A Study on the Current Status and Development Direction of School Movement Department in the Age of Regional Extinction (Centered in Jeollanam-do) Lee, Jo-Eun Adviser : Prof. Kim, Hyun-Woo Major in Dance Education. Graduate School of Education, Chosun University The school sports department has served as the root of Korea's sports development for as long as its history. This study provides basic data to examine the causal relationship between population decline, school-age population, and school sports department, and based on literature review methods, interviews, media article analysis, historical interpretation and technology methods, the current status and change of school sports department in Jeonnam, and the decline and development of school sports department in Jeonnam. As a result of this examination, it was found that the actual population and the decrease in the school-age population, referred to as the era of regional extinction, are closely related to the rise and fall of the school sports department. Since 1980, when Korea's population decline began, the school-age population across the country has also turned downward, and the pace of decline in Jeollanam-do, which is mostly rural and fishing areas, has progressed faster.Jeonnam's population fell from 2.84 million in 1986 to 1.81 million in 2022. The number of students in Jeollanam-do, which peaked at 1.2 million as the population decreased, fell to 740,000 in 1987, and even broke the 200,000 mark to 198,262 in 2022. A number of schools closed because children's cries in rural villages were cut off and there were no freshmen. In the five years since 2018, 193 elementary, middle and high schools have disappeared in 17 metropolitan cities nationwide, and during this period, Jeonnam had the largest number in the country with 34 schools. The number of students in Jeollanam-do, which was over 1.2 million in 1981, has fallen to 190,000 since 2022, and the school's athletic department has also faced a crisis. Since the 1990s, 112 school sports teams in 94 schools in Jeollanam-do have been disbanded. Of the 94 schools, 23 were private and the rest were public schools. Regardless of popular or unpopular events, school sports teams in various sports are suffering from dissolution. Among the reasons for the dissolution of the school sports department in South Jeolla Province in 94 schools and 121 sports that have been disbanded since 1990, the difficulty of securing student athletes accounted for 67.8%, followed by a lack of leaders and conversion to public sports clubs. The fact that it was difficult to secure student athletes in two out of three school sports departments in Jeollanam-do, which were disbanded, proves that it is closely related to the decline in the school-age population. The crisis of the school sports department is a regional crisis, and furthermore, the crisis of Korean sports. With so-called "small schools" with fewer than 60 students, the outlook is inevitably darker. Given that the decline and absence of the school sports department in the absence of an alternative can shake the foundation of Korean sports as a whole, the government, local communities, education authorities, sports circles, and residents should work together to come up with various systems and support measures for the future of the school sports department.