Gangwon State's Border-Area Counties See 43.5% Drop in Population in Their 20s Over 10 Years

【Financial News, Chuncheon = Reporter Kim Gi-seop】The population of people in their 20s in border-area counties in Gangwon State has nearly halved over the past 10 years, accelerating population decline in the border areas.
According to the Gangwon Research Institute on the 27th, research fellow Yang Cheol analyzed population changes in the border areas of Gangwon State from 2015 to 2024 in the recently published Policy Talk Talk report "Indicators That Look Young, 20-Somethings Who Are Disappearing," together with the Regional Statistics Division of the Gangwon Regional Data Office. The analysis found that 9,803 people, or 73.0% of the total population decline of 13,433 in Gangwon State during this period, were lost from the border areas, including Cheorwon County, Hwacheon County, Yanggu County, Inje County, Goseong County, Chuncheon, and Sokcho City.
Although the overall decline rate in the border areas was only 1.9%, the five counties alone saw their population fall from 151,382 to 135,376, a 10.6% decrease—3.1 times the 3.4% decline recorded in non-border counties. The researchers explained that Chuncheon's population grew by 7,223 during the same period, offsetting 45.1% of the 16,006-person decline in the counties and causing the actual scale of the contraction to be obscured by the average.
People in their 20s were at the center of the decline. Their population in the border-area counties fell from 23,441 to 13,244, a 43.5% decrease that accounted for 63.7% of the total population loss. Because active-duty soldiers cannot transfer their resident registration to their military units and are therefore not reflected in the statistics, the researchers viewed the decline in officers and civilian military employees following military restructuring—including the disbandment of the 27th Infantry Division and the 2nd Infantry Division and the relocation of the 6th Infantry Division—as the main factor. In 2019, when the 2nd Infantry Division was disbanded, the population of people in their 20s in the border-area counties fell 10.5% from the previous year, the largest annual decline in the 10-year period.
Yet the areas appear young based on key indicators. In 2024, the aging index in the border-area counties was 289.3, or 57.6% of the figure for non-border counties, which stood at 502.6. All five border counties ranked among the top five in Gangwon State for total fertility rate, led by Hwacheon County at 1.51 births per woman. However, the number of women of childbearing age fell 28.2%, while the number of births declined 43.8%.
The researchers proposed recommending to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety (MOIS) that weights reflecting population decline and the decline among people in their 20s be applied when selecting projects under the Special Act on Support for Border Areas and calculating national subsidy rates. They also proposed incorporating age-specific decline rates into the distribution of the Local Extinction Response Fund and the general local allocation tax. In addition, they said policies for people in their 20s and 30s should be separated and that support for helping the families of officers living off base settle locally should be placed on the agenda of the Civilian-Government-Military Cooperation Committee.
Yang Cheol said, "The border-area counties may appear to be places where support is not urgently needed if we look only at the aging index and total fertility rate, but both the population of people in their 20s and the number of births have fallen by more than 40%." He stressed, "To ensure that the changes are not obscured by Chuncheon's population growth, we need to redesign the support system using the pace of change at the county level as the benchmark."


[email protected] Kim Gi-seop Reporter