How South Korea is pulling out all stops to produce babies

With South Korea becoming the country with the world’s lowest birth rate, innovative measures are being taken by the government which includes launching high speed suburban train project to help people regain family time. Why South Koreans don’t want babies? What does it mean for the country’s economy? ETV Bharat looks at all this and more.

New Delhi: South Korea has launched a new high speed train project called the Great Train Express (GTX) connecting capital city Seoul with its suburbs. The reason? To help people produce babies!

According to reports, on Friday, President Yoon Suk Yeol inaugurated a section of the first line of the GTX, connecting Suseo in the capital to the satellite city of Dongtan cutting down the commute time to 19 minutes from 80 minutes now on a bus.

“With the opening of the GTX Suseo-Dongtan section today, your lives will be greatly changed,” Yonhap news agency quoted Yoon as saying during the inauguration ceremony. “What used to take more than 80 minutes by intercity bus between Suseo and Dongtan will become 20 minutes by GTX. The arduous commute will be cut by more than an hour.”

Citing research that a reduction of an hour translates to 1.14 million won (US$848) per month in monetary terms, Yoon said what is more meaningful is the regained family time and work-life balance.

Earlier, in January this year, Yoon had pledged to reduce commuting times to the 30-minute range for people living in the greater Seoul area.

“Residents in major metropolitan areas nationwide spend a daily average of two hours commuting,” The Korea Times had quoted Yoon as saying during a town hall meeting in Uijeongbu, Gyeonggi Province. “In particular, for people living in Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, the journey to and from Seoul exceeds two-and-a half hours.”

He said that with proper transportation infrastructure, people will be able to sleep more or spend additional time on self-improvement. “Most importantly, it will allow them to spend more time with their families,” Yoon had said.

South Korea has the world’s lowest birth rate. This comes amidst concerns about national extinction and gender relations.

Recent statistics from the South Korean government revealed a worrying decline in the country’s fertility rate in 2023. Compared to the previous year, there was an 8 percent drop in the number of births. Experts have warned that if the current low birth rates persist, South Korea’s population of 51 million could be halved by the end of this century.

The data showed that the average South Korean woman is now expected to give birth to only 0.72 children throughout her lifetime, a significant decrease from 0.78 in 2022. Moreover, projections indicate that this fertility rate could plummet even further to 0.68 by 2024.

This precipitous decline in births highlights the severity of South Korea’s demographic crisis and the urgency to address the underlying societal, economic, and policy factors contributing to the nation’s dwindling fertility rates. Failure to reverse this trend could have profound implications for the country’s future workforce, economic productivity, and social support systems.

So, why is the birth rate so low in South Korea? The East Asian nation has a very competitive job market and long working hours, which makes it difficult for couples to balance work and family life. High housing and education costs also discourage some from having multiple children.

Like many developed countries, South Korea has seen a shift towards more individualistic values, with marriage and childbearing becoming less of a priority for some. The idea of having just one child or remaining childless is more accepted.

Despite increases in female workforce participation, South Korean society still places a larger childcare burden on mothers compared to fathers. This makes it challenging to combine career and family. A report in Al Jazeera in February this year vindicates this.

“Having a baby is on my list, but there are windows for promotions and I don’t want to be passed over,” Al Jazeera quoted Gwak Tae-hee, a 34-year-old junior manager at a Korean dairy product maker who has been married for three years, as saying.

South Korea's population is aging rapidly. A larger elderly population means proportionately fewer people of reproductive age, contributing to lower overall births.

Some argue that South Korea’s policies have not been fully effective in incentivising higher fertility through childcare support, parental leave, etc.

“This is a challenge being faced by many countries in East Asia and western Europe like Italy,” K Yhome, Fellow at the Shillong-based think tank Asian Confluence and who follows East Asian issues, told ETV Bharat. “What is happening is that while the age group above 50 is increasing, the age group below 35 is declining.”

Yhome explained that countries facing this challenge of low birth rate are now resorting to policy measures to get foreign labour force.

“Eventually, to maintain the growth of the economy of nation, you need labour force to fill the gap,” he said.

It is worth mentioning here that Taiwan, another East Asian nation, signed an agreement earlier this year with India to have Indian migrant workers to help in various sectors of that country’s economy.

“But one worry is that having foreign labour force will have major implications socially and culturally,” Yhome stated. He said that countries faced with low birth rates have been motivating couples with incentives to produce babies. Some countries are giving maternity leave even to husbands.

In line with this, apart from the South Korean government, the private sector in that country is also encouraging employees to produce babies.

One such example is the South Korean construction firm Booyoung group. Earlier this month, Booyoung CEO Lee Joong-Keun offered employees a bonus of nearly $76,000 if they choose to have a baby.

“If the current state of low birth rates persists, we will face a national existential crisis such as workforce decline and a lack of defence manpower necessary for national security,” Lee was quoted as saying by the Unilad youth news website. “The low birth-rate results from financial burdens and difficulties in balancing work and family life, so we decided to take such a drastic measure.”

Coming back to Friday’s inauguration of the high-speed rail network in Seoul, Yhome said that countries facing the challenge of low birth rate have no other option but to formulate innovative policies.

“The Korean government’s initiative today to build infrastructure to boost birth rate is perhaps one of the first of its kind,” he said. “Other developed nations can also emulate this.”

Meanwhile, Hermit Kingdom North Korea is also faced with the same problem. In December last year, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was filmed crying while appealing to his country’s women to have more children and raise them to love the authoritarian state.

“Preventing a decline in birth rates and good childcare are all of our housekeeping duties we need to handle while working with mothers,” the North Korean dictator said while addressing the National Mothers’ Meeting. Though better than South Korea’s 0.72, the average number of babies expected to be born to a woman in North Korea over her lifetime stood at 1.79.

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