Resident-Led Daily Life and Welfare Services to Expand in Rural Areas... 300 Communities to Be Fostered by 2028

Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Announces First “Rural Community-Based Economic and Social Services Activation Plan” (2026?2028)

The government has decided to take full-scale action to improve living conditions in rural areas, where it has become increasingly difficult to access welfare services due to aging and population decline. The plan is to foster resident-led communities to provide the daily life and welfare services that residents need, and to significantly expand outreach services such as home-visit buses and mobile markets.

On December 30, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs established and announced the first “Rural Community-Based Economic and Social Services Activation Plan,” which will be implemented from 2026 to 2028. This plan was prepared in accordance with the “Act on the Promotion of Community-Based Economic and Social Services in Rural Areas,” which was enacted in August of last year.

An official from the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs stated, “In rural areas, the demand for care is increasing due to the deepening of aging, but the absolute decrease in the resident population, that is, depopulation, has led to not only a lack of welfare and medical infrastructure, which has long been an issue, but also, recently, many areas are struggling to provide even basic daily services. The shortage of daily life services in rural areas cannot be addressed solely by market functions or public policy. Therefore, there is a growing need to guarantee the basic living standards of rural residents through resident-led service provision, which is why this activation plan has been established.”

First, the Ministry aims to increase the number of resident-led communities, which serve as the main providers of daily life services in rural areas, from 173 in 2024 to 300 by 2028. The number of service communities providing services such as home repairs, meal delivery, and laundry will be expanded from 40 in 2025 to 120 in 2028. The number of social farms, which provide education and healing functions through social agriculture for vulnerable groups, will be increased from 133 in 2025 to 180 in 2028. Currently, each service community receives an average of 66 million won in support, and each social farm receives up to 55 million won. The Ministry plans to gradually expand the scale of support to ensure the continued activities of service communities.

The Ministry will also develop a step-by-step training curriculum tailored to each community’s growth stage-entry (preliminary community), growth, and maturity-to address difficulties that arise during community activities. It will introduce village dispatch consulting, where experts and leading communities directly visit and support new communities on-site. To strengthen the foundation for community self-reliance, the Ministry will ensure that communities are registered as eligible for basic rural income and local gift certificates, and will link them to community service vouchers (Community Service Investment Project) and the Hometown Love Donation Program.

The Ministry will increase the utilization of key facilities such as living social overhead capital (SOC), and expand demand-based service provision through outreach services. The number of living SOC facilities in rural areas will be increased to 1,350 by 2028, with efforts to improve utilization by considering connections with nearby villages and operational activation from the planning stage. After establishment, the Ministry will create institutional conditions so that social solidarity economy organizations led by local residents can take charge of management. In addition, the number of regions visited by home-visit buses to address rural medical blind spots will be expanded from 465 towns and townships in 2024 to 800 by 2028. The number of rural mobile markets, which address the issue of food deserts, will be increased from 9 in 2024 to 30 in 2028.

Regulations will also be improved to expand resident community participation across various sectors. To promote transportation support services, the scope of subsidies for care community support projects will be expanded to include vehicle rental costs. Next year, a gap-care service will be introduced to address early morning and nighttime childcare shortages during the busy farming season. The Ministry will also pursue legal revisions to allow social solidarity economy organizations to participate in rural regeneration projects, such as utilizing vacant houses for guesthouses and vacant house maintenance projects.

Park Sungwoo, Director General for Rural Policy at the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, stated, “We will use this first rural economic and social services activation plan as a starting point for building a resident-led service delivery system, and will gradually improve related systems by reflecting feedback and improvements identified in the field.”