Experts warn of 'bubble' population targets in noncapital regions

Korea’s local governments have collectively overestimated their future populations by more than 6 million people, creating what researchers call “bubble” population targets that drive wasteful infrastructure spending. Ahead of the June 3 local elections, experts gathered Wednesday for a seminar on the country’s demographic crisis and called for politicians and policymakers to abandon “inflated growth assumptions” and redesign their policies around realistic population data. During the event, think tank Korean Peninsula Population Institute for Future unveiled a nationwide analysis of population figures embedded in municipalities’ plans. The research found that 119 of them — 96 percent of the sample — had overestimated their future population. The average gap between planned and actual figures was 21.9 percent, it found. While the actual resident registration count stood at 39.7 million, the combined planned population reached 46.16 million, leaving roughly 6.46 million “extra” people on paper. “That’s because those population figures serve as a baseline for plan

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