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How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s

111 points by neom 3y ago

1-6 3y ago
South Korea is hostile for new families. Unless you were born to rich parents, have a decent education with a good job (that's with a Multi-national or a Chaebol), own property in Seoul, find a partner, and survive the probability of divorce, having a child is impossible--let alone having two to meet the population replacement rate. What's the solution?
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Sounds more like SK is hostile just to middle and lower class families. No that that makes it right but that's the correct interpretation.
  - deepsun 3y ago
    I feel like it's the same way in California.
    - 1-6 3y ago
      As someone who's lived in both areas, California still had opportunities for advancement during my career if one was willing to work hard. In SK, you can work hard all your life but as opportunities are limited, you'll get stuck in toil. When tourists look at S. Korea and say, "Hey, it's real nice here!" They don't see the hundreds of low-paid workers who are working behinds the scenes. There are plenty of low paying jobs but nothing that can help one build generational wealth.
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        It's exactly the same in western Europe. American tourists visit here on vacation and think "wow it's really nice here, it's walkable and full of culture" but they don't see there's no opportunities for building generational wealth, as all of it has already been captured by the previous generations so the new generation is stuck in serfdom.
        JambalayaJim 3y ago
        The vast majority of Americans aren’t building generational wealth anyway. Plus is wealth really all that valuable when you don’t have to worry about crime, funding your child’s education, losing your job, or having a major health scare? When living in a walkable area full of culture is an option everywhere, rather than a select few areas?
        morbicer 3y ago
        Hmm, social mobility index actually puts most EU countries ahead of USA. Hell even South Korea is ahead of USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index The American Dream is just that, a dream.
- gottorf 3y ago
  To add some color: South Korea is somewhere between the size of Kentucky and Indiana (the 37th and 38th largest states), yet has over 51 million people, almost 15 million more than California, the most populous state. It has very few natural resources to speak of, and is roughly two-thirds mountainous, meaning most of the population is condensed in the few flat areas. In some ways, it's natural that the fertility rate would be so low, purely out of density, if nothing else. It's honestly miraculous how far it's come. Within one lifetime, it went from a primarily agricultural economy to one of the world's largest and most industrialized. It builds (at times) half of the world's ships in tonnage, and its engineers and contractors are responsible for many of the world's tallest buildings.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    Indeed. Infinite growth as demanded by capitalism is not physically possible. If they wouldn't hit "the wall" now, they would hit it anyway in the near future. Maybe South Korea's situation should give all ageing rich developed nations something to reflect on and start making preparations for the upcoming demographic plateau/collapse and reform stuff like welfare/pension systems, instead of blindly kicking the can down the road thinking growth is never ending.
    - danuker 3y ago
      The wall manifests as prices. When you barely make ends meet in spite of being a skilled worker, something is off.
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        "The wall" is already manifesting in Europe as well, in terms of CoL and real estate prices[1] where even skilled workers can't afford a decent home anymore or build any wealth after paying the inflated rents from their stagnating wages. You either inherit something from your parents or are screwed if you don't get a top FAANG/F500 job out of university. Working for small or average companies doesn't cut it anymore. It feels like the society collectively decided "no more new building" to make housing scarce and inflate up property prices of existing owners at the expense of the newcomers. Seems like a common theme among the developed world from the Americas all the way to AU-NZ. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mavRpBC2dA8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mavRpBC2dA8
- 1-6 3y ago
  One issue is that there are many who are not willing to live normal lives and there's this constant battle of trying to outdo one another. People are trying to please even mere strangers standing next to them at the crosswalk. Living mediocre is bad and there's a negative stigma associated to being middle to lower class. If your apartment isn't a Prugio or Lotte Castle and live in Bangbae; If your car isn't a AMG, BMW M, or at least a Genesis; If your bag isn't a Hermes or a LV; If your morning routine doesn't include an Ah-Ah (Ice Americano); If your baby stroller isn't a Yoyo; If your watch isn't an Apple Watch or Omega; If your shoes aren't won through a Nike Raffle and have high resale; If your road bike riding through Hangang isn't a Pinarello; You'll be forever mediocre. My solution? Spread the population apart such that people will stop comparing themselves with one another. There are plenty of places outside of Seoul where there's fiber internet, good schools that are empty (better teacher to student ratio), and cheap land. People should be more willing to embrace the countryside (shigol) and stop thinking it's bad or without opportunity. I hope there will be more remote jobs that pay well to incentivise new families to go outward. Seoul needs some rest!
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    > My solution? Spread the population apart such that people will stop comparing themselves with one another. Small villages where everyone knows each other can be just as bad regarding bullying and talking behind one's backs, although I do agree - especially as some here in Western countries keep advocating for megacities and accelerating rural flight because of resource usage efficiency - that too dense populations are a hotbed of all kinds of social issues.
  - amrocha 3y ago
    Or just tax the shit out of the rich until they can't afford to flaunt their wealth as status
    - boeingUH60 3y ago
      The real rich, the capital owners, are not the ones flaunting wealth for status...that's the upper class people with high-paying jobs; rich but not wealthy.
- bachmeier 3y ago
  As someone that lived there with a kid a while back, I agree, and it's only gotten tougher since I left. > What's the solution? Let's start by identifying the problem. The problem is that everyone wants to live in Seoul, or even in particular parts of Seoul. Is there a solution to that? Hard to see what it might be.
  - Slava_Propanei 3y ago
    [dead]
- ChumpGPT 3y ago
  Have the Gov subsidized the young with generous programs, perhaps a monthly fee for each child where at some level (2-3 children), one parent could stay home to raise them and collect a modest salary. Otherwise most young folks can't afford it.
  - 1-6 3y ago
    The government is already subsidizing families with children. 700,000 won ($528) per month up to age of one, and 350,000 won ($264) per month up to the age of two. It's certainly a nice to have but not enough.
    - andrewjl 3y ago
      > It's certainly a nice to have but not enough. Agree, it sounds like peanuts. Probably still better than nothing on net but substantially raising this subsidy is the first thing to do if making a serious attempt to improve things for families.
- intrasight 3y ago
  The solution is fewer people - which is the direction they are headed. S.Korea has twice the population density of Germany for instance. So cutting in to half the current number seems about right. Honest question: who benefits from population growth besides developers?
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    Rapid changes are always problematic, no matter the direction. Society and environments can accommodate slow changes much easier than they can accommodate quick ones.
  - avisser 3y ago
    Old people. Any socialized support system is predicated on growth.
  - RestlessMind 3y ago
    > Honest question: who benefits from population growth besides developers? Honest answer: next generation of retirees / older people. They need young people in multiple ways - 1. to sustain welfare (which is pay-as-you-go universally), 2. production of food / entertainment / stuff, 3. services If you think automation is going to solve that, just look at who were "essential service workers"[1] in Covid where governments had to make exceptions even in the early days of pandemic when things were at their scariest. All those are essential functions for the society. Who is going to handle all of that when each next generation is only 35% of the previous generation's size (with a TFR of 0.7)? [1] One example: https://covid19.ca.gov/essential-workforce/ https://covid19.ca.gov/essential-workforce/
    - MichaelZuo 3y ago
      Huh? 'Essential service workers' don't even make up 20% of the current adult population of the US.
    - intrasight 3y ago
      Immigration and automation
- yobbo 3y ago
  Guessing ... because of appreciating real estate and concentration of jobs, living in certain cities/areas became culturally synonymous with "being a winner" while staying in rural/industrial towns meant "being a loser". So the big cities became the bottle neck through which all young people need to funnel before they deem each other worthy of starting families. And that's a bottle neck on population growth. The same mechanism exists elsewhere but the contrasts between "stagnant vs vital" would be more pronounced in SK, probably because of the rate and scale of the economy over the last 40-50 years. Maybe? The government needs to stop fuelling the bubble. Instead, raise mortgage rates (so that "time in market" stops being a factor) and force industry to spread out offices and jobs (of all ranks) evenly throughout the country.
- dirtyid 3y ago
  Lot's of sticks. No real estate / wealth transfers unless to couples with 2 kids. New nuclear families either have potential windfall of 4x estates/wealth/housing from multiple older generations or they have to work the uphill childless grind. Combine with subsidies for home ownership in desirable areas for those with kids. BAN PET OWNERSHIP for those without kids. IMO This one huge. Increasing trend of emotional surrogate pets filling emotional void in east asia. Need to drive down cost of people settling for medicore relationships. It's not enough to make economics of having kids easier, you have to make not having kids harder.
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    Ha, I’d you ban pet ownership people will just go shopping with their roombas.
- kamaal 3y ago
  This seems to be the problem with all the developing countries. Economic growth requires, men and women both prioritising jobs over marriage and family stability. Divorces happen because there is immense incentive for women to look for better partners even after 1, or many marriages. The incentives are life long, premium monthly pensions with annual raises and child support payments. All you have to do is marry some one, and divorce them. They now owe you life long monthly pensions. There is not a job on earth where you can work two years, and then be entitled to life long pensions. Not even in the extreme politics of communism was this even imagined, to the scale marriage has been reduced to now. Given all, marriage and even having kids is heavily disincentivised. You have to be an idiot beyond belief to walk into something like this. Apart from this, even with a perfect marriage. Most men have to deal with never ending disappointed feelings from women for working to death and still coming short of their expectations. Given all this I don't think there is a easy solution for this birth rate problem. Social engineering on the scale of countries is needed. The overall social and cultural trend world wide are no where near whats needed to bring about these birth rate increases.
