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Korea has failed to cope with demographic crisis
Statistics Korea said last Wednesday that the number of newborns fell to 260,500 in 2021, hitting the lowest level since the government began to compile related data in 1970. The country's total fertility rate ― the average number of children a woman aged 15-49 bears in her lifetime ― stood at 0.81. It's also the lowest in history and the lowest worldwide. Korea is the only country with a total fertility rate below 1 among the 38 OECD nations, with its rate remaining half of the OECD average of 1.61.
Both common sense and the prediction that the birthrate declines gradually are wrong. In 2010, the government statistics agency projected that the number of newborns born annually would not drop to 280,000 until 2060. However, it plunged to 260,000 in just 11 years, 40 years earlier than expected. The trend is far ahead of the statistical forecast. Successive governments have spent 380 trillion won ($315 billion) to increase the fertility rate over the past 15 years. Still, the results have been little different than pouring water into a bottomless pit.
Korea has become a country where young people are reluctant to marry and have children due to soaring home prices, high private tutoring costs and concerns among women over career disruption and traditional gender roles in the family. The nation must acknowledge that the ultralow birthrate has become an irreversible social phenomenon. It should both try to get out of the low birthrate trap and adapt appropriately to social changes that have already progressed.
Many things need to be tackled immediately. Among them are the increasing burden of caring for the elderly and depleting pension funds, stagnant economic growth due to population decline, and the decreasing number of conscripted soldiers. The government recently launched one more taskforce to tackle population policy, led by the first vice minister of economy and finance. However such a taskforce is unlikely to solve the problem fully. The next leader must establish a presidential committee to develop and implement a long-term national strategy to cope with the aggravating demographic crisis.
