number of younger generations choosing to live such a way of life. The population of such households grew at a steady pace from 880 in 2001 to 2,218 in 2008 and 4,067 in 2010. In 2012, most of them moved to South Gyeongsang Province or South Jeolla Province, the document said.