neom 3y ago
My wife and I have opted not to have children for reasons* and it's really sad how the conversation with the in-laws has moved from "you should have children because children" to "you need to have children because korea needs you to have children", and it's not just a passing comment here and there, the campaign to get us to single handedly re-populate SK is intense and sustained. I wonder if other couples are experiencing this. *We can't afford to have children, Climate change, We can't afford to have children
- seanw444 3y ago
  My outlook is that the world certainly isn't getting better any time soon. It'll get a lot worse first. And who knows how long that will take. And I want to be young enough to enjoy time with my kids when they're adults. The complications and difficulties are worth it, I figure. I say this as an American glossing through this comment thread though, so I don't know your circumstances.
- Hitton 3y ago
  I wouldn't worry to much about climate change, humanity overcame bigger problems. And if your in-laws want children so much, just tell them your concerns, they might be willing to chip in financially.
  - Daishiman 3y ago
    I think you are seriously underestimating the impacts that worldwide crop failures in the next 20 years are going to have as far as global human catastrophes go.
    - johngladtj 3y ago
      Are you serious about this? This climate doomerism is frankly ridiculous. Do you have any genuine studies that show such impactful effects?
      - wing-_-nuts 3y ago
CapitalistCartr 3y ago
Smuggle people out of North Korea on a massive scale. I'm imagining scenes like a Mission Impossible movie.
- deleted 3y ago
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- jimlongton 3y ago
  I would imagine integrating North Koreans into the South would be far more difficult than the reunification of Germany. The technological and health gap alone is huge and even their language has started to drift apart.
  - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
    I've read about the sad state of escaped North Koreans. They are provided a "life starting" package from the South Korean government, but sometimes to get out of North Korea they have to promise to give some of that money to the people smuggling them out. There are also a lot of scams that North Koreans don't know to be wary of, and there was even a report of someone going back to North Korea after being scammed and becoming a propagandist on their national television to tell everyone about how South Korea is full of scams and liars, and North Korea is way better.
grej 3y ago
South Korea was among the poorest countries in the world - poorer than many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa as recently as the 1960s. Withing a single lifetime they transformed themselves into one of the most advanced developed economies on the planet with a madman (mad men) on their doorstep. It’s natural that that kind of change will have some massive societal implications, many of which they are still sorting out. Their birth rate is something that will require immense attention and work to begin to correct, but it’s worth noting what they’ve accomplished in getting to a place where they can afford to worry about that as one of their primary concerns.
- deleted 3y ago
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- cagenut 3y ago
  correct?
  - Night_Thastus 3y ago
    There are reasons from an economical point of view why a shrinking population isn't great. So they may see it as a problem that needs correcting.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  It's easy to illustrate the impact of fertility rates by model, and it's far more rapid/severe than I think most realize. A fertility rate of "N" means that the next younger generation will be N/2 times as large. So, a fertility rate of 2 means no change, while a fertility rate of 4 would result in an exponential doubling. How about 0.7? We can create a population distribution of this easily enough because we know how big each generation will be relative to the one after it. Assume each generation is 20 years (if its longer - things look even worse). We end up with, for instance: === 1000 eighty year olds, 350 sixty year olds, 122 forty year olds, 42 twenty year olds, 15 newborns. === So you have a working age population of ~300 people working to support a population of 1529. You have a median age of 80, and an average age of 70. Think about the pressure on hospital, healthcare, and any sort of pension or other programs. Those 300 people need to not only man all of these jobs, but also somehow keep the entire economy from collapsing. I mean it's just not going to work. And then of course your population will be declining catastrophically quickly. The ~20 years during which those 1000 eighty year olds die will result in a population decline of 65%. Yet that's no salvation because the ratio of age distributions won't change at all, unless fertility rates do. You'll end up in the exact same position, continuing to lose 65% of your population each 20 years to come.
firebirdn99 3y ago
[flagged]
neaden 3y ago
While South Korea has the largest fertility rate fall it's important that they are just the most extreme of many countries. East Asian countries in general like China and Japan have been having a big fall, and many European countries are as well. France has the highest birthrate of any European country at 1.84 but even that is below replacement rate.
mathverse 3y ago
Should I have children in a country where I can get fired for no reason, apts cost $1M+ and you have to work slave hours? LOL
- deleted 3y ago
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- jimlongton 3y ago
  It's okay. You can complain to your union (which is run by your company) or work for a competitor (which is also owned by the same conglomerate as your company). At least your leader is no longer brainwashed by a shaman who channels her dead father while taking bribes from those conglomerates [1]. That father who was also your former military dictator who followed the great tradition of torturing and murdering socialists and worker leaders with the CIAs help. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_South_Korean_political_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_South_Korean_political_sc...
kypro 3y ago
I think in the West we would benefit if the default position was that it's shameful and selfish to not have kids. The way our welfare state is set up currently is such that we don't pay for our own retirement, but need the generations below us (hopefully a larger generation) to fund our retirement as we did for the generations before us. When we don't have kids the welfare system which we seem to value simply doesn't work anymore and puts increasing pressures on younger generations. And this compounds the low birthrate issue because we now have to raise taxes on younger generations and take out more debt (both public and private) to afford the welfare spending. This high level of taxation and indebtedness increases wealth inequality and makes it harder for young couple to have children. I think we'll work this out the hard way at some point... The West is trying to offset the inevitable with ever increasing levels of immigration but that will only work for so long. Eventually the welfare system will collapse and people will have to have kids if they want to be cared for in their older age. I hope we don't get to that point, but it seems to me people are too nice to shame people for not having kids and are unwillingly cut welfare spending / fund their own retirements. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58340 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58340 Not sure what the situation is in South Korea. If people care for their own elderly family / neighbours instead of expecting the state to do it then perhaps a low birth rate is less of an issue. Sure, GDP might not grow, but that's not the end of the world.
- pacifika 3y ago
  Or we could opt to care for our elderly and encourage compassion and empathy instead of shaming and stigma.
  - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
    Gotta have kids in the first place to raise kids that know to respect and care for the elderly. Otherwise this sentiment sounds like "I hope other people raise kids that know to respect and care for elders" because it's not like people are financially rewarded for most kinds of elder care, at least in the US, and that labor has to come from somewhere. The nuclear family has the side effect of needing to put elders in a care facility rather than them living at home with the rest of the family. It's also compounded by the amount of medical care people receive in old age and many families aren't capable of safely caring for certain levels of dementia, for example. It's kind of an application of Ghandi's "be the change you want to see in the world" - knowing that at the very least YOUR kids have been taught to respect and care for elders.
mrangle 3y ago
Expensive societies with the always concomitant class stratification will always run into reproduction issues. In short, unsubsidized poor and even middle class people begin to rationalize that, even if they could somehow manage the financial stress of reproduction, their lives are too miserable to justify damning their kids to the same fate. That said: climate doomerism, as an excuse for not having kids, is for intellectual children. Climate arguments aside, such views ironically ignore that man is subsumed under nature. If and when the climate is actually a problem in regard to reproduction, the human population will decline directly due to climate pressure. Then the climate and else will recover, and the population will again recover. In other words, the climate's ecosystem with humans is self limiting and correcting if it is an issue at all. Refusing to have kids due to climate is the exact same as saying that someone else deserves children more than you do. And that's it.
- skulk 3y ago
  Your last paragraph tries to use population arguments to prove that individual decisions are illogical. That doesn't look great after calling people who hold a certain position "intellectual children".
Auracle 3y ago
Are we sure that there's nothing else going on with fertility rates? It seems odd to me that one of the primary drives of humanity has fallen off of a cliff so quickly. Sure, it mostly manifests as a drive to have sex and we can get around that with birth control, but that's not the only thing it does to us. There's a reason the concept of the "biological clock ticking" is a thing. We know testosterone levels are dropping: "After controlling for confounders—including year of study, age, race, BMI, comorbidity status, alcohol and smoking use, and level of physical activity—total testosterone was lower among men in the later (2011-2016) versus earlier (1999-2000) cycles (P < 0.001). Mean total testosterone decreased from 1999-2000 (605.39 ng/dL), 2003-2004 (567.44 ng/dL), 2011-2012 (424.96 ng/dL), 2013-2014 (431.76 ng/dL), and 2015-2016 (451.22 ng/dL; all P < .0001)." https://www.urologytimes.com/view/testosterone-levels-show-steady-decrease-among-young-us-men https://www.urologytimes.com/view/testosterone-levels-show-s... Setting aside that semen quality is also affected... Maybe testosterone, or other hormones that might be affected by the same thing, also affect the drive to have children? It seems the more urban a civilization, the lower the birth rate. When I just tried to look up if anyone has looked into that I couldn't find anything, but here's a nice overview of different theories on fertility rates dropping as a whole: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8977063/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8977063/
- jm__87 3y ago
