This study is a basic research for the development of ‘Marginal Village Policy’ in response to the hollowing-out of rural areas. For this purpose, the viewpoint of “Regeneration” & “Reconstruction” of the “Marginal Village Theory” and the recent “Rural Planning Theory of Evacuation” in Japan were reviewed. The background and trends of Marginal Village policy in Japan were also investigated. And based on this, the implications and future tasks for Korea were summarized as follows; ①It is necessary to be interested in the disappearance of villages and marginal villages and to form positive discussions and social consensus. ② Continuous field investigation and management of changes in population and village functions at regional and village level are required. ③In addition to increasing the importance of depopulation problems, it is necessary to establish ‘marginal villages’ as a public policy target. ④It is necessary to review and consider the viewpoint of reconstruction along with regeneration. ⑤It is necessary to pay attention that the software project is expanded, and the regeneration & reconstruction policies of the rural villages are aimed at revitalizing the rural community. ⑥It is necessary to consider the possibility of applying ‘spacial construction’ along with the expansion of the academic debate on the ‘rural planning theory of evacuation’. On the basis of this, in this study, rural villages were classified into ‘continuous villages’, ‘semi-marginal villages’ and ‘marginal villages’ according to the degree of marginalization, and the basic framework of ‘Marginal Village Policy’ was proposed, which is to encourage the differentiated policies of ‘continuous villages’ by ‘rural village policy’, ‘semi-marginal villages’ and ‘marginal villages’ by ‘marginal village policy’.

The aim of this study is to suggest the quantitative standard of a marginal village. For the purpose, the study selected 43 villages with the population of 50 or less, the classification of a marginal village in accordance with advanced research and 47 villages with the population over 50 in Buyeo-gun region. The common reason of occurrence of a marginal village suggested by advanced research is a characteristic of a village or decline and extinction of a village rather than a simple index of population or aging rate. Therefore, the study assumed that decline of functions of the village would be caused by decline a function of communities consisting of the villagers. The study then assumed that the relatively low or 0 number or rate of participants would result in community functions. The study conducted t-test on basis of population and aging rate and an analysis to find the range with relatively large differences in the number of communities, participants and the rate of the participants, etc. The result showed that the community function began to decline when the population was less than 60~70 and the aging rate over 75%~85%. As the decline of functions of communities began in population of 70, the critical point was met when the population was 40 or less. With population of 40 or less, the young and the old group communities became extinct or showed rapid decrease in the number of participants. The study assumed that decline of functions of a village, a reason of occurrence of a marginal village would be decline of functions of communities, but there was no further analysis on decline or extinction of a village with population of 40 or less. There shall be further studies about whether a village of population of 40 or less is led to decline of a function or extinction of village communities.

The rapid rural urban migration and aging has generated an over-depopulation problems in rural areas since the 1980s. The purpose of this study constructs the marginal size of rural over-depopulated village through the analysis of the residential disparities such as farmer's ratio, basic life service accessibility, and levels of social and economic factors for each village community. This marginal scale could support evaluating diverse rural policies, which have been planned to apply to the rural development programs at the village level. The major challenges for over-depopulated villages are the lack of basic facilities, production infrastructures and inactive communities in the village. Therefore, the quantitative analysis of rural residential disparities according to rural village scale can provide the criteria for rural over-depopulated villages. We utilized Korea Agricultural Survey Data(2010) including specific residential condition of village level. The present study adopt multinomial-logit model for quantitative analysis of different village scales and decomposition techniques to separate the direct effect by the village scale factor from the endowment effects by regional or area characteristics, and residual effect by unknown factors. The present study found that the minimum scale of a rural over-depopulated village was 40 and 60 houses for the respective conditions of farmer's ratios less than 50% and greater than 75%. It was concluded based on the study findings that threshold scale could support evaluating the diverse rural policies, which have been planned to apply to the rural development programs at the village level.