Young South Koreans, craving jobs and a slower pace of life, turn to farming

SEOUL — A year ago, freelance graphic designer Jeon Joo Young was cooped up in a high-rise apartment in the city of Gwanggyo, eating late dinners and burning the midnight oil to meet deadlines. Sleeping a mere two hours every day, the 25-year-old was burnt out.

Now Ms Jeon wakes up to a new routine. As sunlight streams into an elongated greenhouse overlooking paddy fields and winding dirt roads, the petite woman crouches on the ground, inspecting swathes of baby spinach in the soil for damaged leaves.

In January, Ms Jeon decided to trade her city life for the rustic countryside. She is now a full-time farmer working on her parents’ vegetable farm in Yongin, Gyeonggi province, about 50 km south of Seoul.

“Before, I only concentrated on how much money I could earn. The environment I was in before made me very materialistic, and I didn’t have any time to think about other things in my life,” she said, adding that the late nights took a toll on her health.

“Now, I start work when the sun rises, and stop once the sun sets. The quality of life here is better. I feel like I’ve found myself again.”

In South Korea, the farm is no longer the domain of the old. Like Ms Jeon, more young urbanites are moving to the countryside to pursue farming, lured by the appeal of living a quiet pastoral existence away from the bustle of overcrowded metropolises. They are also keen to tap the potential of a career in agriculture.

REVERSE MIGRATION

In the 70s and 80s, rapid industrialisation spurred a mass migration of rural households to big cities, with most heading to Seoul in search of better education and employment opportunities.

But a reverse exodus has emerged over the past few years, in a movement termed as gwinong or ‘return to farm’, fuelled by baby boomers in their 60s hoping to retire in the countryside. Now, young people are hopping onto the bandwagon, as jobs become increasingly scarce in cities.

According to Statistics Korea, a total of 496,000 people moved to the countryside in 2016. Half of the new rural population is now made up of young people under 30 years old, with half of them taking up farming.

With the new interest in farming, agricultural institutes and colleges across the country have seen a rising demand for their courses.

At the Gyeonggi Agricultural Institute, a quarter of the 300 applicants for its agricultural education courses this year were in their 20s and 30s, said Mr Lee Seung Hun, 37, an assistant team manager at the institute.

In April, the institute launched the Young Farmers’ Leadership Academy, a six-month programme aimed at nurturing farmers under 39 who intend to take over their parents’ farms.

The programme includes classes on agribusiness management, agricultural marketing, taxation and law, as well as farm succession strategy planning.

With the average age of farmers at 65, experts are hopeful the influx of youth will be the key to revitalising ageing farming communities.

Unlike the older generation who mainly produced raw agricultural goods, young farmers are diversifying into areas like processing, sales, distribution and agritourism, noted Mr Lee.

“Young people are more competitive; they are trying hard to challenge the traditional ways through which farming has always been done,” he said.

“It is difficult because their parents are involved in 70 to 80 per cent of the decision- making on the farm, so the younger people need to persuade their parents with what they have learnt.”

At her parents’ farm, Ms Jeon uses the spinach grown to manufacture food products like Korean rice snacks, spinach jam and tea bags with spinach and honey.

“My parents never had the time to do any of this because their work was too labourious. They would only sell the spinach, which is not profitable,” said Ms Jeon, who has created a unique brand for the farm.

Her parents — Mr Jeon Kyou Sik, 51, and Ms Lee Kyoung Lee, 47 — were former teachers who began the farm in 2015.

With Ms Jeon’s efforts, the farm’s expected net profit is 100 million won (S$120,000) this year, up from 75 million won in 2016.

Not far from Ms Jeon’s farm, a poster is plastered with the beaming face of 22-year-old farmer Kang Byeong Gu, with the words “Welcome to Twin Strawberry Experience Farm”.

Farming profits there have risen 30 per cent from 38 million won since Mr Kang began organising tours to his parents’ strawberry farm in March, where participants learn how to pick strawberries and make desserts.

After 10 years of attending school in nearby Yongin city, Mr Kang initially planned to remain there to become a professional sportsman.

But deterred by the short shelf life of an athlete, he enrolled in an agricultural university instead, returning to the countryside after graduating in 2016.

“I used to think farming was old- fashioned and backward. But young people can bring novel ideas to the farm. My parents are not accustomed to using social media sites or blogs to advertise our programme, which I’m good at,” he said.

STARTING FROM SCRATCH

While Ms Jeon and Mr Kang received a head start from their parents, the switch to farming life is a formidable task for urban dwellers with no agricultural connections or experience.