  Weird to be wondering if men are to blame here when women are typically the ones who have the final say as to when and with whom they decide to settle down and have kids with. Personally I think it is a combination of couples not wanting to have kids for a variety of reasons (not wanting to sacrifice their quality of life, lack of economic security, anxieties about the future), women delaying childbirth for longer to focus on education and career (and possibly waiting too long and not being able to have children by the time they are ready), women becoming pickier with who they choose to date and marry with the reality of hypergamy (women with higher educational and career attainment typically want to date men who are at least as successful as they are, and women are increasingly outperforming men in education and career these days). I'm sure men have some blame in this too, but most single men I know would prefer to not be single, but can't seem to find anyone interested.
steve76 3y ago
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sampa 3y ago
seems like NK will overwhelm SK by paraphrased Yasser Arafat words: the strongest weapon that the Palestinians have is the womb of Palestinian mothers
tatrajim 3y ago
Some historical context that might be of use to one or two lonely grad students reading this comment :) As a US peace corps volunteer working in a very rural health center in South Korea (one paved road in a large county, many villages still without electricity), it was impossible not to notice the huge push the Park Chung Hee government was making into birth control. Pres. Park was convinced that Korea's very high birth rate was an anchor around his plans for economic development and so devoted substantial government resources toward reducing it. Many families had 5-8 children, especially in the first four were daughters, as at the time there was an overwhelming preference for sons. This preference generally changed to daughters sometime in the 1990s. In practice Park's birth control program meant that every township (면, about 10,000 in population) outside the cities had a special nurse devoted to birth control (가족계획요원) operating out of the local township center. My job involved tuberculosis control out in the villages, so I came to know these nurses well. In practice they provided information on birth control to all married women and were tasked with keeping track of the menstrual cycles of all married women, a fact I found extraordinary at the time and still do in memory. Additionally, the government encouraged vasectomies financially (esp. for government employees) and there were often long lines of anxious-looking men outside our health center awaiting the procedure. There are many reasons for the low birth rate in contemporary South Korea, but the inflection point came in the 1970s and the now long-forgotten family planning nurses were at the forefront of this change.
stormfather 3y ago
"Calhoun had been running similar experiments with rodents for decades but had always had to end them prematurely, ironically because of laboratory space constraints, says Edmund Ramsden, a science historian at Queen Mary University of London. This iteration, dubbed Universe 25, was the first crowding experiment he ran to completion. As he had anticipated, the utopia became hellish nearly a year in when the population density began to peak, and then population growth abruptly and dramatically slowed. Animals became increasingly violent, developed abnormal sexual behaviors, and began neglecting or even attacking their own pups. Calhoun termed this breakdown of social order a “behavioral sink.” Eventually Universe 25 took another disturbing turn. Mice born into the chaos couldn’t form normal social bonds or engage in complex social behaviors such as courtship, mating, and pup-rearing. Instead of interacting with their peers, males compulsively groomed themselves; females stopped getting pregnant. Effectively, says Ramsden, they became “trapped in an infantile state of early development,” even when removed from Universe 25 and introduced to “normal” mice. Ultimately, the colony died out. “There’s no recovery, and that’s what was so shocking to [Calhoun],” says Ramsden."
chaostheory 3y ago
The only thing they left out in the article is what the effect of pollutants like BPA have on the birthrate. Currently, BPA, an artificial estrogen, is nearly everywhere from food, receipts, and now even clothing. PFAS, BPS, and a host of other pollutants are almost as widespread in many countries that experienced any decent amount of industrialization
- throwawaysleep 3y ago
  This explanation may make sense if people were complaining about an inability to have kids despite wanting them. But physical infertility is not alleged here.
  - jamiek88 3y ago
    Those hormones could very well affect the desire to have kids too. Our brains and hormones are poorly understood.
    - woodruffw 3y ago
      "We don't understand it" is the absence of an argument, not positive evidence that these chemicals make people not want to have children.
      - munk-a 3y ago
        I agree that it's a frustrating counter argument since it is so vague and poorly understood but we really don't know a lot about how hormones effect decision making outside of a few very crude ones. It is a mostly non-existent argument but it's still something that's important to consider.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - xwdv 3y ago
      If you must have a child hormones will have little to do with it. Reproduction can be made into a very routine robotic like activity, like going to the gym.
hungryforcodes 3y ago
[flagged]
- Fauntleroy 3y ago
  I wouldn't necessarily call it "fueled by western style feminist politics", when it is fueled as much (or even moreso) by "western style incel politics". Furthermore, while it most certainly is an issue over there, it's not so widespread it contributes meaningfully to this particular statistic.
  - ae_throw 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - Fauntleroy 3y ago
    I should add the obvious: if this is the result of "western style" anything, why is it more prevalent in Korea than "the West"?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- HelloMcFly 3y ago
  > western style feminist politics Care to explain precisely what you mean in this context? Because it's hard not to see this as a dog-whistle for "why can't women just be happy with the caretaker role?" but perhaps you mean something more benign.
  - hungryforcodes 3y ago
    I'm just reporting what I've been told by Koreans I've met. The problem doesn't seem to exist in older generations. Happy if Koreans could chime in.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      This sounds like Korean men who can’t get a date. Given they’re blaming “Western-style feminism,” I see why. Marriage rates in Korea are declining, as they are everywhere. But there is no evidence of increases in single men, other than in the uneducated and low-income group [1]. [1] https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/poor-men-in-s-korea-likely-single-and-childless-as-those-with-money-get-to-have-it-all https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/poor-men-in-s-ko...
jmyeet 3y ago
[flagged]
- Fauntleroy 3y ago
  To be precise the issue is that capitalism will always optimize for "most profit" and little else, simply due to the design of the capitalist "machine". Koreans are simply very very good at capitalism, and the result is a society where most will barely scrape by, constantly working, while those at the top reap massive profits. If you've been paying attention, you can see the same exact thing here in America, with a little more wiggle room due to the wide range of cost of living throughout the country.
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    The other thing is that Japan and Korea have heavily state sponsored capitalism; bank capital and other resources are overwhelmingly allocated to large conglomerates as an industrial policy, which strangles small and medium size businesses that actually employ most people and thus reduces wages across the economy. Samsung Group is 20.3% of South Korean GDP, and that’s just one of the chaebol.
    - Fauntleroy 3y ago
      Finally, a commenter who actually knows something about Korea.
  - wsc981 3y ago
    Northern Europe and Canada as well. Perhaps all of the “Western” world.
- nine_zeros 3y ago
  > Capitalism. The problem is capitalism. Not capitalism but the unfettered capitalism without protection for workers. In a system where humans are treated as "input" for the big machine without income security, said humans will not produce more burden unto themselves. If having a kid increases the risk of destitution, the rational human will choose to not have them (or at least not have more than 1).
UncleOxidant 3y ago
I see little emphasis in this article on real estate or rents. Sure, the issues they raise are contributors, but housing issues are foundational for many of the other problems they spend a lot of time on in the article. SK is more land-constrained than Japan. We're seeing family formation being negatively impacted in many areas of the world now due to high real estate prices. It's particularly acute in SK: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-04-11/in-seouls-piece-rooms-theres-not-even-enough-room-to-lay-down-inside-south-koreas-brutal-housing-crisis https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-04-11/in-seo...
- yoyoyo1122 3y ago
  It's in the middle of the article: > Another economic factor in the falling birthrate is the rising price of real estate and a resulting increase in unmarried or late-marrying people. The tradition in Korea is for men to prepare a family home before marrying, and the rising cost of housing in recent years has thereby triggered a decline in marriage rates. The Bank of Korea recently enacted emergency interest rate hikes that brought down the price of condominiums, but the interest rate on mortgages has risen, keeping home ownership a distant dream for many.
  - UncleOxidant 3y ago
    Ok, there's a bit of a mention there, but they don't seem to consider it the foundational issue. They mention education costs for several paragraphs - education costs would likely not be so high if real estate costs weren't so high. Fewer desireable/high paying jobs gets several paragraphs, but again, this would be less of a problem if rents weren't so high - people would be able to live on the incomes available. High real estate prices are sucking the oxygen out of the rest of the economy.
- deleted 3y ago
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- Tade0 3y ago
  It's there. Relevant fragment: > Another economic factor in the falling birthrate is the rising price of real estate and a resulting increase in unmarried or late-marrying people. The tradition in Korea is for men to prepare a family home before marrying, and the rising cost of housing in recent years has thereby triggered a decline in marriage rates.
seydor 3y ago
Life may be too good for kids anymore The article has curiously little about what koreans actually want, vs what the author thinks is stopping them (despite their burning desire) to have kids. After all, as the article says the birthrate went way down a long time ago thus it's likely that people would know by now what is stopping them from having more kids
- thegreenswede 3y ago
  No. I want kids but I don't want them until I can afford stable housing. And if that's hard for me as an overpaid tech worker, then I understand why most people are delaying kids or not having them at all. If most young people are still living with parents or roommates well into their 30's, then it's not a mystery why my generation isn't having kids. Nothing to do with 'life is so good kids aren't desirable anymore'.
  - munk-a 3y ago
    Yea, pretty much this. I'm half of a two person couple well into the upper middle class - we live in a one bedroom condo that costs more than half a million dollars... kids are not a realistic financial decision.
    - paulcole 3y ago
      You and I are probably in similar situations (I rent a 1-bedroom apartment in an upscale-ish area) and you probably earn more than me but I live very comfortably. I've personally never had any interest in having kids. Whatever it is that makes kids appealing, I've never had it. But I think I agree with you and I don't understand why I think I agree with you. Kids do seem like a crazy financial decision today. But if we wanted to, we could for sure have a kid and get by. Plenty of people have plenty of kids on a lot less money. Is it that we want to maintain our standard of living more than people did in the past? Plenty of poor people have plenty of kids in 1 bedroom apartments. Do we just demand more comfort today? Are we just more picky? Are kids just not worth what they used to be? I don't think any of these answers are bad. I just think it's interesting.
