Publisher’s Note
In South Korea, the prolonged phenomenon of an “ultra-low birth rate” is threatening the sustainability of its population and the very foundation of national existence.
A recent column in The New York Times, titled “Is South Korea Disappearing?,” has raised alarms about the speed of population decline in South Korea, comparing it to the level experienced during the Black Death. Professor David Coleman of the University of Oxford, a renowned scholar who had previously identified South Korea as the world’s first “population extinction” nation, reiterated his warning this year. He stated, “South Korea achieved the fastest economic growth in human history, but at the cost of losing the next generation to carry it forward.” Indeed, South Korea’s total fertility rate, which was 1.13 in 2006 when, at a U.N. forum, Coleman first identified the country as facing population extinction, fell to 0.78 in 2022 and slumped further to 0.7 in the second quarter of this year.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) classifies countries with a total fertility rate below 2.1 as “low birth rate” nations. South Korea has been experiencing this phenomenon for 40 years since 1983 when its fertility rate was 2.06. Moreover, the country has never rebounded since recording a rate of 1.3 in 2001, the threshold for a “very low birth rate” nation.
A more alarming issue is the rapid decline of South Korea’s total fertility rate compared to other countries. A comparison with Japan using the U.N.’s World Population Prospects (since 1950) shows that it took South Korea only 25 years to drop from a fertility rate of over 2 to below 1.3, while Japan took 43 years. Japan even managed to rebound from a rate of 1.2 in the mid-1990s to levels above 1.5, shedding its label as a very low birth rate country.
The ripple effects of low birth rates are widespread. For instance, the productive age population (15-64 years) is projected to decrease from 37.38 million in 2020 to 17.37 million by 2070, with its proportion dropping from 72.1% to 46.1% of the total population. In contrast, the percentage of the elderly population (over 65) is expected to skyrocket from 17.4% in 2022 to 47.7% by 2072, the highest level among OECD countries. The total dependency ratio, indicating the balance between the productive and elderly populations, is predicted to reach a world-leading 116.8 by 2070, up from 40.8 last year.
The decline in the productive population is also anticipated to impact the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Projections suggest that by 2050, the GDP could fall by 28.38% compared to 2022. The Bank of Korea warns that a failure to address the ultra-low birth rate issue could lead to negative growth by 2050 and cause megaton-level shocks across various sectors, including education, defense, and pensions. Thus, South Korea’s population decrease has become an urgent reality and a major national policy issue.
Previous governments have established and attempted various population increase policies, allocating significant budgets to this area. However, population policy governance has remained predominantly government-driven. South Korea’s basic population policy has been heavily focused on copying advanced countries’ systems, and various policies supporting childbirth and parenting have not provided tangible benefits to young men and women, thus failing to achieve success. If tangible benefits from childbirth behavior are expected, the need for marriage and childbirth will increase, ultimately boosting marriage and birth rates and delaying the relative risk of population extinction.
The success or failure of population policy hinges on how issues related to childbirth and parenting, such as rare quality-employment opportunities for young people, high housing prices, and competitive education, are addressed. Population policy governance needs to evolve into a system where diverse stakeholders, including young people, the government, businesses, and NGOs actively participate in social consensus processes to determine policy directions and implement concrete measures. Additionally, the current government has to be sure to follow up on its commitment to implementing bold reforms in labor, education, and pensions for future generations.