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By Yoon Ja-young
Kim Young-ji, a working mother in Seoul, gave up having a second child. She had dreamed of having at least two babies, but it wasn't long before she faced the harsh reality.
"From the day I came back to work after childcare leave, I started juggling between work and home," she said.
It was her job to leave her baby son at a daycare center every morning. Since she comes home late in the evening, she had to find a babysitter to bring her son home from the daycare center.
Upon arriving home, she had to prepare dinner and take care of her son. Her husband usually came home late at night like other Korean men, and was of little help.
"After paying a babysitter and part-time housekeeper, not much is left from my salary. However, I can't quit my job since we have to pay our mortgage. We will need more money soon to send my son to a hagwon (private cram school). How could we dare have a second child?"
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The country's birthrate, or the number of live births per 1,000 women in the reproductive age or between the ages of 15 and 44 years, recorded 0.97 in the second quarter.
It came as a shock since such low rates were witnessed only during war or in societies in rapid transition, such as Eastern European countries' transition to capitalism from communism. Korea is the only country in the world with the figure below 1.
The low birthrate is leading to an aging society.
According to the 2017 census, senior citizens aged 65 or older made up 14.2 percent of the total population last year. The working age population, meanwhile, dropped by 116,000. It is expected that four out of 10 Koreans will be elderly in 2060.
Aging threatens the economy since production and consumption slow down while welfare spending snowballs. It will be difficult to pull up economic growth by injecting labor. The country's growth rate is expected to fall to below 1 percent after 2026.
The government is all out to raise the birthrate, but it isn't easy since this is a comprehensive problem which involves a tough job market, housing prices, huge private education costs, as well as the low social status of females. Young people delay marriage due to the tough job market, and they give up having a child due to expensive housing.
Jung Jae-hoon, a professor at Seoul Women's University, said that Korea should increase spending on overall social welfare such as jobs, housing, education and safety to pull up the birthrate.
"The OECD member countries whose rate stood at between 1.5 and 2 during the past few years spent on average 25 percent of their GDP on public social welfare. The ratio is a mere 12 percent for Korea."
France, which boasts the highest birthrate in Europe, focused on supporting female participation in the labor market as well as childcare.
The support, which includes childcare allowances and tax benefits, doesn't exclude relatively wealthy families either. It is based on the belief that any child should get universal support, with the government taking responsibility. It contrasts with Korea, which determined to exclude the top 10th percentile income bracket in childcare allowances.
Yoo Jin-sung, director at the Korea Economic Research Institute, said that welfare spending on basic living expenses, housing and healthcare have a positive effect on the birthrate.
"Support for housing, for instance, can increase the marriage rate, which leads to a rise in the birthrate. Flexible labor policy such as flexible work hours and selective work hours for working moms can prevent a falling rate. Korea should pull up the female employment rate and birthrate simultaneously as did Scandinavian countries or the Netherlands," he said.
Though it is true that young Koreans are delaying or shunning marriage, some experts point out that it is a universal phenomenon witnessed in other developed countries.
For instance, Korean mothers who gave birth to their first child were on average 31.4 in 2016, which is not much higher than Swedish mothers' 29.2. However, Sweden's birthrate is much higher at 1.85.
Yoon Hong-sik, professor at Inha University, said that there should be a fundamental change in people's lives.
"The country should look into the life of the ordinary people. Young people say that they don't want to have children and see them live in 'Hell Joseon.' It shows the reality of the society," he said.
He pointed out that Sweden overcame the low birthrate in the 1930s by tackling difficulties that ordinary people faced in their lives. It focused on improving the quality of life, and the birthrate started to rise as a result.
"Unless the overall quality of life is improved, even the rate of one baby per woman will be difficult to maintain," Yoon said.