ae_throw 3y ago
Having read the article and somewhat followed the SK troubles, the only sensible conclusion I can draw is that the culture itself has become poor and unable to prosper, and is on a downward trajectory. A small % of people will obviously succeed but this doesn’t really make a culture. You having children today doesn’t guarantee the circumstances for your children, no matter how much of a financial or otherwise buffer you put in place - because your neighbours are in the same situation and nobody wants to take action to divert from the current course. This is another society that’s on track for extinction. You just can’t play along and hope for the best. It doesn’t work that way and it never did. Forcing your kids to stay up until 4 am to study while you get yourself into debt is not a recipe for success no matter what the rest of the country is doing. It’s just terrible from a societal perspective.
orochimaaru 3y ago
I think all these studies skirt very gingerly around a big problem. Stressful work culture, lack of support for families (includes high real-estate costs, long commute times, lack of sick leave, etc.) and most importantly a path for women (and men - but its mostly women) who drop out of the workforce and want to get back in once the children are older and more independent. Child rearing takes a group of people not just a nuclear family where both parents work long hours. Cost of living and work culture is forcing people to work long hours and women don't find a good enough reason to give up their freedom, and keep in mind it's what childbirth is in most Asian cultures, a woman giving up what she wants to do until the child is independent. I see no reason why women would ever want children. What's society providing them that they need to make this sacrifice ? All studies mention these, they just don't provide any concrete solutions. It's typically around creating some committee or forum that is looking to change this. Nothing will change, not until the corporations start running out of people to hire or the country runs out of soldiers for defense.
- deleted 3y ago
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- Yhippa 3y ago
  Not sure where you are but it feels that this is exactly what it's like in America. I am not sure why nobody really cares and I suspect by the time people try to do something about it, it won't be too late, but it's going to take a Herculean effort to fix. Mindset and structural support.
  - orochimaaru 3y ago
    It is. The only difference is that the US (and Canada) are way more welcoming of immigrants than South Korea or Japan. That's basically what's keeping them competitive. I'm also pretty sure that high birth rate from illegal south american immigrants keeps US population going. The legal immigrants have children but at a subsistence level, generally <= 2.
    - angmarsbane 3y ago
raarts 3y ago
There's a very interesting and relevant documentary called 'Birthgap'. First part's on YouTube. Recommended. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6s8QlIGanA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6s8QlIGanA
- deleted 3y ago
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ethbr1 3y ago
There's a good note about the vast disparity between tiers of employers in South Korea (and will likely ring true in other countries too) >> There is also a large wage gap between the primary labor market of major companies, like Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motor Company, and the secondary labor market of small to medium-sized enterprises. This labor market polarization is progressing, and there is an even greater disparity in labor conditions than in Japan. [...] Employees of larger companies are much better off, with relatively higher salaries, better working conditions, and labor union protections. Those in SMEs, though, earn low wages, work under harsher conditions, and have no unions to protect their rights in negotiations with management, making these companies far less attractive to job seekers. I'd pair that with a François Mitterrand-era (i.e. ~1980-95) French position that 'Progress means nothing unless it is shared by all.' Chaebols are antithetical to democracy, as ultimately people will always act in their own best interests, and centralized individual economic power will rapidly corrupt democratic restraints placed on it. The only antidote is decentralization of economic power (aka ensuring gains are widely accessible by most of the population).
aidenn0 3y ago
Aside from SK specific issues in TFA, are their wealthy countries that have successfully countered declining birth rates with something other than immigration?
- dmoy 3y ago
  No. But there are places where it isn't nearly as stark as SK or HK (the two big ones under 1.0, let alone replacement of ~2.1). Most of Western Europe is under 1.5, which is still way under replacement rate. Sweden, France, and Iceland are at like 1.8, which is still under replacement rate but not incredibly low. Unless you count tiny places like the Faroe Islands maybe.
Slava_Propanei 3y ago
Women in the workplace was a mistake
- PretzelPirate 3y ago
  Is that what you mean, or do you mean that building a society where both parents need to work in order to survive has distracted us from important parts of life that result in a healthier society? Perhaps one parent working and one at home with plenty of time for both parents to relax and spend time with their family is the key, but that doesn't mean that the man should work and the woman should stay home (or that both parents need to be different genders).
davidktr 3y ago
To add another source, the Atlantic had a piece on birthrates in South Korea last March: https://archive.li/Fm93M https://archive.li/Fm93M Quoting from the article: > There are a lot of reasons people decide not to have a baby. Young Koreans cite as obstacles the high cost of housing in greater Seoul (home to roughly half the country’s 52 million citizens), the expense of raising a child in a hypercompetitive academic culture, and grueling workplace norms that are inhospitable to family life, especially for women, who are still expected to do the bulk of housework and child care. But these explanations miss a more basic dynamic: the deterioration in relations between women and men—what the Korean media call a “gender war.” Unfortunately, there seems to be little commonality in how men and women see the issue. Hard to imagine any solution at all.
- deleted 3y ago
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- mvncleaninst 3y ago
  They should append "From a White American Journalist's Perspective" to the title, would make the whole thing a little more honest
em500 3y ago
South Korea is just the most extreme example of the global trend of below replacement rate and still decreasing fertility: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate#/media/File:Total_Fertility_Rate_Map_by_Country.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate#/media/Fi... Central Africa is pretty much the only remaining region with fertility>3. Even in pretty poor countries like Bangladesh, which I learned in school had unsustainability high birth rates are already near or below replacement rate fertility. And if you look at time series trends, is't negative in the vast majority of countries: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN
- sho_hn 3y ago
  It's a simplistic thought, but I often have this optimistic impulse that dealing with stabilizing the birth rate is easier than escaping the Malthusian trap would be, especially with energy use/person generally trending up.
  - seneca 3y ago
    Longterm, it probably is. The problem is the transitional period. The reality of having a population with more elders and fewer working age adults will be absolutely brutal.
markus_zhang 3y ago
Chinese people are seeing the same decline of birth and marriage. Part of that contributes to better life but I'd say the majority is because of Capitalism. This form of Capitalism is initiated by the government so there is not much to check its power. Essentially, if you look at housing, cost of education and cost of medical services, you will understand why middle class in China does not want to give birth to children.
- pyuser583 3y ago
  China also had, and still has, a child limit policy that violates human rights. Not to mention the genocide currently in progress. Genocides don’t help fertility, I’m guessing.
  - throwawaysleep 3y ago
    China now has a 3 kid cap. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57303592 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57303592 Their birthrate is 1. The cap is not a barrier anymore.
    - pyuser583 3y ago
      Decades of vicious persecution and propaganda don’t just vanish. Even in America, there was a massive effort to convince people to have fewer kids, and prominent people still blindly recite the talking points - with zero correction by fact-checkers.
  - markus_zhang 3y ago
    The limit is basically gone now so at least that is a non issue.
    - pyuser583 3y ago
      It’s still there. The limit is currently four (with exceptions). I’m pretty sure the mere existence of a limit sends a message.
duchenne 3y ago
This sounds like a study made from afar by just reading numbers without even talking to Koreans. When I talk to Korean parents, the vast majority of them tell me that raising even one kid is exhausting. They usually try as much as possible to satisfy every requests of their baby: carrying the toddlers for hours until they fall sleep, letting their kids sleep in the parents bed until they're 6, spoon-feeding them until they are 6, and so on... A Korean pediatrician friend told me that Korean kids score the lowest in the world in terms of autonomy. So, parents of one kid are already exhausted and think it would be too hard to have a second one.
- ae_throw 3y ago
  TIL SK babies are needier than babies in rest of the world.
  - dang 3y ago
    Could you please not post unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait? Your account has already been doing it repeatedly. We're trying for something else here! If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- angmarsbane 3y ago
  Perhaps we need a cultural change in parenting, a more relaxed parenting style or more of a village experience where parents can trust teachers, neighbors, bus drivers etc. to reinforce values, expectations, etc. so it isn't all on the parents (or parent).
- seoulmetro 3y ago
  That's entirely to be expected when your plan hinges around having one kid. They're called little emperors for a reason. If you have more than one kid, Korean or not, you treat them less preciously.
pyuser583 3y ago
South Korea had decades of anti-natalist policies. It’s a bit odd complaining about a low fertility rate now.
mustafa_pasi 3y ago
Are there any highly developed cultures with a high birth rate? US Mormons and US Christians maybe?
- gnicholas 3y ago
  Israel comes to mind.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    The part of Israel that has a high birthrate is militantly not modern. To the point of not working in order to study religion all day, and blurring out women in photographs.
    - gnicholas 3y ago
      I’m no expert, but I was under the impression that the fertility rate there is relatively high, pretty much across the board, compared to most other developed countries. Is it only high in the most orthodox communities?
angmarsbane 3y ago
One thing I don't see mentioned is that a larger portion of the population spends a lot more time in full-time school, and in part-time school + working which easily delays having children. Is it truly necessary for so many of us to spend that much time in school? Can school programs be shortened? Can we admit in some areas additional schooling doesn't provide more value than on the job training / experience?
throwaway6734 3y ago
If there is any genetic component to wanting children, this will hopefully work itself out over a few generations as the bloodlines of people that don't want children die off.
smegsicle 3y ago
there used to be some spicy discussion on feminism in south korea here its gone now

