This paper examines the role of rural regions in the economic transformation of Korea. The analysis at regional level reveals that, while having experiencing continued urbanisation and rapid demographic shift of aging and depopulation, the Korean rural areas performs well in terms of productivity growth thanks to the relatively higher share of tradable sectors in rural economies. It also provides the overview of how the rural policy in Korea, which has evolved in response to the socio-economic changes and growing well-being concerns. With the balanced national development at the centre of the national agenda for decades, regional policy approaches have diversified from state-led large projects to flexible policy packages and functional approaches to enhance rural economies and well-being. Finally, the paper presents a number of international policy approaches that can be useful for Korea, including the case of France, Italy and Sweden.