Balanced regional development is being treated as an important priority in terms of social equity worldwide (Benner and Pastor, 2013). It has been suggested that the extinction of certain local communities caused by imbalances in regional development may be attributed to industrial decline, run-down infrastructure, and aging of society (Beauregard, 2009). It was also found that the higher or lower income the country, the greater the difference (Ota, 2017). South Korea, one of 37 OECD countries as of 2021, needs balanced development between regions, and should ultimately strive for social equity through strengthening regional competitiveness and further enhancing national competitiveness. However, according to Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements (KRIHS; 2021), 37% of the 226 cities (Si) and townships (Gun, or Gu) in S. Korea will experience local extinction within the next 30 years, and it is predicted that local businesses will face a crisis due to a lack of capacity to respond to the rapid changes of the 4th industrial revolution.

The central government is trying to enable local governments to solve such problems responsibly in accordance with the full-fledged fiscal decentralization from 2020. In October 2021, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety (MOIS) prepared a system to designate 89 population-decreasing areas and grant special administrative and financial benefits to respond to the crisis of local extinction. Most of the designated 89 local areas are in agricultural and mountainous areas, and require not only the efforts of MOIS, but also policy responses from the Korea Forest Service (KFS) and the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA). In S. Korea, 43.5% of the total land area is classified as statutory mountainous areas due to its topographical characteristics (Ko et al., 2020). However, those areas have tended to be excluded from policy benefits, as only 2.8% of the total population lives in mountain villages; they are being neglected even in the General Agricultural Fishing Village Development Project that the MAFRA has been implementing with an annual budget of 1 trillion won (Kim and Lim, 2020). In addition to these national policy project problems, factors such as reduction of forest area and population outflow have decreased the number of small communities (Eup or Myeon) in mountainous areas from 503 to 466 in the past 10 years, which is a factor accelerating the crisis of local extinction (Kim et al., 2018). Since mountain villages do not simply provide a settlement environment, but also play a functional and underlying role in food and energy production, watershed conservation, national land conservation, environmental purification, and recreation, in responding to the issue of mountain villages being at risk of extinction, it is necessary to raise a number of fundamental questions, including the following: Will the response be taken by considering only an indicator of depopulation areas, like responses to local extinction? Recent climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic are high-lighting the new public benefit functions of mountain villages such as CO₂ reduction, fine dust reduction, new normal settlement space in the contactless era, and low-density culture space. Mountainous areas, where forests account for more than 70% of the area, not only hold 75% of national parks but also secure tangible and intangible forest cultural assets and ecological health. Nevertheless, depopulation, aging, and declining income levels in mountain villages have been leading to a decline in such functions.

A number of studies on local extinction have recently been conducted, including studies on the causes of local extinction, and policy responses (Chung, 2019a; Kim, 2020; Kim, 2021; Moon, 2021; Lee, 2016; Yoo et al., 2021), studies on spatial approaches (Cha, 2016; Ko and Kim, 2021; Lim et al., 2018), and studies on alternative counter-measures at a regional level (Park et al., 2017; Choi, 2017; Chung, 2019b; Kim, 2019; Yun and Cho, 2021). In response to local extinction, efforts have already been made to respond at a regional level, and Ha (2017) suggested the diversification and differentiation of local autonomy in the era of local extinction. In the meantime, research has been actively conducted on rural areas responding to local extinction (Lee, 2020; Lee and Choi, 2017), while such studies on mountain villages are almost completely lacking. Among the studies on mountain villages responding to local extinction (NIFoS, 2020; Kim et al., 2021a; Kim et al., 2021b), in particular, Kim et al. (2020) suggested that the policy should be converted to increase relational population to overcome the limit of increase in settled population in response to the decrease in the population in mountain villages. Examining countermeasures pursued in Japan, which has already experienced local extinction, many previous studies on policy projects (Lee, 2017; Park et al., 2017; Kim, 2017) have been conducted. Kim et al. (2019) presented a case of mountain village revitalization targeting Japan; in particular, they reported that a change in policy business was required by suggesting the establishment of governance and the introduction of a business model for region-led regeneration (Kim and Kim, 2017, Chae and Kim, 2021). In addition, Kang et al. (2021) suggested the need to review the currently promoted projects because the review on a number of issues has been insufficient; these include whether the policies currently being promoted in the forestry sector are projects that respond to these changes of the times, and whether core projects are being promoted.

Targeting the forestry and agricultural projects which have been proposed for areas where the population is shrinking nationwide, and which are currently being promoted in 8 regional areas, this study aimed to respond to the crisis of extinction of local communities and to suggest a direction for establishing a policy to revitalize mountain villages for balanced national development. It was conducted by comparing types of projects, and presenting implications in comparison with the importance and performance recognized by policy stakeholders.

