The number of Korean urban households moving to rural areas jumped more than 10 percent in 015 from a year earlier as the return-to-farm movement is becoming notable in the country, government data showed Thursday.
A total of 11,959 households living in the countryside came from cities last year, up 11.2 percent from 10,758 in 2014, according to the data compiled by Statistics Korea.
In fishing villages last year, meanwhile, 991 households had urban backgrounds, up 8.4 percent from a year earlier.
The average age of rural settlers was 54 years old last year, slightly up from the previous year's 53.4 percent, with those in their 50s and 60s accounting for 65 percent of the total city-to-country migrating population.
A rural settler runs a farm in the central region of South Chungcheon Province in South Korea. (Yonhap)
The figure underscores the return-to-farm trend in Korea, where a growing number urban dwellers choose to move to the countryside to spend their post-retirement period amid a rapidly aging society with a low birth rate.
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