Jun-Byeong Yoon "There are over 80,000 empty houses, but more than 90% of them are simply demolished."

The playback utilization rate is only 8%... Rural empty house banks are also famous.

(Jeongeup = Yonhap News) Reporter Kim Dong-cheol = Although the number of empty houses in rural areas has exceeded 80,000, more than 90% of government maintenance efforts are focused on simple demolition, so the actual utilization rate is only around 1%.

According to data submitted by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs on the 7th by Representative Yoon Jun-byeong of the Democratic Party of Korea (Jeongeup, Gochang, Jeollabuk-do), a member of the National Assembly's Agriculture, Food, Rural Affairs, Oceans and Fisheries Committee, the number of empty houses in rural areas nationwide increased by 29.5% in three years from 65,019 in 2023 to 84,200 in 2025.

However, the maintenance performance compared to the total number of empty houses remained at around 10% every year.

In particular, out of the total 7,935 maintenance cases in 2025, 7,315 cases, or 92.2%, were simple demolitions, and only 620 cases (7.8%) were reused for housing or business start-ups.

There were 56,061 vacant homes that could be repaired and used last year, but the actual utilization rate was only 1.1%.

The ‘Rural Empty House Bank’, which was introduced to promote transactions, also failed to function properly.

As of this year, there were only 177 registered properties nationwide, of which only 60 transactions were completed, leading to criticism that the platform's functionality is poor.

Rep. Yoon said, “It is not the time to sit back and wait for the implementation of the Special Act on the Maintenance of Vacant Houses in Rural and Fishing Villages, which is scheduled for June next year,” and urged, “We must implement a preemptive regeneration roadmap by preparing unconventional incentives to register properties for sale, such as tax breaks for vacant house banks and remodeling loans.”