South Korea’s Decrease in Population, More Serious than Japan (kyunghyang)

Jang (31) had worked as an after-school instructor, but recently failed to renew her contract. Although she has a boyfriend, she has no thoughts of marriage. Jang said, “I don’t earn a lot of money and my status is unstable because it’s a temporary job, so it’s difficult to think about marriage.” She said, “It’s a bit gloomy alone, but I can lower my expectations and adjust to the environment, but if I start a family, I’ll have to get a house and things will be a lot more difficult.”

The fertility rate in South Korea has been extremely low, less than 1.3 children per woman (the average number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime), for fifteen years in a row since 2001. The government presented measures for the low birthrate and aging of our society since 2005, but the birthrate remains at the bottom among a list of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries.

South Korea’s fertility rate has sharply declined in a short period of time. The birthrate, which was 6.0 children in 1960, dropped to 2.1 children, nearly the replacement fertility rate, in 1983. Then in 1998, it dropped to 1.45 children, 1.3 children in 2001 and 1.08 children in 2005. In 2007, the fertility rate rebounded slightly to 1.25, but as of 2014 (1.21), it has yet to recover to 1.3 children.

South Korea had implemented a “basic plan for the low birthrate and an aging society” on two occasions, first in 2006-2010 and second in 2011-2015, but it failed to present an effective policy response. Jo Seong-ho, assistant research fellow at the Population Policy Research Department at the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs announced in the report, “Status of and Policy for the Low Fertility Rate in South Korea and Japan” released last November, “The problem about South Korea’s policy response to the low fertility rate is that they focus on married families such as those concerning childbirth and childcare, and that the scale of the policy is too small.”

The third basic plan for the low birthrate and an aging society (2016-2020) accepted such criticism and include some measures to relieve the socio-economic reasons why young people hesitate or give up on marriage. Specifically, the plan includes measures to stimulate youth employment and strengthen housing support for newlyweds. The direction of the plans has improved, but its effectiveness still remains controversial.

Stimulating youth employment, which is the key in the government’s low birthrate measures, has as its premise the government’s “labor reforms,” but if such reforms, which have the risk of increasing employment instability by increasing the number of temporary jobs, are carried out, it is doubtful as to whether the younger generation will be able to find peace and have children. Jeong Jun-yeong, director of policy at the Youth Union said, “Measures to stimulate youth employment in the government’s third basic plan is only a low-birthrate version of the labor reforms that the Park Geun-hye government has been trying to push.”