President Yoon Suk Yeol holds a press conference to commemorate the second anniversary of his inauguration at the presidential office in Yongsan District, Seoul, Thursday. Yonhap

President Yoon Suk Yeol said, Thursday, that he will create a new ministry dedicated to addressing the country's low birthrate and aging population, vowing to focus all possible capabilities on overcoming drastic changes in the demographic picture.

He said a deputy prime minister will lead the new ministry to set the unprecedentedly low birthrate as a state priority and formulate policies encompassing all related matters such as education, labor and welfare.

"I will mobilize all possible measures to overcome the low birthrate, as the issue amounts to a state of national emergency," Yoon said during a press conference marking the second anniversary of his presidency.

"The government will work to let people take maternity and child care leave more freely and sufficiently. We will expand support for companies to reduce their financial burden caused by these employees' leave."

Yoon asked the opposition parties, which control the National Assembly, to cooperate in revising the Government Organization Act for the establishment of the new ministry.

So far, matters involving the low birthrate have been handled by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Presidential Committee on Ageing Society and Population Policy. However, neither of them has managed to achieve a breakthrough in alleviating the country's demographic crisis.

Korea is battling the world's lowest birthrate, being the only country to have its total fertility rate below 1 among the 38 OECD members as of 2021.

Data by Statistics Korea showed that Korea's total fertility rate, which means the average number of expected births from a woman in her lifetime, hit 0.72 in 2023, down from the previous record low of 0.78 in the previous year.

In the October-December period in 2023, the rate fell to an all-time quarterly low of 0.65.

Amid the falling birthrate, Statistics Korea estimated that the country's population would decrease to 36.22 million in 2072 from 51.44 million in 2023, and that more than half of the population would be aged 60 or older.

Rival parties appeared to both recognize the need to establish the new ministry overseeing the demographic crisis, as both the ruling People Power Party and the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea presented similar pledges during the lead-up to the April 10 general elections.

Medical professionals walk down a hallway of a major hospital in Seoul, Thursday. Yonhap

During his press conference, President Yoon stressed that his administration's medical reform initiatives, which include the controversial plan to increase the medical school admissions quota starting next year, was another effort to cope with the low birthrate.

"The medical reform plans, including the medical school quota hike, cannot be postponed any longer, considering an explosive increase in demand for health care services," Yoon said.

"The country needs better systems for essential medical treatment fields as well as for underserved areas, as many parents face difficulties seeing doctors when their children are sick."

The president made it clear, once again, that the government will continue to push for the medical reform policies despite fierce protests from doctors.

Since February, over 90 percent of the country's 13,000 trainee doctors have been protesting the government's plan to increase the number of medical school seats by 2,000 for next year, claiming such a drastic hike will compromise medical education and training.

The Yoon administration has asked the doctors' community to present their unified measure regarding the range of the hike and engage in dialogue, but doctors have stuck to a position that the government should withdraw the plan and go back to square one.

"The refusal of the doctors' community to produce the unified measure has been a key sticking point for the dialogue to proceed," Yoon said. "Consulting with doctors has been very difficult, but we cannot postpone it forever."