[2025 Top 10 News] Shaken Youth Agriculture Policy

Published Dec 23, 2025

Tridge summary

[Minjeong Son, Korea Farmers' Newspaper] In July, Hwang Mo, a selected young farmer from the first batch of the "Youth Farmer Program," took his own life due to continuous poor harvests and pressure to repay policy funds. This incident has brought the issues of the "Youth Farmer Program" back into the spotlight. The Yoon Suk-yeol government aimed to "cultivate 30,000 young farmers" and significantly increased the selection scale for young farmers starting in 2023, but the failure to secure the budget led to early depletion of policy funds, blocking loans for young and successor farmers, resulting in numerous damages. Subsequently, the government's shift from first-come, first-served to selective support for fund allocation as a remedial measure intensified the backlash from the field.

Original content

Last July, Hwang Mo, a selected first-generation young farmer under the "Youth Farmer Program," took his own life due to continuous poor harvests and the pressure of repaying policy funds. This incident brought the issues of the "Youth Farmer Program" policy back into the spotlight. The Yoon Suk-yeol administration aimed to "cultivate 30,000 young farmers" and significantly increased the selection scale of young farmers from 2023. However, as budget allocation did not follow, the policy funds were quickly exhausted, blocking loans for young and successor farmers, leading to numerous damages. Subsequently, the government's high-pressure policy of switching the fund allocation method from first-come, first-served to selective support further intensified the backlash on the ground. Additionally, at the end of 2022, the repayment period for successor farmer funds was extended to "20 years of repayment after 5 years of grace," but there is ongoing fairness controversy as applicants for ...

Source: Agrinet