South Korean Cultural Ecology - 1905 to 1990
Part 3: The Plight of the Farmers - Page 20

E. Loss of Rural Mates

Labor was not the only group that paid the high price for high-speed industrialization. Farmers have had to pay a heavy price as well. South Korea has the highest in the world, largely due to the migration of women to the cities for factory work. Women were paid much less than men and were more advantageous to hire. They also were more willing to live in dormitories and could be controlled more easily than men. Due to the inability of farmers to secure wives because of the scarcity of women in the rural areas, in the first six months of 1989 alone, 21 farmers took their own lives. The rate of migration from rural to urban is precipitous, about 400,000 yearly in the 1980s. The vast majority has been young men and women and it left the agricultural work force in a rapidly aging state. The average age of the agricultural work force age 50 or older went from 19% in the early 1980s to 33% by the end of 1988. In percentage, the portion of people living in rural areas dropped from 56% in 1965 to 17% in 1988. In absolute numbers, the rural population went from 15.8 million to 7.8 million people.