111 points by neom 3y ago

1-6 3y ago

South Korea is hostile for new families. Unless you were born to rich parents, have a decent education with a good job (that's with a Multi-national or a Chaebol), own property in Seoul, find a partner, and survive the probability of divorce, having a child is impossible--let alone having two to meet the population replacement rate. What's the solution?

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
Sounds more like SK is hostile just to middle and lower class families. No that that makes it right but that's the correct interpretation.
- deepsun 3y ago
  I feel like it's the same way in California.
  - 1-6 3y ago
    As someone who's lived in both areas, California still had opportunities for advancement during my career if one was willing to work hard. In SK, you can work hard all your life but as opportunities are limited, you'll get stuck in toil. When tourists look at S. Korea and say, "Hey, it's real nice here!" They don't see the hundreds of low-paid workers who are working behinds the scenes. There are plenty of low paying jobs but nothing that can help one build generational wealth.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      It's exactly the same in western Europe. American tourists visit here on vacation and think "wow it's really nice here, it's walkable and full of culture" but they don't see there's no opportunities for building generational wealth, as all of it has already been captured by the previous generations so the new generation is stuck in serfdom.
      - JambalayaJim 3y ago
        The vast majority of Americans aren’t building generational wealth anyway. Plus is wealth really all that valuable when you don’t have to worry about crime, funding your child’s education, losing your job, or having a major health scare? When living in a walkable area full of culture is an option everywhere, rather than a select few areas?
      - morbicer 3y ago
        Hmm, social mobility index actually puts most EU countries ahead of USA. Hell even South Korea is ahead of USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index The American Dream is just that, a dream.
gottorf 3y ago
To add some color: South Korea is somewhere between the size of Kentucky and Indiana (the 37th and 38th largest states), yet has over 51 million people, almost 15 million more than California, the most populous state. It has very few natural resources to speak of, and is roughly two-thirds mountainous, meaning most of the population is condensed in the few flat areas. In some ways, it's natural that the fertility rate would be so low, purely out of density, if nothing else. It's honestly miraculous how far it's come. Within one lifetime, it went from a primarily agricultural economy to one of the world's largest and most industrialized. It builds (at times) half of the world's ships in tonnage, and its engineers and contractors are responsible for many of the world's tallest buildings.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Indeed. Infinite growth as demanded by capitalism is not physically possible. If they wouldn't hit "the wall" now, they would hit it anyway in the near future. Maybe South Korea's situation should give all ageing rich developed nations something to reflect on and start making preparations for the upcoming demographic plateau/collapse and reform stuff like welfare/pension systems, instead of blindly kicking the can down the road thinking growth is never ending.
  - danuker 3y ago
    The wall manifests as prices. When you barely make ends meet in spite of being a skilled worker, something is off.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      "The wall" is already manifesting in Europe as well, in terms of CoL and real estate prices[1] where even skilled workers can't afford a decent home anymore or build any wealth after paying the inflated rents from their stagnating wages. You either inherit something from your parents or are screwed if you don't get a top FAANG/F500 job out of university. Working for small or average companies doesn't cut it anymore. It feels like the society collectively decided "no more new building" to make housing scarce and inflate up property prices of existing owners at the expense of the newcomers. Seems like a common theme among the developed world from the Americas all the way to AU-NZ. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mavRpBC2dA8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mavRpBC2dA8
1-6 3y ago
One issue is that there are many who are not willing to live normal lives and there's this constant battle of trying to outdo one another. People are trying to please even mere strangers standing next to them at the crosswalk. Living mediocre is bad and there's a negative stigma associated to being middle to lower class. If your apartment isn't a Prugio or Lotte Castle and live in Bangbae; If your car isn't a AMG, BMW M, or at least a Genesis; If your bag isn't a Hermes or a LV; If your morning routine doesn't include an Ah-Ah (Ice Americano); If your baby stroller isn't a Yoyo; If your watch isn't an Apple Watch or Omega; If your shoes aren't won through a Nike Raffle and have high resale; If your road bike riding through Hangang isn't a Pinarello; You'll be forever mediocre. My solution? Spread the population apart such that people will stop comparing themselves with one another. There are plenty of places outside of Seoul where there's fiber internet, good schools that are empty (better teacher to student ratio), and cheap land. People should be more willing to embrace the countryside (shigol) and stop thinking it's bad or without opportunity. I hope there will be more remote jobs that pay well to incentivise new families to go outward. Seoul needs some rest!
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > My solution? Spread the population apart such that people will stop comparing themselves with one another. Small villages where everyone knows each other can be just as bad regarding bullying and talking behind one's backs, although I do agree - especially as some here in Western countries keep advocating for megacities and accelerating rural flight because of resource usage efficiency - that too dense populations are a hotbed of all kinds of social issues.
- amrocha 3y ago
  Or just tax the shit out of the rich until they can't afford to flaunt their wealth as status
  - boeingUH60 3y ago
    The real rich, the capital owners, are not the ones flaunting wealth for status...that's the upper class people with high-paying jobs; rich but not wealthy.
bachmeier 3y ago
As someone that lived there with a kid a while back, I agree, and it's only gotten tougher since I left. > What's the solution? Let's start by identifying the problem. The problem is that everyone wants to live in Seoul, or even in particular parts of Seoul. Is there a solution to that? Hard to see what it might be.
- Slava_Propanei 3y ago
  [dead]
ChumpGPT 3y ago
Have the Gov subsidized the young with generous programs, perhaps a monthly fee for each child where at some level (2-3 children), one parent could stay home to raise them and collect a modest salary. Otherwise most young folks can't afford it.
- 1-6 3y ago
  The government is already subsidizing families with children. 700,000 won ($528) per month up to age of one, and 350,000 won ($264) per month up to the age of two. It's certainly a nice to have but not enough.
  - andrewjl 3y ago
    > It's certainly a nice to have but not enough. Agree, it sounds like peanuts. Probably still better than nothing on net but substantially raising this subsidy is the first thing to do if making a serious attempt to improve things for families.
intrasight 3y ago
The solution is fewer people - which is the direction they are headed. S.Korea has twice the population density of Germany for instance. So cutting in to half the current number seems about right. Honest question: who benefits from population growth besides developers?
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Rapid changes are always problematic, no matter the direction. Society and environments can accommodate slow changes much easier than they can accommodate quick ones.
- avisser 3y ago
  Old people. Any socialized support system is predicated on growth.
- RestlessMind 3y ago
  > Honest question: who benefits from population growth besides developers? Honest answer: next generation of retirees / older people. They need young people in multiple ways - 1. to sustain welfare (which is pay-as-you-go universally), 2. production of food / entertainment / stuff, 3. services If you think automation is going to solve that, just look at who were "essential service workers"[1] in Covid where governments had to make exceptions even in the early days of pandemic when things were at their scariest. All those are essential functions for the society. Who is going to handle all of that when each next generation is only 35% of the previous generation's size (with a TFR of 0.7)? [1] One example: https://covid19.ca.gov/essential-workforce/ https://covid19.ca.gov/essential-workforce/
  - MichaelZuo 3y ago
    Huh? 'Essential service workers' don't even make up 20% of the current adult population of the US.
  - intrasight 3y ago
    Immigration and automation
yobbo 3y ago
Guessing ... because of appreciating real estate and concentration of jobs, living in certain cities/areas became culturally synonymous with "being a winner" while staying in rural/industrial towns meant "being a loser". So the big cities became the bottle neck through which all young people need to funnel before they deem each other worthy of starting families. And that's a bottle neck on population growth. The same mechanism exists elsewhere but the contrasts between "stagnant vs vital" would be more pronounced in SK, probably because of the rate and scale of the economy over the last 40-50 years. Maybe? The government needs to stop fuelling the bubble. Instead, raise mortgage rates (so that "time in market" stops being a factor) and force industry to spread out offices and jobs (of all ranks) evenly throughout the country.
dirtyid 3y ago
Lot's of sticks. No real estate / wealth transfers unless to couples with 2 kids. New nuclear families either have potential windfall of 4x estates/wealth/housing from multiple older generations or they have to work the uphill childless grind. Combine with subsidies for home ownership in desirable areas for those with kids. BAN PET OWNERSHIP for those without kids. IMO This one huge. Increasing trend of emotional surrogate pets filling emotional void in east asia. Need to drive down cost of people settling for medicore relationships. It's not enough to make economics of having kids easier, you have to make not having kids harder.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  Ha, I’d you ban pet ownership people will just go shopping with their roombas.
kamaal 3y ago
This seems to be the problem with all the developing countries. Economic growth requires, men and women both prioritising jobs over marriage and family stability. Divorces happen because there is immense incentive for women to look for better partners even after 1, or many marriages. The incentives are life long, premium monthly pensions with annual raises and child support payments. All you have to do is marry some one, and divorce them. They now owe you life long monthly pensions. There is not a job on earth where you can work two years, and then be entitled to life long pensions. Not even in the extreme politics of communism was this even imagined, to the scale marriage has been reduced to now. Given all, marriage and even having kids is heavily disincentivised. You have to be an idiot beyond belief to walk into something like this. Apart from this, even with a perfect marriage. Most men have to deal with never ending disappointed feelings from women for working to death and still coming short of their expectations. Given all this I don't think there is a easy solution for this birth rate problem. Social engineering on the scale of countries is needed. The overall social and cultural trend world wide are no where near whats needed to bring about these birth rate increases.