Despite government subsidies to attract new farmers, it can still cost an estimated 300 million won to purchase farmland of 1,000 sq m, together with basic farming machinery, said Mr Hwang Je Hun, assistant manager of the Beginning Farmers’ Centre, a governmental organisation in Seoul that helps people resettle in the countryside.

A 2016 survey conducted by the centre found the total annual income earned per household, in the year before switching to farming, was 46 million won on average.

But after the first year of farming, the total annual income shrank by more than half to 18 million won.

“Once you decide what type of crop to grow and where to grow it, it’s hard to change your plan. For those who come in without proper farming techniques, the possibility of failure increases so it’s harder for them to maintain a steady income,” said Mr Hwang.

About 15 per cent of these new farmers return to the city.

Last year, over 4,000 people from Seoul visited the Beginning Farmers’ Centre for consultations.

To limit the risks involved, the centre offers farm stays to young people so they may experience the rural life for a year before making their decision to move.

There are more than 100 independent centres located in different rural provinces that provide such support and education to potential farmers.

The transition was not easy for Mr Choi Jeung Hun, who used to work as a human resource team leader in Seoul, commanding a comfortable salary of 3 million won a month — above the country’s 2.2 million won median figure.

Last December, the 29-year-old gave all that up to move to Anseong in Gyeonggi province. He has spent the last eight months helping elderly farmers plant crops in their farms.

Having arrived from the city with no farming knowledge, Mr Choi recalls how the older farmers were initially hostile. Others believed he had relocated to the countryside because he failed to achieve corporate success in Seoul.

“A lot of grandmothers and older women in Anseong told me, ‘Oh you didn’t study, oh you didn’t have a job,’ and that didn’t make me feel good,” said Mr Choi, who left his company because he disliked the mundane office work and hierarchical workplace. “When retirees move from the city to the farm, people think it’s because they have lived their life to the fullest. But when young people do the same, people think you have a problem.”

Though it took a while, Mr Choi explained that he eventually gained the trust of elderly farmers by helping them with more strenuous tasks on their farms, such as lifting heavy sacks of potatoes.

With a younger crop of farmers, Mr Kim Jeong Seop, a research fellow at the Korea Rural Economic Institute (KREI), expects the social stigma attached to farming — perceived as a job for the lower-class — to be gradually eroded.

“Many people think farmers are ignorant and stubborn, that farming is a ‘3D’ job — dirty, dangerous and demeaning. But recently, young people who migrated to rural areas for farming were generally highly educated with variable talents.”

For these ex-urbanites, however, returning to the farm means sacrificing creature comforts they used to take for granted.

It takes a 45-minute drive from Ms Jeon’s farm, which spans five football fields, to get to the nearest bus station, making it difficult for her to head anywhere without a car.

“There is nothing around this place, not even a convenience store or a cultural institute. Sometimes I feel lonely because most of my friends live in Seoul, and I cannot meet them frequently,” lamented Ms Jeon. On the plus side, she appreciates having more time to “reflect” on her life.

While Mr Kim from KREI believes youth have the potential to come up with creative marketing strategies for farms, he suggests they temper their expectations of striking it rich.

The rural community is a good place to live, he said, after one gives up the idea of making a lot of money.

He explained that in the farming community, people must give and take.

“So young people had better think of the rural community as a place of life, not as a place of business.”

In the case of newlyweds Kim Han Sol, 26, and Han Na Ra, 32, they are more than eager to leave behind a cutthroat corporate world for greener pastures.

Both had been living in Hokkaido, Japan, for more than a year before Mr Kim dropped out of a human resource management master’s programme and Ms Han quit her trading job. They returned to South Korea in March.

The couple now live and work on a farm with a rice mill, producing traditional Korean rice cakes in Boryeong, South Chungcheong province, about 200 km south of Seoul.

Mr Kim said: “I realised I would not be fully happy as just a businessman. The business world is very political and you do not need to worry about these things in farming.”

To the couple, the move is a big leap of faith. It’s a risk they are willing to take for a more modest lifestyle — one where effort will gather tangible returns.

Said Mr Kim: “It’s a new adventure; we might succeed or we might fail. But to us, farming is a simple and honest living. As you sow, so shall you reap.”

Paige Lim, a final-year journalism student at Nanyang Technological University’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, did this report as part of the school’s Going Overseas For Advanced Reporting module. TODAY will be carrying other pieces on South Korea by students of the programme in the coming week.