[Journalism Internship] Korea is heading towards extinction

Journalism Internship

Published: 25 Jan. 2024, 10:29 Updated: 27 Jan. 2024, 00:02

[Journalism Internship] Korea is heading towards extinction

A staff at a post-natal care facility in Seoul holds a newborn baby to her chest on Dec. 26, 2023. President Yoon Suk Yeol proclaimed a nation-wide effort to raise Korea’s ever-falling birthrate in a meeting held on the same day. [YONHAP]

HAN SO-MIN, SUH YEON-WOO, KIM MIN-JUNG, SONG MIN-JOO

Experts say country must fix its falling birthrates

A staff at a post-natal care facility in Seoul holds a newborn baby to her chest on Dec. 26, 2023. President Yoon Suk Yeol proclaimed a nation-wide effort to raise Korea’s ever-falling birthrate in a meeting held on the same day. [YONHAP]

“Korea is so screwed. Wow!” And really might be, if birthrates continue to fall.

A decrease in births in Korea has set off alarm bells across the peninsula, prompting the government to set various goals for the upcoming year in order to stop snowballing infertility.

The “Korea is screwed” prescription came from Joan William, a professor emeritus at UC Law San Francisco, who expressed concern over the country’s low birthrate in a recent EBS documentary.

Korea’s total fertility rate of 0.81 is the lowest among 38 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries as of 2021. If this birthrate crisis continues, Korea will be the first nation to disappear due to population extinction, according to David Coleman, a professor emeritus at Oxford University.

Coleman commented that although the decline in fertility rates is “an international phenomenon”, the excessive decrease in Korea’s rate, which echoes those of other East Asian countries like Japan and China, could lead to the nation’s premature disappearance by 2750.

Korea’s total fertility rate has decreased by 0.10 from 0.75 in 2022 to 0.70 in the third quarter of 2023, according to data released by Statistics Korea (KOSTAT) last September. The number of births measured in the third quarter of 2023 has dropped by 11.5 percent from 7,381 to 56,794 over one year.

Decades of ineffective policies, such as cheaper childcare and housing benefits, have proven that low birth rates may not only be related to marriage and childcare, but also be interlocked with a variety of social challenges affecting the the younger generation. A report released by KOSTAT in August 2023 called “Changing Attitudes Among Young People Examined Through Social Research” revealed that only 36.4 percent of youth had a positive attitude towards marriage, which was 20.1 percent lower than it was in 2012.

Some say Korea’s low fertility rate should not be viewed as a single issue, but rather as a warning sign that reflects an unhealthy cross-section of Korean society. It is widely viewed as a wake-up call for the country to take a hard look at the struggles of a youth population that pushes marriage and childbirth down its priority list.

One key contributing factor is the low standard of living among today’s youth, which is reflected in the generation’s high suicide rates. The suicide rate among females in their twenties and thirties has nearly doubled in the last 20 years, according to KOSTAT. The report suggests that suicide constituted 62.7 percent of all deaths among females in their twenties in 2021, which is significantly higher than the 18.6 percent, recorded in 2000.

Labor rights are also central to the discontent of today’s youth. Many young people are employed in “nonstandard” or “special employment status” jobs, which means they are vulnerable to exploitation and are often not provided with basic rights such as minimum wage and social insurance.

The fatal work injury rate of 1.10 people per ten thousand workers in 2023, which is significantly higher than it is in other developed countries, is indicative of the unstable labor rights and poor working conditions in Korea.

The problem of rural regions’ deterioration, which is sending young people surging to the cities for better opportunities, is also linked to the low birthrate in Korea. Fifty-two percent of all the districts in Korea are at risk of disappearing, according to the Korea Employment Information Service, while 50.39 percent of the country’s population lives in the Seoul metropolitan area. This forces young people into intense competition for a small number of highly desired positions. As a consequence, preparation for exams, certifications and other lifecycle tasks, such as marriage and childbirth, is often pushed to the back of the line.

Gender roles and stereotypes also contribute to low birthrates in Confucian cultures like Korea’s.

Kim Min-sik, an officer at Korea’s Institute for Low Fertility, says that many women face pressure from their in-laws to give birth to a son. Korea’s older generation tends to prefer sons over daughters, since males hold more authority in patriarchal Confucianist societies. Many women, however, find this expectation burdensome, and prefer instead to avoid marriage and childbirth altogether.

Many female employees also struggle to return to their careers after giving birth, which makes the prospect of having children less attractive.

Gender inequality also influences the birthrate in Korea, which has consistently held the highest gender pay gap among OECD countries for the past 30 years. The average gender pay gap among OECD countries was 11.6 percent in 2020; Korea’s average was 31.5 percent.

That translates to an average pay gap of 5,237 won per hour, said Kim Nam-ju, deputy head researcher of the Korean Women’s Development Institute. The exact size, however, can vary by industry. The number of years that each man or woman is employed also plays a role.

Lee Joo-hee, a professor of Sociology at Ewha Womans University, believes that Korea has only created policies that ease the economic burden on men. For example, Lee believes that the government’s recent actions to shorten working hours do not benefit the majority of female employees, who tend to work at smaller companies that are not protected by the Labor Standards Act.

Lee emphasized that in order to fix Korea’s low birthrate, the government must think of young women.

The Korea Women’s Association United announced on March 31, 2023, that the government’s current solutions to the low birthrate “only focuse on marriage, childbirth, and childcare” which may be “harmful since it focuses on women’s childbirth as a main cause of problems and the target of the policy,” according to a statement issued by 47 women’s civil rights organizations including the Korea Women’s Hot-Line.

Next year’s government funding will focus on fortifying benefits to newlyweds and improving the childcare environment for existing households, President Yoon Suk Yeol said during a recent cabinet meeting on March 28, 2023, at the Blue House Guest House.

Yoon vowed to lower the burden of housing costs for newlywed couples by increasing the number of housing units and low-interest loans supplied to them. The government hopes the additional time and flexibility afforded to young couples will encourage them to have children.

Households with children will also receive increased parental benefits and child incentives intended to relieve the burden of childcare expenses. President Yoon targeted parents who need financial aid in order to raise children by reducing working hours.

Parents will also be given parttime childcare and an increased amount of tax credit.

Many hope that such incentives will succeed. If Korea’s birth rate issues are not resolved, the country might see an increasingly elderly population, which could bring labor shortages and inflated tax rates. These could pose significant challenges to the country’s stability and prosperity, threatening the country’s economic growth and development.

“The national pension is expected to be in deficit in 2041, and the generations born after 1990 may not receive any pension at all,” said Lee Sung-Yong, a chief of the Population Association of Korea. Lee also worries that “teachers and children are disappearing in Korea,” leading to the closure of elementary, middle, and high schools and universities too.

Lee added that, “When the elderly population outnumbers the productive age population from the age of 16 to 64, society will collapse.”

BY HAN SO-MIN, SUH YEON-WOO, KIM MIN-JUNG, SONG MIN-JOO [smhan24@kis.ac, ywsuh25@kis.ac, kimminjung01933@branksome.asia, songminjoo05174@branksome.asia]