neom 3y ago

My wife and I have opted not to have children for reasons* and it's really sad how the conversation with the in-laws has moved from "you should have children because children" to "you need to have children because korea needs you to have children", and it's not just a passing comment here and there, the campaign to get us to single handedly re-populate SK is intense and sustained. I wonder if other couples are experiencing this. *We can't afford to have children, Climate change, We can't afford to have children

seanw444 3y ago
My outlook is that the world certainly isn't getting better any time soon. It'll get a lot worse first. And who knows how long that will take. And I want to be young enough to enjoy time with my kids when they're adults. The complications and difficulties are worth it, I figure. I say this as an American glossing through this comment thread though, so I don't know your circumstances.
Hitton 3y ago
I wouldn't worry to much about climate change, humanity overcame bigger problems. And if your in-laws want children so much, just tell them your concerns, they might be willing to chip in financially.
- Daishiman 3y ago
  I think you are seriously underestimating the impacts that worldwide crop failures in the next 20 years are going to have as far as global human catastrophes go.
  - johngladtj 3y ago
    Are you serious about this? This climate doomerism is frankly ridiculous. Do you have any genuine studies that show such impactful effects?
    - wing-_-nuts 3y ago

CapitalistCartr 3y ago

Smuggle people out of North Korea on a massive scale. I'm imagining scenes like a Mission Impossible movie.

deleted 3y ago
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jimlongton 3y ago
I would imagine integrating North Koreans into the South would be far more difficult than the reunification of Germany. The technological and health gap alone is huge and even their language has started to drift apart.
- I_Am_Nous 3y ago
  I've read about the sad state of escaped North Koreans. They are provided a "life starting" package from the South Korean government, but sometimes to get out of North Korea they have to promise to give some of that money to the people smuggling them out. There are also a lot of scams that North Koreans don't know to be wary of, and there was even a report of someone going back to North Korea after being scammed and becoming a propagandist on their national television to tell everyone about how South Korea is full of scams and liars, and North Korea is way better.

grej 3y ago

South Korea was among the poorest countries in the world - poorer than many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa as recently as the 1960s. Withing a single lifetime they transformed themselves into one of the most advanced developed economies on the planet with a madman (mad men) on their doorstep. It’s natural that that kind of change will have some massive societal implications, many of which they are still sorting out. Their birth rate is something that will require immense attention and work to begin to correct, but it’s worth noting what they’ve accomplished in getting to a place where they can afford to worry about that as one of their primary concerns.

deleted 3y ago
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cagenut 3y ago
correct?
- Night_Thastus 3y ago
  There are reasons from an economical point of view why a shrinking population isn't great. So they may see it as a problem that needs correcting.
somenameforme 3y ago
It's easy to illustrate the impact of fertility rates by model, and it's far more rapid/severe than I think most realize. A fertility rate of "N" means that the next younger generation will be N/2 times as large. So, a fertility rate of 2 means no change, while a fertility rate of 4 would result in an exponential doubling. How about 0.7? We can create a population distribution of this easily enough because we know how big each generation will be relative to the one after it. Assume each generation is 20 years (if its longer - things look even worse). We end up with, for instance: === 1000 eighty year olds, 350 sixty year olds, 122 forty year olds, 42 twenty year olds, 15 newborns. === So you have a working age population of ~300 people working to support a population of 1529. You have a median age of 80, and an average age of 70. Think about the pressure on hospital, healthcare, and any sort of pension or other programs. Those 300 people need to not only man all of these jobs, but also somehow keep the entire economy from collapsing. I mean it's just not going to work. And then of course your population will be declining catastrophically quickly. The ~20 years during which those 1000 eighty year olds die will result in a population decline of 65%. Yet that's no salvation because the ratio of age distributions won't change at all, unless fertility rates do. You'll end up in the exact same position, continuing to lose 65% of your population each 20 years to come.

firebirdn99 3y ago

[flagged]

neaden 3y ago

While South Korea has the largest fertility rate fall it's important that they are just the most extreme of many countries. East Asian countries in general like China and Japan have been having a big fall, and many European countries are as well. France has the highest birthrate of any European country at 1.84 but even that is below replacement rate.

mathverse 3y ago

Should I have children in a country where I can get fired for no reason, apts cost $1M+ and you have to work slave hours? LOL

deleted 3y ago
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jimlongton 3y ago
It's okay. You can complain to your union (which is run by your company) or work for a competitor (which is also owned by the same conglomerate as your company). At least your leader is no longer brainwashed by a shaman who channels her dead father while taking bribes from those conglomerates [1]. That father who was also your former military dictator who followed the great tradition of torturing and murdering socialists and worker leaders with the CIAs help. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_South_Korean_political_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_South_Korean_political_sc...

kypro 3y ago

I think in the West we would benefit if the default position was that it's shameful and selfish to not have kids. The way our welfare state is set up currently is such that we don't pay for our own retirement, but need the generations below us (hopefully a larger generation) to fund our retirement as we did for the generations before us. When we don't have kids the welfare system which we seem to value simply doesn't work anymore and puts increasing pressures on younger generations. And this compounds the low birthrate issue because we now have to raise taxes on younger generations and take out more debt (both public and private) to afford the welfare spending. This high level of taxation and indebtedness increases wealth inequality and makes it harder for young couple to have children. I think we'll work this out the hard way at some point... The West is trying to offset the inevitable with ever increasing levels of immigration but that will only work for so long. Eventually the welfare system will collapse and people will have to have kids if they want to be cared for in their older age. I hope we don't get to that point, but it seems to me people are too nice to shame people for not having kids and are unwillingly cut welfare spending / fund their own retirements. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58340 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58340 Not sure what the situation is in South Korea. If people care for their own elderly family / neighbours instead of expecting the state to do it then perhaps a low birth rate is less of an issue. Sure, GDP might not grow, but that's not the end of the world.

pacifika 3y ago
Or we could opt to care for our elderly and encourage compassion and empathy instead of shaming and stigma.
- I_Am_Nous 3y ago
  Gotta have kids in the first place to raise kids that know to respect and care for the elderly. Otherwise this sentiment sounds like "I hope other people raise kids that know to respect and care for elders" because it's not like people are financially rewarded for most kinds of elder care, at least in the US, and that labor has to come from somewhere. The nuclear family has the side effect of needing to put elders in a care facility rather than them living at home with the rest of the family. It's also compounded by the amount of medical care people receive in old age and many families aren't capable of safely caring for certain levels of dementia, for example. It's kind of an application of Ghandi's "be the change you want to see in the world" - knowing that at the very least YOUR kids have been taught to respect and care for elders.

mrangle 3y ago

Expensive societies with the always concomitant class stratification will always run into reproduction issues. In short, unsubsidized poor and even middle class people begin to rationalize that, even if they could somehow manage the financial stress of reproduction, their lives are too miserable to justify damning their kids to the same fate. That said: climate doomerism, as an excuse for not having kids, is for intellectual children. Climate arguments aside, such views ironically ignore that man is subsumed under nature. If and when the climate is actually a problem in regard to reproduction, the human population will decline directly due to climate pressure. Then the climate and else will recover, and the population will again recover. In other words, the climate's ecosystem with humans is self limiting and correcting if it is an issue at all. Refusing to have kids due to climate is the exact same as saying that someone else deserves children more than you do. And that's it.

skulk 3y ago
Your last paragraph tries to use population arguments to prove that individual decisions are illogical. That doesn't look great after calling people who hold a certain position "intellectual children".

Auracle 3y ago

Are we sure that there's nothing else going on with fertility rates? It seems odd to me that one of the primary drives of humanity has fallen off of a cliff so quickly. Sure, it mostly manifests as a drive to have sex and we can get around that with birth control, but that's not the only thing it does to us. There's a reason the concept of the "biological clock ticking" is a thing. We know testosterone levels are dropping: "After controlling for confounders—including year of study, age, race, BMI, comorbidity status, alcohol and smoking use, and level of physical activity—total testosterone was lower among men in the later (2011-2016) versus earlier (1999-2000) cycles (P < 0.001). Mean total testosterone decreased from 1999-2000 (605.39 ng/dL), 2003-2004 (567.44 ng/dL), 2011-2012 (424.96 ng/dL), 2013-2014 (431.76 ng/dL), and 2015-2016 (451.22 ng/dL; all P < .0001)." https://www.urologytimes.com/view/testosterone-levels-show-steady-decrease-among-young-us-men https://www.urologytimes.com/view/testosterone-levels-show-s... Setting aside that semen quality is also affected... Maybe testosterone, or other hormones that might be affected by the same thing, also affect the drive to have children? It seems the more urban a civilization, the lower the birth rate. When I just tried to look up if anyone has looked into that I couldn't find anything, but here's a nice overview of different theories on fertility rates dropping as a whole: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8977063/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8977063/

jm__87 3y ago
Weird to be wondering if men are to blame here when women are typically the ones who have the final say as to when and with whom they decide to settle down and have kids with. Personally I think it is a combination of couples not wanting to have kids for a variety of reasons (not wanting to sacrifice their quality of life, lack of economic security, anxieties about the future), women delaying childbirth for longer to focus on education and career (and possibly waiting too long and not being able to have children by the time they are ready), women becoming pickier with who they choose to date and marry with the reality of hypergamy (women with higher educational and career attainment typically want to date men who are at least as successful as they are, and women are increasingly outperforming men in education and career these days). I'm sure men have some blame in this too, but most single men I know would prefer to not be single, but can't seem to find anyone interested.

