Koreans are Going Extinct

The last time I visited Singapore about 4 or 5 years ago, I saw the most damning thing. The government had sponsored a series of national advertisements encouraging couple to procreate. They wanted their citizens to shack up and make lots and lots of babies. These were state-funded messages strapped onto billboards and popping up in mainstream commercials.

I soon learned that this wasn’t so much an isolated incident. Several countries in the region such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and as featured in the title - Korea - are reporting declining rates of childbirth and “at-risk” populations. If things don’t change soon for these countries, there will be no-one left in a few hundred years.

Birth rates in asian countries have nose-dived in the last few decades. Korea has recently reached a new low, now officially becoming the fastest aging developed country. The average rate of birth is 1.25 children per woman, essentially meaning a drastic net-negative per every married couple. As of August 2017, less than 360,000 births had taken place in the previous 365 days, shattering the all-time-low record of 400,000.

The newly elected president Jae-In Moon called it a “national crisis” that would require comprehensive labor, pension, and housing reform. A falling youth population doesn’t just mean less pacifier sales. The country is now facing severe threats to its social programs, particularly those that support the rapidly expanding elderly population, and domestic industry is disappearing as I write this. A thriving young population is desperately needed to balance out the needed facets of society and Korea is most at-risk.

But why is this happening? Everyone knows that Korean babies are the cutest bundles of yellowy goodness, so why such adversity to making more? It seems Korean society is in a perfect storm that is tearing the nuclear family apart. We’re in a unique moment of history where several factors contribute to this suppression of pregnancy rates and in this post I’ll be going through a few of them.

1- Isolated Living

---

If you’ve ever been to some of the countries of lowest contemporary birth, you’ll notice one physical aspect immediately - high density living. Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and Korea have all converted from home estate living with whole families to zillions of high-rises that barely fit a bedroom or two. Sky-rocketing real estate has dissected once large family complexes into tiny apartments. Just like an animal in a tiny cage, the physical constraints of a home will dissuade the body or family from growing any bigger.

• Source: YTIMG

2- Cost of Living

---

On top of confined spaces, the general cost of living in Korea is astronomical compared to a few decades ago. Housing in particular are almost impossible to access for a young professional, even with a well-paying corporate job. If young people almost unanimously live at home during their early career due to high costs, how could they ever support a family household on their own?

• Source: The Economist

3- Women in the Workplace

---

We saw a correlated drop in birthrates in the US too when women began entering all disciplines of the workplace. Although sexist practices are abundant in Korea, women have nonetheless taken the workplace by storm and the population of independent female professionals is at an all-time high. Sadly, this means less women willing to have children at a young age or at all.

• Source: The Economist

4- Plummeting Satisfaction in Life

---

Life for a youth in Korea has been dubbed “Hell” by the majority. Younger individuals are increasingly barred from higher levels of education and esteemed jobs due to rising competition. Having a child just doesn’t seem ‘worth it’ when lives for parents and children are becoming more and more agonizing at a national scale.

• Source:The Korea Herald

So what do we do?

---

This seems a tangled web of hopelessness that is almost impossible to tackle from any single angle. People just don’t want to have kids and the reasons are so many, in fact much more than what I’ve noted on today. So many that it has gone beyond rationale and it has become the given impulse of young couple. Maybe 1 child, probably not any more than that.

• Source: Time

Figuring this issue out is in fact the golden ticket to getting Koreans to a better environment. I’d love to hear your thoughts and I’ll most likely revisit this issue and sub-sections of this issue in future posts. For now though, all I can do is share a bit of optimist energy and encourage the joy of new life.

So as a New Year’s Resolution, make a baby! Or better yet, twins or triplets?