South Korea’s Fertility Rate Hits 0.68: What Next?

South Korea's record-low birth rates signal a fertility crisis with implications for depopulation and national security. Despite longstanding government efforts, the situation persists, offering insights into broader fertility challenges.

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0:00 Intro
1:39 The 2 Reasons South Korea is Struggling
2:07 Housing
5:25 South Korea’s Gender Divide
7:17 General Lessons
7:42 Sponsor

[Mirakolis]

East Asian countries doing a speedrun of who can drop their birthrate the fastest right now

[command_unit]

North Korea in a few years:"Its Free real estate!"

[rake]

Who would have thunk it? Working 60h a week for low wages leaves you with no time or money to start a family.

[Kris_]

Long working hours. Low wages. High costs. No chance of ever owning a house. 0 work-life balance without a child, let alone with one. Layoffs left right and center. Hard if not impossible to get a job even with experience. Life is stressful as is already. Low standards of life. Nothing is family friendly - work, life, schools etc. A lot of the institutions still have the same mentality of - man works, woman stays at home, and it just doesn't fit how people want to live now.

[themassagechair]

Might it not also be worth mentioning that South Koreans work around 50% longer hours than, for example, the Scandinavian countries? With their work culture also strongly encouraging spending free time with co-workers, it doesn't leave much time for baby-making.

[clairdelune]

Ironically, Japan has the highest birth rate in East Asia. And, although few people pay much attention to this, Taiwan has a birth rate as low as South Korea.

[tanzeelahmadhashmi]

Real estate inflation is probably the worst hand done to young generation across developed nations

[LWrc]

The only reason we don’t call SK a hellish dystopian country is because there’s an even more hellish dystopian country right above it

[newcarpathia]

I have a lot of students from South Korea and they all say the same thing. You're expected to give your life over to whichever chaebol you work for. Your home family doesn't matter. Until that system is overhauled, nothing will change.

[MrLePov]

I lived in South Korea for a while, and the focus on education and having a good career are MASSIVE. Those affect fertility rates in general, and also explain why so many people want to live in Seoul, because obviously most of the better jobs are there.

[sebastiangruenfeld]

South Korea is an IRL cyberpunk dystopia that lots of Koreans are trying to escape by moving to the West.

[uwagajedzietramwaj_]

why have kids when they’re pretty much forced to study all day from a very early age so you’ll barely see them anyway

[FirstLight-ev]

literally would rather die out than de-commodify housing

[alexemann]

In addition, there is a medical crisis happening right now. There is a doctors strike happening, and most new doctors are going into low-risk, high-reward practices like dermatology and plastic surgery.

Pediatrics in particular has very few new doctors in training. So even if we do have children here in Korea, its tough to find a doctor to care for them.

[FutureCommentary]

Me watching this from somewhere in a middle income African country with birth rate 4.8. People are comfortable not having material possessions and struggling to make ends meet, sometimes not being able to afford school fees or healthcare. Society's pressure is towards having as many children as possible.
Cultural values shift.

[SupGaillac]

I wouldn't call it better "economic prospect" but rather, better "quality of life". Which is something often forgotten in the most competitiveness-based economies.

[emikomina]

It's scheduled to go reach 0.5 or under 0.60, because towards the end of the year, there are much fewer births.

[Randomstuffs]

Honestly, I blame babies, they are way too slow and expensive to develop

[J_X]

As a young man with a girlfriend (soon to be wife), we have just moved into an actual house which is tiny and was EXTREMELY expensive.

If houses were as cheap as they were a couple generations ago, I'd definitely be a husband, and most likely a father.

The longer it takes to save up for housing, the later people will get married. The later people get married, the fewer children they'll probably have.

Improving economics isn't enough to stabilize fertility rates. Urbanization is a huge part of why birth rates are so low. Obviously we can't just deurbanize, but what we can do is equalize the gigantic wealth gap between the average person and the ultra rich. Obviously it's not as simple as that, but hopefully that'd help ease people into feeling more comfortable and secure in having children.

South Korea is infamous for being one of the most absolute corporatocracies and I dare say it's no coincidence that it has the lowest rates of birth. People are basically married to their jobs over there thanks to the megacorporate stranglehold on the country and the resultant competitive and workaholic mindset. I'm not anti-capitalist, but clearly letting the rich and powerful have this much control is not creating a future for Koreans.