The employment rate in agriculture and ratio of engagement in farming by agricultural college graduates are very low at 5.9% and 4.2% respectively in 2008, showing poor inflow into the field of farming (Ma and Park, 2008). The statistics in 2013 also showed that the ratio of self-supporting people among agricultural college graduates was merely 10.9%. One of the causes is the lack of experts with management skills for advanced agricultural facilities and specialized technology in items due to the absence of practice-based education (Jeong, 2015). Another thing is that it is necessary to change the perspective from merely nurturing agricultural workers as laborers to be engaged in the primary industry to nurturing specialized human resources who manage farming as a business and support upstream and downstream businesses of agriculture (Ma et al., 2013).

This is because there is a rising need to nurture knowledge-based agricultural workers to meet the 21st-century knowledge-based society. In other words, unlike the past, people live in a knowledge-based society today and thus have shorter lifespan of knowledge. Thus, in terms of qualifications for agricultural workers, it is necessary to improve the direction for agricultural education to develop more specialized skills by polishing up the basic qualifications to generate and utilize knowledge and information so that new agricultural workers can adapt to the rapidly changing knowledge and information in agriculture.

Jyung et al. (2001) argued that the right kind of human resources required by 21st-century knowledge-based agriculture has a good balance of the basic qualities (basic agricultural knowledge, etc.) and specialized qualities (specialized knowledge, agricultural management skills) as an agricultural worker, as well as the basic qualities (communication skills, etc.) and specialized qualities (ability to create and share knowledge and information) as a professional worker. Ma et al. (2011) defined the image of specialized agricultural workers as agricultural workers living a good life with their careers in pride, professional managers with specialized techniques and management skills, and ethical producers fulfilling social responsibility.

Furthermore, to increase new inflow of specialized agricultural workers that received agricultural education into the field of farming, it is necessary to clarify the sense of purpose and constantly encourage achievement motivation for potential agricultural workers to set their career path to agriculture by developing and supplying career paths for each category and step of business startup and succession of specialized agricultural workers. This would promote interest and attractiveness of agriculture, thereby facilitating inflow of outstanding workers in the field of agriculture (MAFRA, 2015).

Recently, it is inspiring to find that agriculture as the 6th industry is contributing to increased attractiveness of agriculture by having agricultural college students to perceive agriculture not only as labor but as a business. Agriculture as the 6th industry is a series of activities that lead to the convergence of production, processing, distribution, sales and tourism services using resources that exist in rural areas (Park, 2013). These activities enable them to be engaged in business that creates new values by developing processed goods, connect to the restaurant business, and respond to tourism, interaction, healing and welfare (Kwon, 2014), which made agricultural college students perceive agriculture as a business beyond just labor.

The career choices of students are determined by individual characteristics such as inner motives and interests, family characteristics such as parents’ occupations and education levels, and lastly the characteristics of the highest level of schooling (Jang and Lee, 2012). In particular, as a result of investigating the effects on career choices and decisions of agricultural college students in the agricultural industry, their intention to choose a career in agriculture and forestry services was highest at 30.2%, and important factors related to such intention were their parents’ attitude toward entering the agricultural industry, and knowledge and experience in the industry. In particular, agricultural college students showed a statistically significant correlation among major, reason to enter, approval of parents, and knowledge and experience in agricultural business. Those majoring in agriculture (plant resources), who attended an agricultural college according to their own aptitudes and will, whose parents approve of their entry into the agricultural industry, and who better understand the value chain of agrifoods tended to have high intention of choosing a career in the agricultural industry (Ma and Kim, 2017).

Comparing the characteristics between succession of agricultural business and getting a new job or starting up a business, settlement as a farmer is relatively more advantageous when it is done by business succession than by starting up, mainly in terms of nurturing managers or building business or living foundations. Such advantage is also a benefit of family agricultural business. As a result of analyzing factors that affect settlement as a farmer, those from a farming family that graduated from an agricultural college and are at a young age tended to be engaged in farming in the form of succession due to financial reasons (Kim and Ma, 2005). Agricultural workers succeeding to business can save about 5 years in acquiring harvesting technology and agricultural product sales skills compared to new startup farmers, and also have share close ties with local residents (Lee and Goh, 2014). However, while startup farmers secure funds and obtain farming technology with their own individual efforts, successive farmers inherit such resources from their parents. Such management techniques or philosophies are fully inherited without any changes from previous generations, which may hinder new market explorations or expansions due to lack of innovation (Ma and Kim, 2010). This study is conducted based on the difference in the perception of new agricultural startups, especially entrepreneurship like innovation, between students engaged in agriculture as a family business and students that are not.

As a result of measuring the interest in agricultural startup among 224 agricultural college students in G University located in Gyeongnam, it was found that their interest was very low, and so was their agro-entrepreneurial intention. However, in the comparison between students that are engaged in agriculture as a family business and students that are not, the former had significantly higher agro-entrepreneurial intention. In the moderating effect of succession status regarding the effect of agro-entrepreneurial intention according to entrepreneurship, it was found that agro-entrepreneurial intention became stronger for successive students. Among 6th industry entrepreneurship, successive students showed high innovation, social responsibility and initiative, while other factors showed no difference between successive and nonsuccessive students. Agro-entrepreneurial intention only showed positive correlation with innovation, social responsibility, networking capabilities and initiative among 6th industry entrepreneurship, and agro-entrepreneurial intention turned out to be stronger with higher innovation and social responsibility.

The logistics regression analysis showed an interaction effect between social responsibility and succession status, and initiative and succession status. The interaction effect was also significant between challenge spirit and succession status. Successive students whose parents are engaged in agriculture were accompanied by initiative and challenge spirit, while non-successive students only had innovation and social responsibility that significantly affected agro-entrepreneurial intention.

Therefore, innovation and social responsibility are the most important factors for those whose parents are not engaged in agriculture. Once these factors can be nurtured through education by reflecting them on curriculums and extracurricular programs, agro-entrepreneurial intention of students will increase. For those whose parents are engaged in agriculture, their agro-entrepreneurial intention can be cultivated through education that promotes initiative and challenge spirit.

In conclusion, it is necessary to run various curriculums and extracurricular programs to cultivate entrepreneurship aside from agricultural education in order to provide career paths for agricultural college students. In particular, for such entrepreneurship education, prior investigation and counseling must be done in order to identify the parents’ occupations to distinguish successive and non-successive agricultural students, which will contribute to the inflow of new selfsupporting agricultural workers.