Through an analysis of policy projects that contribute to the revitalization of mountain villages by dividing them into forest and AG sector projects in terms of response to the crisis of local extinction and balanced national development, 50 types of policy projects derived from a total of 8 domains in both sectors were found to have direct and indirect effects: in the forestry sector, 27 types from 5 domains (Boosting forestry, Creating green infrastructure, Providing forest welfare service, Creating a regional base, and Promoting forest culture tourism); and in the AG sector, 23 types from 3 domains (Improving settlement environment, Increasing income, and Strengthening local capacity). By comprehensively examining the characteristics of these classification types, the following four implications can be derived.

First, based on an IPA of policy projects related to mountain village revitalization, 22 types out of 50 types were distributed in Quadrant 1, and 4 types were distributed in Quadrant 2. Among the types that fall into Quadrant 1, “providing forest welfare service” in the forestry sector and “increasing incomes” in the AG sector are project domains that require continuous promotion to revitalize the mountain villages, so it is necessary to suggest a direction for the policy to be maintained. In particular, the intensive and core projects domains falling under Quadrant 2 included in the forestry sector, creating green infrastructure (FG1: creating forests for environmental improvement) and promoting forest culture tourism (FC1: discovering forest cultural assets); and in the AG sector, improving settlement environment (AS5: Establishment of automation of agricultural infrastructure using ICT technology), AS6: Creation and supplementation of welfare/cultural facilities). The 4 types require active promotion and improvement in terms of mountain village revitalization by increasing performance.

Second, many types of the “creating a regional base” domain in the forestry sector and the “strengthening local capacity” domain in the agricultural administration sector fall under Quadrant 3. The respondents considered that the current status should be maintained for the types for revitalization of the entire region. In addition, FF5, FG2, FG4, FW2, AS2, AS4, and AS8, which are in Quadrant 4, are at a risk of overkill efforts, and it is thus necessary to keep the projects at the current level so that the performance does not deteriorate, or to change the current projects in a new direction.

Third, the importance and performance of the forestry sector were generally lower than those of the AG sector, and the difference in performance was even greater. As this means that projects in the AG sector are considered to be directly important to the revitalization of mountain villages, it is important to establish a direction so that the projects in the AG Sector can be carried out in the mountain villages without being excluded. The domains with high importance and performance were found to be “providing forest welfare service” in the forestry sector, and “improving settlement environment” and “increasing incomes” in the AG sector. It is necessary to establish a direction to continuously and intensively promote for these three domain projects. In particular, the performance of the following four types was found to be low compared to the importance, indicating that a policy response to improve the performance was necessary: providing forest therapy service, creating forest-related jobs, creation and supplementation of welfare/cultural facilities, and establishment of a sustainable agricultural foundation.

Fourth, the domains with low importance-performance to mountain village revitalization were “creating a regional base” and “promoting forest culture tourism.” However, the following four types of these domains were found to have low performance despite their very high importance: supporting community revitalization, boosting forest tourism, urban-rural exchange, and discovering forest cultural assets. They need to be discovered and fostered as key policy projects, and business diversification should be sought with a focus on these.

Summarizing the analysis results in this study, forest welfare service projects should continuously be promoted, and should also be shifted in a commercialized direction based on communities in mountainous areas. In addition, strategic responses are required for “discovering forest cultural assets” and “creating forests for environmental improvement,” which are suggested as key strategic project types. To this end, such policy projects require a regionally tailored operation strategy that can discover forest cultural assets and link them with forest tourism and community revitalization. In addition to discovering forest cultural assets, strategic responses should be presented, in which they can be commercialized and used as a means of exchange between mountain villagers and city dwellers through publicity and marketing. Furthermore, as the domains and types in the AG sector currently being promoted have both high importance and performance to the revitalization of mountain villages, when discovering new key projects in the future, it seems necessary to apply the “business using ICT technology” and “welfare and cultural service facilities,” which are core strategic projects that may have a direct impact on the mountain villages among the projects in the AG sector.

In response to one of the challenges of the times, the extinction of certain local communities, this study assessed the importance of policy projects in the field of forest welfare and culture in terms of revitalization of mountain villages for balanced regional development. It is considered that a research approach on how to link such importance with solving regional problems is necessary. It is understood that the discovery of regional forest policies linked with keywords such as forest welfare services, forest culture, and community will be key in the process. In addition, this study had a limitation in that the policy projects were concentrated in Quadrants 1 and 3 because a modified IPA model was not applied in the IPA analysis. In follow-up studies, it will be necessary to analyze the data by applying a modified IPA model.