by RUTH KIM
Just as it seems like Korea is taking over the world with its pop culture and technology exports, a new report suggests that the nation that brought us Girls Generation, the Kia Soul and Samsung smartphones is at risk of going extinct.
The study warns that South Korea may just go the way of the dinosaur by the year 2750, if the country fails to curb its falling fertility rate, the Chosun Ilbo reported.
South Korea’s birthrate, which was 1.23 in 2012, fell to 1.19 children per woman in 2013–one of the lowest numbers ever recorded.
The study, which was commissioned by the New Politics Alliance for Democracy party and conducted by the National Assembly Research Service, forecasts that South Korea’s current population of 50 million people will drop to 40 million by 2056, and 10 million by 2136. The port city of Busan would be the first to see its streets empty, suggests the simulation, since there has been a dramatic decrease in the number of young and middle-aged residents there.
According to the study, Busan’s last survivor will be born in 2413 and the last Seoulite in 2505, and if these projections become reality, then South Korea will be the first nation in the world to become extinct.
Meanwhile, in the midst of South Korea’s youth crisis, its gray population has been growing. The country’s National Statistics Office says that, by 2030, 24.3 percent of South Koreans will be 65 or older, and that figure will rise to 32.3 percent by 2040, according to the Agence France Presse. This imbalance of a booming older population and a shrinking youth generation seems to align with NARS’ grim forecast.
Notably, the forecast is based on a worst-case scenario and does not take into account possible changes caused by immigration policy.
The study not only sounds the alarms, but also raises questions as to why South Korea is facing this worst-case scenario. The Wall Street Journal points out that former President Park Chung-hee’s national family planning campaign may have worked too well. The policy, which started from the early 1960s and lasted well into the 1980s, encouraged families to have fewer children. One government poster read, “Even two children per family are too many for our crowded country.”
The left poster reads, “Even two children are too many!” (Photo via TheGrandNarrative.com)
Another poster, which read, “Give birth without thought and keep living like a beggar,” highlighted the economic burden of raising children–and no less, a child–in South Korea, and this concern seems still prevalent in today’s society, where high education costs are considered heavy burdens to families.
Top photo: Getty Images