steve76 3y ago

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sampa 3y ago

seems like NK will overwhelm SK by paraphrased Yasser Arafat words: the strongest weapon that the Palestinians have is the womb of Palestinian mothers

tatrajim 3y ago

Some historical context that might be of use to one or two lonely grad students reading this comment :) As a US peace corps volunteer working in a very rural health center in South Korea (one paved road in a large county, many villages still without electricity), it was impossible not to notice the huge push the Park Chung Hee government was making into birth control. Pres. Park was convinced that Korea's very high birth rate was an anchor around his plans for economic development and so devoted substantial government resources toward reducing it. Many families had 5-8 children, especially in the first four were daughters, as at the time there was an overwhelming preference for sons. This preference generally changed to daughters sometime in the 1990s. In practice Park's birth control program meant that every township (면, about 10,000 in population) outside the cities had a special nurse devoted to birth control (가족계획요원) operating out of the local township center. My job involved tuberculosis control out in the villages, so I came to know these nurses well. In practice they provided information on birth control to all married women and were tasked with keeping track of the menstrual cycles of all married women, a fact I found extraordinary at the time and still do in memory. Additionally, the government encouraged vasectomies financially (esp. for government employees) and there were often long lines of anxious-looking men outside our health center awaiting the procedure. There are many reasons for the low birth rate in contemporary South Korea, but the inflection point came in the 1970s and the now long-forgotten family planning nurses were at the forefront of this change.

stormfather 3y ago

"Calhoun had been running similar experiments with rodents for decades but had always had to end them prematurely, ironically because of laboratory space constraints, says Edmund Ramsden, a science historian at Queen Mary University of London. This iteration, dubbed Universe 25, was the first crowding experiment he ran to completion. As he had anticipated, the utopia became hellish nearly a year in when the population density began to peak, and then population growth abruptly and dramatically slowed. Animals became increasingly violent, developed abnormal sexual behaviors, and began neglecting or even attacking their own pups. Calhoun termed this breakdown of social order a “behavioral sink.” Eventually Universe 25 took another disturbing turn. Mice born into the chaos couldn’t form normal social bonds or engage in complex social behaviors such as courtship, mating, and pup-rearing. Instead of interacting with their peers, males compulsively groomed themselves; females stopped getting pregnant. Effectively, says Ramsden, they became “trapped in an infantile state of early development,” even when removed from Universe 25 and introduced to “normal” mice. Ultimately, the colony died out. “There’s no recovery, and that’s what was so shocking to [Calhoun],” says Ramsden."

chaostheory 3y ago

The only thing they left out in the article is what the effect of pollutants like BPA have on the birthrate. Currently, BPA, an artificial estrogen, is nearly everywhere from food, receipts, and now even clothing. PFAS, BPS, and a host of other pollutants are almost as widespread in many countries that experienced any decent amount of industrialization

throwawaysleep 3y ago
This explanation may make sense if people were complaining about an inability to have kids despite wanting them. But physical infertility is not alleged here.
- jamiek88 3y ago
  Those hormones could very well affect the desire to have kids too. Our brains and hormones are poorly understood.
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    "We don't understand it" is the absence of an argument, not positive evidence that these chemicals make people not want to have children.
    - munk-a 3y ago
      I agree that it's a frustrating counter argument since it is so vague and poorly understood but we really don't know a lot about how hormones effect decision making outside of a few very crude ones. It is a mostly non-existent argument but it's still something that's important to consider.
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  - xwdv 3y ago
    If you must have a child hormones will have little to do with it. Reproduction can be made into a very routine robotic like activity, like going to the gym.

hungryforcodes 3y ago

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Fauntleroy 3y ago
I wouldn't necessarily call it "fueled by western style feminist politics", when it is fueled as much (or even moreso) by "western style incel politics". Furthermore, while it most certainly is an issue over there, it's not so widespread it contributes meaningfully to this particular statistic.
- ae_throw 3y ago
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- Fauntleroy 3y ago
  I should add the obvious: if this is the result of "western style" anything, why is it more prevalent in Korea than "the West"?
- deleted 3y ago
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HelloMcFly 3y ago
> western style feminist politics Care to explain precisely what you mean in this context? Because it's hard not to see this as a dog-whistle for "why can't women just be happy with the caretaker role?" but perhaps you mean something more benign.
- hungryforcodes 3y ago
  I'm just reporting what I've been told by Koreans I've met. The problem doesn't seem to exist in older generations. Happy if Koreans could chime in.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    This sounds like Korean men who can’t get a date. Given they’re blaming “Western-style feminism,” I see why. Marriage rates in Korea are declining, as they are everywhere. But there is no evidence of increases in single men, other than in the uneducated and low-income group [1]. [1] https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/poor-men-in-s-korea-likely-single-and-childless-as-those-with-money-get-to-have-it-all https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/poor-men-in-s-ko...

jmyeet 3y ago

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Fauntleroy 3y ago
To be precise the issue is that capitalism will always optimize for "most profit" and little else, simply due to the design of the capitalist "machine". Koreans are simply very very good at capitalism, and the result is a society where most will barely scrape by, constantly working, while those at the top reap massive profits. If you've been paying attention, you can see the same exact thing here in America, with a little more wiggle room due to the wide range of cost of living throughout the country.
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  The other thing is that Japan and Korea have heavily state sponsored capitalism; bank capital and other resources are overwhelmingly allocated to large conglomerates as an industrial policy, which strangles small and medium size businesses that actually employ most people and thus reduces wages across the economy. Samsung Group is 20.3% of South Korean GDP, and that’s just one of the chaebol.
  - Fauntleroy 3y ago
    Finally, a commenter who actually knows something about Korea.
- wsc981 3y ago
  Northern Europe and Canada as well. Perhaps all of the “Western” world.
nine_zeros 3y ago
> Capitalism. The problem is capitalism. Not capitalism but the unfettered capitalism without protection for workers. In a system where humans are treated as "input" for the big machine without income security, said humans will not produce more burden unto themselves. If having a kid increases the risk of destitution, the rational human will choose to not have them (or at least not have more than 1).

UncleOxidant 3y ago

I see little emphasis in this article on real estate or rents. Sure, the issues they raise are contributors, but housing issues are foundational for many of the other problems they spend a lot of time on in the article. SK is more land-constrained than Japan. We're seeing family formation being negatively impacted in many areas of the world now due to high real estate prices. It's particularly acute in SK: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-04-11/in-seouls-piece-rooms-theres-not-even-enough-room-to-lay-down-inside-south-koreas-brutal-housing-crisis https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-04-11/in-seo...

yoyoyo1122 3y ago
It's in the middle of the article: > Another economic factor in the falling birthrate is the rising price of real estate and a resulting increase in unmarried or late-marrying people. The tradition in Korea is for men to prepare a family home before marrying, and the rising cost of housing in recent years has thereby triggered a decline in marriage rates. The Bank of Korea recently enacted emergency interest rate hikes that brought down the price of condominiums, but the interest rate on mortgages has risen, keeping home ownership a distant dream for many.
- UncleOxidant 3y ago
  Ok, there's a bit of a mention there, but they don't seem to consider it the foundational issue. They mention education costs for several paragraphs - education costs would likely not be so high if real estate costs weren't so high. Fewer desireable/high paying jobs gets several paragraphs, but again, this would be less of a problem if rents weren't so high - people would be able to live on the incomes available. High real estate prices are sucking the oxygen out of the rest of the economy.
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Tade0 3y ago
It's there. Relevant fragment: > Another economic factor in the falling birthrate is the rising price of real estate and a resulting increase in unmarried or late-marrying people. The tradition in Korea is for men to prepare a family home before marrying, and the rising cost of housing in recent years has thereby triggered a decline in marriage rates.

seydor 3y ago

Life may be too good for kids anymore The article has curiously little about what koreans actually want, vs what the author thinks is stopping them (despite their burning desire) to have kids. After all, as the article says the birthrate went way down a long time ago thus it's likely that people would know by now what is stopping them from having more kids

thegreenswede 3y ago
No. I want kids but I don't want them until I can afford stable housing. And if that's hard for me as an overpaid tech worker, then I understand why most people are delaying kids or not having them at all. If most young people are still living with parents or roommates well into their 30's, then it's not a mystery why my generation isn't having kids. Nothing to do with 'life is so good kids aren't desirable anymore'.
- munk-a 3y ago
  Yea, pretty much this. I'm half of a two person couple well into the upper middle class - we live in a one bedroom condo that costs more than half a million dollars... kids are not a realistic financial decision.
  - paulcole 3y ago
    You and I are probably in similar situations (I rent a 1-bedroom apartment in an upscale-ish area) and you probably earn more than me but I live very comfortably. I've personally never had any interest in having kids. Whatever it is that makes kids appealing, I've never had it. But I think I agree with you and I don't understand why I think I agree with you. Kids do seem like a crazy financial decision today. But if we wanted to, we could for sure have a kid and get by. Plenty of people have plenty of kids on a lot less money. Is it that we want to maintain our standard of living more than people did in the past? Plenty of poor people have plenty of kids in 1 bedroom apartments. Do we just demand more comfort today? Are we just more picky? Are kids just not worth what they used to be? I don't think any of these answers are bad. I just think it's interesting.

