[비즈한국] The blueprint for the '5-Pole 3-Special Zone' strategy, which President Lee Jae-myung is pushing to revitalize local regions, was unveiled on the 15th of last month. The plan involves creating mega special zones to support this initiative, providing a package of seven benefits including tax and financial incentives.
Since his presidential campaign last year, President Lee has promoted the '5-Pole 3-Special Zone' as the core foundation of his balanced growth strategy, dividing the country into five supra-regional areas (Capital, Southeast, Daegu-Gyeongbuk, Central, and Honam) and three special self-governing provinces (Jeju, Gangwon, and Jeonbuk). The driving force behind President Lee's emphasis on balanced regional development through this initiative is the widening gap between the capital region and the provinces.
In the provinces, in particular, the number of employed youth continues to decline while the number of employed elderly increases, leading to a situation where the elderly have become the mainstream of the job market. Out of 17 major cities and provinces, 14 have already seen their elderly employment rates surpass those of the youth. If this trend continues, regional extinction could become a reality.
While presiding over the first plenary meeting of the Regulatory Rationalization Committee on April 15, President Lee stated, "It is necessary to bring regulations up to global standards and switch to 'negative regulation' in the fields of high-tech and industry," adding, "We are attempting to ease or completely eliminate regulations in specific areas or sectors, and it would be good to try this on a large regional scale."
In response, the government has decided to align the mega special zones with the 5-Pole 3-Special strategy, establishing them as large-scale core growth hubs for balanced regional development and the cultivation of national strategic industries, while providing the highest level of regulatory exemptions and policy support packages including finance, tax, and human resources.
The aging of local jobs is so severe that the government is staking its future on balanced regional development. According to the National Data Agency, in the first quarter of this year, the employment rate for the elderly aged 60 and older reached 44.4% nationwide, surpassing the youth employment rate (aged 15-29) of 43.5%, marking a so-called 'Silver Cross' phenomenon. This is the first time since related surveys began in 2000 that the elderly employment rate has exceeded the youth employment rate in the first quarter.
Previously, inversions between youth and elderly employment rates occurred occasionally after the second quarter, when government-led elderly job programs began in earnest. However, this is the first time the elderly employment rate has surpassed the youth rate in the first quarter, before the execution of the elderly job program budget. This indicates that the 'Silver Cross' in the job market has solidified into a structural phenomenon independent of seasonal effects or policy implementation timing.
The bigger problem is that this job market 'Silver Cross' has long been entrenched in rural areas and is increasingly spreading to major metropolitan cities. In the first quarter of this year, only three out of 17 major cities and provinces—Seoul (youth 46.2%, elderly 39.0%), Busan (44.9%, 37.5%), and Gyeonggi-do (44.9%, 42.5%)—saw youth employment rates higher than elderly employment rates.
In Incheon, the youth employment rate was 46.0% against 44.4% for the elderly in the first quarter of last year, but a Silver Cross occurred this year as the youth employment rate fell to 42.5% and the elderly rate rose to 45.7%. Ulsan also saw an inversion, with rates shifting from 41.5% and 39.0% for youth and elderly respectively in the first quarter of last year, to 39.1% and 39.6% in the first quarter of this year. Daejeon also saw its figures flip from 44.6% and 44.2% to 40.9% and 43.7% over the same period.
The Silver Cross that once occurred in rural provinces has now spread to regional metropolitan areas. This shows that youth jobs are disappearing even in major regional cities. This is interpreted as fueling a vicious cycle where youth leave for the capital region in search of work, and local job markets are reorganized around the elderly population.
The inversion between elderly and youth employment rates is most severe in the Honam region. In South Jeolla Province, the elderly employment rate in the first quarter of this year was 54.5%, 15.3 percentage points higher than the youth rate (39.2%). In North Jeolla Province, the gap was 14.8 percentage points, with elderly and youth employment rates at 51.7% and 36.9% respectively. Sejong also showed a gap of 15.2 percentage points, and Jeju saw a gap of 11.4 percentage points, all exceeding the 10 percentage point threshold.