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| This photo shows a farmer works in a potato field in Chuncheon, 75 kilometers northeast of Seoul, March 19. Yonhap |
The number of Koreans in the agrofisheries sector fell in 2022 from a year earlier, data showed Wednesday, reflecting the rapidly aging population.
The number of households in the farming business totaled 1.02 million in 2022, down 0.8 percent from the previous year, according to the data compiled by Statistics Korea.
The number of farmers dropped 2.3 percent on-year to 2.16 million.
In the fishing sector, the number of families fell 1.8 percent on-year to 42,500 last year, with the population decreasing 3.2 percent to 90,800 over the period.
People aged 65 and above accounted for 49.8 percent of the population in the farming business, up 3 percentage points from a year earlier. They took up 44.2 percent of the people involved in the fishing sector, rising 3.7 percentage points over the period.
Over the past decades, an increasing number of younger Koreans living in rural areas have migrated to cities in pursuit of higher-paying jobs, and this trend has accelerated in recent years due to the aging population.
Just 23,179 babies were born in Korea in January, sinking 6 percent from a year earlier, a separate report from Statistics Korea showed earlier. It marked the lowest number for any January since the statistics agency started compiling monthly data in 1981.
The number of babies born in Korea has been falling on-year for 86 consecutive months.
Meanwhile, among farming households, just 3.8 percent saw their annual sales reach 100 million won ($75,815) or more in 2022, down 0.1 percentage point from the previous year.
The ratio for fishery households, on the other hand, moved up 0.5 percentage point to 17 percent, the data showed. (Yonhap)
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