The Rural Transportation Service Model Guarantees Rural Residents’ Mobility Rights and Grows More Popular among Users

Sejong, 2 May 2025 — The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) has been implementing the rural transportation services project to improve the transportation welfare of rural residents. On 1 May, the MAFRA announced the results of the monitoring of the project conducted in 2024, as well as the results of a survey on consumer satisfaction with the project.

The rural transportation services project utilizes small-sized buses and taxis as the mode of transport and provides transportation services tailored to the needs of people living in rural areas out of reach of public transportation services or lacking access to transportation. The project was operated in 81 counties in 2024. In South Korea, a county (gun) is an administrative unit below a city. A taxi-type service was operated in 78 counties, and a bus-type service was operated in 69 counties. A demand responsive transport (DRT) bus service was operated in 12 counties.

According to the findings from the monitoring of the project, the number of rural villages that had received the benefit of the project reached 9,206 in 2024, up by 9.9% from 8,374 in 2023. The number of people using the rural transportation services increased to 6.98 million in 2024, up by 2.9% from 6.78 million in 2023. With a rise in rural residents’ satisfaction with the rural transportation services, more and more rural villages requested the implementation of the project, and thus local governments increased the number of the villages receiving the benefit of the project.

Rural residents’ satisfaction with the project increased to 8.7 points in 2024, up from 8.3 points in 2023. Taxi users’ satisfaction level was 8.8 points, slightly higher than bus users’ level of 8.6 points. Among various categories in the survey, users showed a higher satisfaction with fares and cleanliness of a vehicle. 

The rural transportation services were most used by rural residents when they visited health and medical facilities. Among those who used a taxi-type service, 87.4% of them said that they used a taxi-type service to visit health and medical facilities and 63.4% said they used a taxi-type service to visit amenities such as a market, a supermarket, etc. Among those who used a bus-type service, 81.3% said they used a bus-type service to visit health and medical facilities, and 65.7% said they used a bus-type service to visit amenities. 

The places visited by rural residents the next most frequently through the rural transportation services were government and public offices, financial institutions, cultural facilities, leisure facilities, etc. This indicates that the transportation services customized for the needs of rural residents are playing an important role in improving the welfare of rural residents in terms of their overall daily life.

Director General Sung-woo Park of the MAFRA’s Rural Policy Bureau said: “The rural transportation service model is the key to the realization of customized transportation welfare tailored to the characteristics of rural areas and the needs of rural residents. We will continue to make more efforts to guarantee rural residents’ mobility rights. To this end, we will expand our support to ensure that the rural transportation service model will be more widely adopted across the nation.”