ae_throw 3y ago

Having read the article and somewhat followed the SK troubles, the only sensible conclusion I can draw is that the culture itself has become poor and unable to prosper, and is on a downward trajectory. A small % of people will obviously succeed but this doesn’t really make a culture. You having children today doesn’t guarantee the circumstances for your children, no matter how much of a financial or otherwise buffer you put in place - because your neighbours are in the same situation and nobody wants to take action to divert from the current course. This is another society that’s on track for extinction. You just can’t play along and hope for the best. It doesn’t work that way and it never did. Forcing your kids to stay up until 4 am to study while you get yourself into debt is not a recipe for success no matter what the rest of the country is doing. It’s just terrible from a societal perspective.

orochimaaru 3y ago

I think all these studies skirt very gingerly around a big problem. Stressful work culture, lack of support for families (includes high real-estate costs, long commute times, lack of sick leave, etc.) and most importantly a path for women (and men - but its mostly women) who drop out of the workforce and want to get back in once the children are older and more independent. Child rearing takes a group of people not just a nuclear family where both parents work long hours. Cost of living and work culture is forcing people to work long hours and women don't find a good enough reason to give up their freedom, and keep in mind it's what childbirth is in most Asian cultures, a woman giving up what she wants to do until the child is independent. I see no reason why women would ever want children. What's society providing them that they need to make this sacrifice ? All studies mention these, they just don't provide any concrete solutions. It's typically around creating some committee or forum that is looking to change this. Nothing will change, not until the corporations start running out of people to hire or the country runs out of soldiers for defense.

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Yhippa 3y ago
Not sure where you are but it feels that this is exactly what it's like in America. I am not sure why nobody really cares and I suspect by the time people try to do something about it, it won't be too late, but it's going to take a Herculean effort to fix. Mindset and structural support.
- orochimaaru 3y ago
  It is. The only difference is that the US (and Canada) are way more welcoming of immigrants than South Korea or Japan. That's basically what's keeping them competitive. I'm also pretty sure that high birth rate from illegal south american immigrants keeps US population going. The legal immigrants have children but at a subsistence level, generally <= 2.
  - angmarsbane 3y ago

raarts 3y ago

There's a very interesting and relevant documentary called 'Birthgap'. First part's on YouTube. Recommended. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6s8QlIGanA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6s8QlIGanA

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ethbr1 3y ago

There's a good note about the vast disparity between tiers of employers in South Korea (and will likely ring true in other countries too) >> There is also a large wage gap between the primary labor market of major companies, like Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motor Company, and the secondary labor market of small to medium-sized enterprises. This labor market polarization is progressing, and there is an even greater disparity in labor conditions than in Japan. [...] Employees of larger companies are much better off, with relatively higher salaries, better working conditions, and labor union protections. Those in SMEs, though, earn low wages, work under harsher conditions, and have no unions to protect their rights in negotiations with management, making these companies far less attractive to job seekers. I'd pair that with a François Mitterrand-era (i.e. ~1980-95) French position that 'Progress means nothing unless it is shared by all.' Chaebols are antithetical to democracy, as ultimately people will always act in their own best interests, and centralized individual economic power will rapidly corrupt democratic restraints placed on it. The only antidote is decentralization of economic power (aka ensuring gains are widely accessible by most of the population).

aidenn0 3y ago

Aside from SK specific issues in TFA, are their wealthy countries that have successfully countered declining birth rates with something other than immigration?

dmoy 3y ago
No. But there are places where it isn't nearly as stark as SK or HK (the two big ones under 1.0, let alone replacement of ~2.1). Most of Western Europe is under 1.5, which is still way under replacement rate. Sweden, France, and Iceland are at like 1.8, which is still under replacement rate but not incredibly low. Unless you count tiny places like the Faroe Islands maybe.

Slava_Propanei 3y ago

Women in the workplace was a mistake

PretzelPirate 3y ago
Is that what you mean, or do you mean that building a society where both parents need to work in order to survive has distracted us from important parts of life that result in a healthier society? Perhaps one parent working and one at home with plenty of time for both parents to relax and spend time with their family is the key, but that doesn't mean that the man should work and the woman should stay home (or that both parents need to be different genders).

davidktr 3y ago

To add another source, the Atlantic had a piece on birthrates in South Korea last March: https://archive.li/Fm93M https://archive.li/Fm93M Quoting from the article: > There are a lot of reasons people decide not to have a baby. Young Koreans cite as obstacles the high cost of housing in greater Seoul (home to roughly half the country’s 52 million citizens), the expense of raising a child in a hypercompetitive academic culture, and grueling workplace norms that are inhospitable to family life, especially for women, who are still expected to do the bulk of housework and child care. But these explanations miss a more basic dynamic: the deterioration in relations between women and men—what the Korean media call a “gender war.” Unfortunately, there seems to be little commonality in how men and women see the issue. Hard to imagine any solution at all.

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mvncleaninst 3y ago
They should append "From a White American Journalist's Perspective" to the title, would make the whole thing a little more honest

em500 3y ago

South Korea is just the most extreme example of the global trend of below replacement rate and still decreasing fertility: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate#/media/File:Total_Fertility_Rate_Map_by_Country.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate#/media/Fi... Central Africa is pretty much the only remaining region with fertility>3. Even in pretty poor countries like Bangladesh, which I learned in school had unsustainability high birth rates are already near or below replacement rate fertility. And if you look at time series trends, is't negative in the vast majority of countries: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN

sho_hn 3y ago
It's a simplistic thought, but I often have this optimistic impulse that dealing with stabilizing the birth rate is easier than escaping the Malthusian trap would be, especially with energy use/person generally trending up.
- seneca 3y ago
  Longterm, it probably is. The problem is the transitional period. The reality of having a population with more elders and fewer working age adults will be absolutely brutal.

markus_zhang 3y ago

Chinese people are seeing the same decline of birth and marriage. Part of that contributes to better life but I'd say the majority is because of Capitalism. This form of Capitalism is initiated by the government so there is not much to check its power. Essentially, if you look at housing, cost of education and cost of medical services, you will understand why middle class in China does not want to give birth to children.

pyuser583 3y ago
China also had, and still has, a child limit policy that violates human rights. Not to mention the genocide currently in progress. Genocides don’t help fertility, I’m guessing.
- throwawaysleep 3y ago
  China now has a 3 kid cap. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57303592 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57303592 Their birthrate is 1. The cap is not a barrier anymore.
  - pyuser583 3y ago
    Decades of vicious persecution and propaganda don’t just vanish. Even in America, there was a massive effort to convince people to have fewer kids, and prominent people still blindly recite the talking points - with zero correction by fact-checkers.
- markus_zhang 3y ago
  The limit is basically gone now so at least that is a non issue.
  - pyuser583 3y ago
    It’s still there. The limit is currently four (with exceptions). I’m pretty sure the mere existence of a limit sends a message.

duchenne 3y ago

This sounds like a study made from afar by just reading numbers without even talking to Koreans. When I talk to Korean parents, the vast majority of them tell me that raising even one kid is exhausting. They usually try as much as possible to satisfy every requests of their baby: carrying the toddlers for hours until they fall sleep, letting their kids sleep in the parents bed until they're 6, spoon-feeding them until they are 6, and so on... A Korean pediatrician friend told me that Korean kids score the lowest in the world in terms of autonomy. So, parents of one kid are already exhausted and think it would be too hard to have a second one.

ae_throw 3y ago
TIL SK babies are needier than babies in rest of the world.
- dang 3y ago
  Could you please not post unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait? Your account has already been doing it repeatedly. We're trying for something else here! If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
angmarsbane 3y ago
Perhaps we need a cultural change in parenting, a more relaxed parenting style or more of a village experience where parents can trust teachers, neighbors, bus drivers etc. to reinforce values, expectations, etc. so it isn't all on the parents (or parent).
seoulmetro 3y ago
That's entirely to be expected when your plan hinges around having one kid. They're called little emperors for a reason. If you have more than one kid, Korean or not, you treat them less preciously.

pyuser583 3y ago

South Korea had decades of anti-natalist policies. It’s a bit odd complaining about a low fertility rate now.

mustafa_pasi 3y ago

Are there any highly developed cultures with a high birth rate? US Mormons and US Christians maybe?

gnicholas 3y ago
Israel comes to mind.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  The part of Israel that has a high birthrate is militantly not modern. To the point of not working in order to study religion all day, and blurring out women in photographs.
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    I’m no expert, but I was under the impression that the fertility rate there is relatively high, pretty much across the board, compared to most other developed countries. Is it only high in the most orthodox communities?

angmarsbane 3y ago

One thing I don't see mentioned is that a larger portion of the population spends a lot more time in full-time school, and in part-time school + working which easily delays having children. Is it truly necessary for so many of us to spend that much time in school? Can school programs be shortened? Can we admit in some areas additional schooling doesn't provide more value than on the job training / experience?

throwaway6734 3y ago

If there is any genetic component to wanting children, this will hopefully work itself out over a few generations as the bloodlines of people that don't want children die off.

smegsicle 3y ago

there used to be some spicy discussion on feminism in south korea here its gone now