Korea - People
One of the countries with the lowest fertility rates in the entire world, South Korea faces an extreme demographic transition that threatens to diminish its population from a peak of 51.3 million in 2024 to just 29.5 million by 2100. Korea's population is one of the most ethnically and linguistically homogenous in the world. As of 2011, the population of the Republic of Korea stood at 49,779,000 with roughly 486 people per square kilometer. Conversely, the population of North Korea as of 2010 was estimated at 24,000,000.
South Korea could see its population start falling sooner than expected. According to a government official, the country's data agency Statistics Korea expects that the population will begin to decline before 2028. The agency had said previously that the number of South Koreans would likely start shrinking around 2032, and the birthrate to fall substantially by 2028. However, noting that the fertility rate in recent years has been sliding faster than expected, the population outlook will be adjusted in the agency's February 2019 report. A presidential committee on the birthrate estimates that around 325,000 children were born last year, marking an all-time annual low, as the birthrate fell to 0.97 -- for the first time, less than one child born per woman. The country already had the lowest fertility rate among the 35 OECD member countries, whose average in 2017 was 1.68 children.
Despite government effort to boost the birthrate, there is a continued decline. According to Statistics Korea roughly 98,000 babies were born in the 1st quarter of 2017. That's a more than 12-percent drop compared to the same period a year ago. In contrast, the number of people aged over 65is predicted to surge by at least 500,000 annually. Low fertility rate and a rapidly aging society are two main factors expected to be economic challenges for Korea. The number of people in the working demographic group,comprised of those aged between 15 and 64 had been on a steady rise until 2016. The number dropped for the first time in 2017 and showed no signs of slowing down much less reversing.
The need to revamp the National Pension System (NPS) was particularly pressing for the South Korean economy amid concerns that the state-run pension fund could be depleted faster than expected due to the rapidly aging society. In fact, pension spending had already risen steadily from 1.8% of GDP in 2009 to approximately 4.0% in 2022, and we expect this figure to continue its upwards trajectory.
The National Advisory Committee had in September 2023 proposed raising the contribution rate to at least 15.0%, from the current 9.0%. To be sure, South Korea’s contribution rates are relatively low, and even if approved, will still fall short of the OECD’s average of 18.0%. A separate suggestion put forth includes raising the retirement age to 68 from 65 currently to make the pension system more sustainable. If this were to happen, the government would likely face a backlash, as was the case in countries as diverse as France and Russia.
Historically, the threat of rapid population growth posed serious social repercussions on developing countries. Yet such fears of swelling growth hardly raise much cause for alarm on the peninsula. With the advent of successful family planning campaigns and changing attitudes, there are signs that the population growth has curbed remarkably in recent years. The baby boomers of Korea’s industrialization period are now coming into their golden years, with the number of senior citizens (those ages 65 and up) reaching 5.42 million (as of 2010) and making up roughly 11.3% percent of the entire population.
Koreans are primarily from one ethnic family and speak one language. Sharing distinct physical characteristics, they are believed to be descendants of several Mongol tribes that migrated onto the Korean Peninsula from Central Asia.
In the seventh century, the various states of the peninsula were unified for the first time under the Silla Kingdom (57 B.C.-A.D. 935). The resulting homogeneity has remained largely preserved to this day, enabling Koreans to maintain a firm solidarity with one another.
As of the end of 2011, South Korea's total population was estimated at 49,779,000. The population of North Korea is estimated to be around 24,051,218 (2010).
Korea saw its population grow by an annual rate of 3 percent during the 1960s, but growth slowed to 2 percent over the next decade. In 2005, the rate stood at 0.44 percent and is expected to further decline to 0.01 percent by 2020.
A notable trend in Korea's demographics is that it is growing older with each passing year. Statistics show that 7.2 percent of the total population of Korea was 65 years or older in 2009; by 2010, this same demographic group made up 11.3% of the population.
In the 1960s, Korea's population distribution formed a pyramid, with a high birth rate and relatively short life expectancy. However, age-group distribution is now shaped more like a bell because of the low birth rate and extended life expectancy. It is projected that by the year 2020 youths (15 and younger) will make up a decreasing portion of the total population, while senior citizens (65 and older) will account for some 15.7 percent of the total population.
The nation's rapid industrialization and urbanization in the 1960s and 1970s was accompanied by continuing migration of rural residents to the cities, particularly Seoul, resulting in heavily populated metropolitan areas. However, in recent years, an increasing number of Seoulites have begun moving to suburban areas.
South Koreans use mental health service less than Nigerians, South Africans, Americans, Latinos, Australians, and Israelis. In South Korea, culture-influenced personal beliefs (knowledge about mental illness and stigma) play a substantial role in shaping individuals' attitudes toward mental health service. The stigma of mental illness, such as those concerning major depressive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, alcohol-related problems, generalized anxiety disorder, hypochondriasis, and social phobia, substantially influences the attitudes of South Koreans and reduce the utilization of mental health services.
