[Column] A scary future 50 years later
Published: 14 Dec. 2022, 19:40
Updated: 14 Dec. 2022, 19:42
The author is an editorial writer at the JoongAng Ilbo.
“I would like to be born again in Korea 50 years later to see how much happier and valuable lives Koreans live,” said Kim Hyeong-seok, a professor of emeritus at Yonsei University. It was the 102-year-old philosopher’s answer to a question about a wish he would ask a Genie for at an event hosted by the JoongAng Ilbo, Dec. 3, for readers of his book entitled “After living 100 years.” The only wish of the survivor of the tumultuous Korean modern history was to bless his beloved country and people.
On the following day, Goldman Sachs issued “The Path to 2075,” an outlook on the world economy a half a century later. The picture of Korea was hardly a country desirable as a place to be reborn in. In terms of gross domestic product (GDP), the Korean economy would fall behind Malaysia and Nigeria to rank below the global 15 from the current 12th by 2075.
In the earlier 2040s, Korea’s real GDP growth rate will stop at 0.8 percent to rank at 23th out of the 24 other OECD countries in the study. It will barely outpace Japan at the bottom, with a growth of 0.7 percent. The decline accelerates from then on. Korea’s growth rate will be 0.3 percent in the 2050s, negative 0.1 percent in the 2060s and another negative 0.2 percent in the 2070s. South Korea was the only country among key 24 economies to show negative growth after four decades from now.
The dismal vision stems from a demographic crisis, not because of Koreans suddenly turning lazy or suffering another war. According to the government’s long-term estimate, Korea’s population will decline to 37.66 million in 2070 from current 51.62 million. Its total fertility rate last year was 0.81, the world’s lowest. No other country showed a birth rate below 1.
The reading has been a fixture. Since population is thinning, output and consumption will inevitably fall. The Goldman Sachs report pointed out that the increased welfare cost (health care and pension) from more senior citizens will hamper with growth in countries with thinning populations. This too should be nothing new to Koreans.
The disaster from ultra-low birth rate has already been spilling over. Pediatricians have become rarer than before. Of 66 general hospitals across the country, 55 received no applicants for pediatrician residencies for next year. A hospital even decided to stop accepting inpatients in its pediatric section. Young doctors shy away from pediatric program partly because they must deal with rude parents, but largely because of a thinning young population. Newborns that numbered at 1 million in the early 1970s totaled 260,000 last year. More than 600 pediatric departments closed down over the last five years.
The phenomenon is nothing new. When application rates in pediatric training program fell to 70 percent three years ago, many had worried about a collapse of the medical system for sick children. The medical community asked for government measures to increase remuneration for doctors opening pediatric clinics when the application rate sank to 38 percent last year. It was a solution Japan took 10 years ago. The rate further dipped to 25 percent and again to 16.6 percent.
The worst is yet to come. Colleges and universities will have to shut down, military conscription may fail, and essential labor will become short. The fundamental problems are laid out. Young people are giving up or avoiding marriage and having children. According to this year’s survey by Statistics Korea, young people do not want to get married due to lack of funds (28.7 percent), job instability (14.6 percent), and the cost of birth and child care (12.8 percent). The social system, including distribution of resources, has stopped working normally.
Na Kyung-won, a former lawmaker, heads the presidential committee on low birth rates and the aging society. But she talks to the media more as a ruling party heavyweight rather than on demographic issues. She came under fire for criticizing a popular TV reality show about single-living celebrities by claiming it to be glamorizing the life of singles and missing the essence about demographic problem.
Time is being wasted due to lack of strong awareness, pushing the country closer to the sad reality in the future.
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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