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It is not news that Korea is shrinking due to the world's lowest-level birthrate and fastest-level population aging.

Korea's total fertility rate, referring to the average number of children a woman gives birth to in her lifetime, stood at 0.78 in 2022 ― a figure less than half of OECD nations' average, 1.59.

Without looking at such official data, we can easily sense the low birthrate by looking at the people around us: Many friends and colleagues in their 30s or older haven't married; among those who married, a large number of them do not have a child; and among those who have a child, most of them have only one child.

Experts have issued pessimistic predictions about economic and social difficulties this aging country will face, such as falling growth, labor shortage and increasing burden on senior care, saying Korea could face “doomsday” unless this situation is changed.

Against this backdrop, government officials have been busy diagnosing the root causes of this record-low birthrate and racking their brains to find solutions to encourage people to get married and have children.

But for decades, they have made wrong guesses, only pouring trillions of won in vain into fruitless projects. And unfortunately, they are likely to keep doing so.

One of the latest measures under consideration is to grant “automatic, mandatory child care leave.” Under the current law in Korea, a female employee is entitled to 90 days of maternity leave from the time their child is born, and she can use up to one year of child care leave (a year and a half starting 2024). She can use it immediately after the maternity leave, or anytime later before the child turns nine years old. She can also split the leave, for example using half of it after the maternity leave and using the remaining half when the child turns five. Male workers, who are parents, are also entitled to one-year leave.

The new policy plan, envisioned by a presidential committee on resolving the birthrate issue, is about making child care leave right after maternity leave mandatory without approval from employers. It came amid the social atmosphere where many employees still hesitate to take child care leave out of pressure from employers to quit or be excluded from promotions.

However, just like many previous policies, the latest idea is doomed to failure, because it does not grasp the real needs of parents.

First, during child care leave, workers receive an allowance that is 80 percent of their wage, and it is also capped at 1.5 million won ($1,100) per month. OECD data showed the allowance in 2022 was 44.6 percent of workers' original income.

The small allowance is one of the reasons forcing workers to return to work after not fully using their child care leave, or not using it at all. If the leave becomes mandatory, it could financially marginalize some workers. Also, employers may shun hiring female workers in their childbearing years.

Second, each worker has a different family situation: Some workers have parents living nearby to help take care of their babies, while others don't; some can send their child to a daycare center when they want, while others have to wait for months or years for admission; some have two or three children to take care of, while others have only one; some can work from home, while others can't; etc.

Based on these various situations, each worker makes different decisions on how and when to use child care leave. The most common way of using it is to use about half after maternity leave and use the remainder (either fully or only part of it) when the child enters elementary school ― a period requiring a lot of parental care for the child to adapt to the new environment. It is that period when many female workers quit their jobs if they have no one else to help with providing child care.

These realities make people wonder why the government keeps coming up with such unrealistic, impractical and bureaucratic measures. The lack of understanding on the lives of “ordinary people” only draws sarcastic reactions from the public: “Oh, all government officials may own their homes, have enough money and no debt, so they can take the leave without worrying about making a living or paying debts even with a small amount of child care allowance,” or “public officials can take as much leave as they want because they never lose their jobs.”

If government officials don't want to get such sarcastic reactions, they need to get real. They must understand why people call the mandatory, automatic child care leave “mandatory, automatic dismissal.”