Koreans have traditionally valued filial piety to parents. They still believe that showing respect and love to parents is one of the most important qualities in a person’s character. For Koreans, the idea of parents may stretch beyond their own mother and father to include everyone else’s parents: the elders of the whole Korean society. Koreans believe it is ethical to respect the broad social spectrum of the elders as they would respect their own parents.
The weakening authority of Confucianism is backed up by a recently published study which found that the percentage of Koreans who believe that people have the responsibility to look after their old parents fell from 90 percent in the late 1990s to the 30 percent range in 2014. People are now starting to think that looking after parents in their old age is not the sole responsibility of the family, but a shared responsibility with the government and society.
In Korea, it is not considered bad manners to ask the age of a person that you meet for the first time. Actually, it is necessary to know the person’s age and understand the age hierarchy within a group so that the necessary etiquette for elders can be followed.
Human beings in many countries will be living to the grand old age of 90 on average by 2030, scientists predicted 22 February 2017, upending many prevailing assumptions about longevity - but also raising serious questions about how this global paradigm shift can and will be accommodated. The first beneficiaries of this demographic revolution, researchers believe, will be women born in South Korea. This is attributable to improvements in its economy and education, reduction in death among children and adults from infectious diseases, improved nutrition, and declining rates of smoking. A notable exception to the trend is the US, where a lethal amalgam of obesity, deaths in childbirth, homicides and lack of access to healthcare is predicted to cause life expectancy to rise more slowly than in most comparable countries.
With the lowest birth rate among OECD member nations, Korea is at high risk of diminished population. With youth unwilling to marry and prohibitively high costs of child-rearing, fewer and fewer people are having children. South Korea is struggling to boost its rock bottom birth rate, one of the lowest among rich countries. According to the research service’s projections, South Korea’s population would become completely extinct by 2750 if the country’s birth rate of 1.19 children per woman continues. The country currently has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, leading only Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau and Singapore.
By 2014, it had the lowest birth rate among the 34 OECD member countries. In 2013, the number of newborns stood at 436,500, a near 10-percent decrease from 2012. This meang only about 8.6 babies were born among a population of one-thousand -- the lowest since the year 1970, when the government first began recording population data.
The age of pregnant mothers meanwhile was getting higher, which is one of the main contributing factors for the country's low birth numbers. In 2013, the average age of mothers who gave birth was 31.8 years old, point-two year older than the previous year One in five of them were aged 35 or older.
Some Korean parents plan ahead for when to give birth because they are worried that several months of age difference may result in their child lagging behind classmates in terms of learning ability. This illustrates the tremendous commitment that parents in this country have for their children’s education, which is already widely known around the world.
The Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs says the low birth rate trend will affect the labor force in the long-run. The number of able workers between the ages of 15 to 64 is estimated to stand at 37.2 million in 2016 and is expected to steadily decrease to less than 9.5 million people by the year 2100. "The country's labor productivity will greatly fall with the growing rise of the aging labor population as there are less newcomers joining the work force." The researcher emphasized the need to come up with comprehensive measures to ease the burdens families face when raising children, particularly policies that would help parents balance work and family life.
In a country with a conscription system, like Korea, a low birth rate is cause for concern. Jane's Defence Weekly, a military and corporate affairs magazine, underscored that in a June 2014 report saying Korea’s low birth rate could be a serious problem in terms of national defense. Korea has one of the lowest birthrates in the world, with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook showing that Korea’s total fertility rate stands at 1.25, putting it in 219th place among the 224 countries surveyed.
The number of births in South Korea fell 9.7 percent on-year in March 2019. According to Statistics Korea on 29 May 2019, there were 27,000 births recorded in March 2019, down from 30,000 tallied in the same month of 2018. This is the lowest number of newborns in the month of March since Statistics Korea began compiling the data on a monthly basis in 1981. As for the first quarter, the total fertility rate, the average number of children a woman bears in her lifetime, was at 1.zero-1, down zero.07 from the first quarter of 2018.
The fertility rate has continued to slide in South Korea, with the rate hitting a record low of 0.98 in 2018. That's much lower than the replacement level of 2.1 that would keep South Korea's population stable at around 50 million. Korea is also the only country in the OECD that has a total fertility rate below one much lower than the OECD average of 1.68. Statistics Korea attributed the decline in childbirths to the falling number of marriages and the falling number of women aged between 30 and 34. The number of marriages dropped near 11 percent on-year to 59-thousand in the first quarter, while the number of divorces jumped 5 percent to 27,000.
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