South Korea’s Farming Households Rebound as Rural Aging Deepens
The number of South Korean farming, forestry and fishing households rose to 1.27 million in 2025, but older residents made up more than half of the sector’s population and average cultivated land fell to a 65-year low.
South Korea’s farming, forestry and fishing households increased in number in 2025, offering a sign of renewed movement toward rural livelihoods even as the data underscored deep aging and shrinking farm scale across the country.
The number of households in the three sectors reached 1.27 million, up 210,000 from five years earlier, according to the Ministry of Data and Statistics. Their combined population stood at 2.57 million, an increase of 191,000 over the same period. People living in farming, forestry and fishing households accounted for 5 percent of South Korea’s total population.
The rise in households was apparently linked to more people moving to farms. However, the population figures also showed that South Korea’s rural communities continue to face a pronounced demographic imbalance. Residents aged 65 and older represented 51 percent of the farming and fishing population, up 9 percentage points from five years earlier.
That shift means more than half of the population in those sectors is now of retirement age. The increase in the number of households therefore does not by itself signal that the long-running challenge of rural aging has eased. It instead coincides with a growing concentration of older people in communities that depend on agriculture and fishing.
Farm size also declined. The average cultivated area per farming household fell to 0.87 hectares, down 0.2 hectares from 2020. That was the smallest average since 1960, when the figure stood at 0.82 hectares. A statistics official attributed the decrease to the aging population.
The ministry’s figures also highlighted the limited sales scale of many agricultural households. In 2025, 12.4 percent of farming households generated more than 30 million won, or about $22,000, in sales from agriculture and livestock farming. Among fishing households, 27.7 percent exceeded the same sales threshold.
Taken together, the data present a mixed picture of rural South Korea. More households are participating in farming, forestry and fishing than five years ago, and the population attached to those sectors has also grown. At the same time, the share of older residents has climbed sharply, cultivated land per farm has contracted, and only a minority of farming households reported annual agricultural and livestock sales above 30 million won.
The figures suggest that the rebound in household numbers is occurring alongside, rather than reversing, the structural pressures facing rural communities. The composition and economic scale of those households will be central to judging whether renewed interest in rural life can translate into a broader and more durable revival.