Yes, housing is a pretty big factor. The textbook life you're supposed to lead in South Korea (and while South Korea is a very dynamic country that is always c

Yes, housing is a pretty big factor. The textbook life you're supposed to lead in South Korea (and while South Korea is a very dynamic country that is always changing fast, for the moment, the expectation to adhere to norms and aspire to what your folks did is still a bit higher than you're perhaps used to) is to get married, move into a marriage home you bought - more on this in a moment - a couple of months to weeks before the ceremony to start co-habitation, and get busy having children. "Buying a home" in South Korea means either outright buying, or very commonly, living rent-free for the duration of a one- or multi-year contract after putting down a deposit that is usually 75% or more of the property value. This system is considered good and desirable, called Jeonse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeonse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeonse For numerous reasons, the Jeonse system is slowly getting dismantled. Monthly rent schemes are slowly becoming more and more prevalent. This is causing a big squeeze/run on the now-fewer good Jeonse apartments available, and giving many South Koreans the feeling that it's harder than ever to find a home to have, which is so intrinsically linked to this life milestone that for some, it puts getting married out of question. In addition to the above issue, which is meant as perceptual, it's also actually become economically more difficult to afford good housing. Some of this is very real and beyond the control of individuals, others is peer pressure to allocate money to e.g. luxury goods. Overall it's become tough on couples to afford housing and kids without both parents working very hard, which in turns makes child-rearing difficult to pull off; Korean employers and co-workers are still very hostile to workers with children (don't bring private issues to work, etc.). (I'm not Korean, but I've lived there for some years, can communicate in the language and read the news, and am married to a South Korean citizen with a child on the way; the latter is one of the reasons we moved away.)