A woman walks past a barbershop in Yeongyang, a county in North Gyeongsang Province, in this Sept. 7, 2021, file photo. Yeongyang, a sleepy county with a population of just 15,000, is seeking to host refugees from Myanmar amid its demographic cliff. Korea Times photo by Cheong Kwang-jin

Yeongyang, a sleepy county with a population of just 15,000 in North Gyeongsang Province, is seeking to host refugees from Myanmar amid its demographic cliff.

According to the county office on Friday, its officials and those at the Ministry of Justice were discussing the policy idea of inviting 40 people from the war-torn Southeast Asian country to one of its villages and helping them settle there as part of efforts to address the issue of its shrinking number of residents.

If it goes as planned, 10 families of the Karen people, an ethnolinguistic group that primarily resides in southeastern Myanmar, will be invited to the county later this year.

Yeongyang has the lowest number of residents among counties in Korea, excluding islands.

The figure, which was higher than 70,000 in the early 1970s, has steadily decreased for decades. Its population fell by more than half in 20 years and dropped down to 15,271 in February 2025. Officials worry the figure will drop below 15,000 by the end of the year.

In recent years, officials have taken measures to reverse the trend, expanding direct cash support for babies born in the county, among other incentives. Despite this, the number of residents who die each year is far greater than those born. According to officials, only about 25 babies are born there annually.