More than 4,000 elementary, middle and high schools across Korea have shut their doors as the country’s student population shrinks, new data shows.
According to the Ministry of Education’s latest figures, revealed on Sunday by Rep. Jin Sun-mee of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, since 1980, 4,008 schools under 17 regional education offices nationwide have closed as of March this year. During the period, the number of enrolled students decreased from 9.9 million to 5.07 million.
since 1980, <snip> the number of enrolled students decreased from 9.9 million to 5.07 million.
That’s half the student in 45 years!
Korea’s birthrate ― the lowest in the world with the total fertility rate remaining below 0.8
Meaning it’s getting even worse!!
These numbers are insane, I’ve heard that South Korea is working like crazy to make robots that can help lift the burden of taking care of the elderly. But I wasn’t aware it was this bad!!
They have the lowest birth rates in the world, beating Japan by some margin. Since most of the world is heading that direction, is important to watch how these countries handle the issue, so we can prepare better
SK is not going to be a good example because, in addition to the usual reasons for a declining birth rate, they also have some pretty extreme racism, sexism, and a work culture that even worse than Japan in many ways. Why would you want to have kids in South Korea‽
Let’s say you do have a wife and kids… Good luck getting home to see them on time on the regular!
What’s incredible is that the government’s stance on this situation is that it is preserving their culture. What they really mean is that they’re keeping out foreigners and not cross-breeding with the riffraff (which is… The rest of the world).
They will “preserve” themselves right into extinction.
Japan was the first to have a fertility crisis, but they’ve slowed the issue a lot. Spain and Italy, for example, now have a lower fertility rate than Japan
I find fertility rate to be such a fascinating topic, because there is no simple explanation, although many people will suggest simple explanations
I’ve heard it’s because of the cost of housing, but Japan fixed their housing crisis decades ago, and South Korea never had much of one, at least not compared to Canada, New Zealand, or the US
I’ve heard it’s about how women are treated culturally, but then why would the fertility rate in places like Norway and Finland be dropping so dramatically?
And I’ve heard it’s a reaction to dystopic late-stage capitalism, but then why is the fertility rate dropping so rapidly in North Korea?
The general explanation of difficult economic conditions doesn’t seem to hold up when you look at a place like the Korean peninsula. There was a great famine in North Korea during the '90s - the arduous march - where millions died in only a couple years. The fertility rate remained far higher during that than it is now. South Korea had far worse economic conditions than it has now, but had a far higher fertility rate
My hypothesis is that it’s related to some form of pollution. Obviously there are many contributing factors, but it’s interesting to me that the lowest birth rates are all in countries around major manufacturing; especially technology manufacturing. South Korea, Taiwan, and China all have the lowest birth rates in the world. Many European countries like Spain and Italy aren’t far behind. Both areas have the highest concentration of high-tech manufacturing
The kinds of fixes that could work are the kind that would be expensive and beneficial to workers, which is why it’s not done. The police angle doesn’t make much sense because it’s not like it’s caused by people who are trying and failing to have kids, except for people who only start in the 40s because that’s how long it takes to become an economically self-sufficient enough to do so. Any government that wants to replace needs to make having a family-sized home and a decent work life balance readily achievable to any 25-year-old
I think it has a very simple explanation, but I doubt many people will agree with me.
I think it proves that humans simply do not have an inherent urge to procreate. Humans have the urge to have sex, sure, and for a long time having sex carried the consequence of having children, but they are not the same thing. When people are able to survive without children and have the CHOICE to not have children, many simply don’t want to.
In the past people needed many children, because many of them died before adulthood, and they needed the rest to take care of them in old age. Women didn’t have the right to say no and many needed husbands to provide for them, since they couldn’t own their own property or even have jobs. When men wanted sex, women had to comply and without birth control they automatically got pregnant, whether they wanted to or not.
I think not having the option to choose, people had children because… that’s just the way it was.
Now people have a choice. And we see what choices they make.
I’m sure many people are going to argue that it is too expensive to have kids, but let’s be honest here. Most humans on earth today are orders of magnitude more prosperous than 400 years ago, for example. If people really wanted kids, they’d have them.
Many people simply don’t want kids and maybe it’s time we finally acknowledge it.
There are only a few groups of people who still have lots of children: the very poor in underdeveloped countries and the very religious. And note that in many of these cases people don’t really have a choice.
Or people just can’t afford to have them. Or they don’t have reliable access to childcare. Or they are too afraid of the future to subject chuldren to whatever is coming. Or any number of social issue that could be fixed.
worselowerlet’s not make value judgements like, i don’t like children until they have personalities and mortgages and my wife is an elementary school teacher. it takes all types in this world.
I don’t think you understand the problem, because lower is absolutely worse. A small decline in population is fine, the world probably has too many people already. But a steep decline like this is catastrophic for a country.
The fertility rate required to maintain population is around 2.1, having it at only 0.8 is really bad, making the South Korean population basically on a path to extinction within a few hundred years.
dude my degrees are better than your degrees in the subject but try to go off. “a steep decline like this is catastrophic for a country” no it isn’t, we want to believe it would be but the only steep population declines we’ve ever actually seen were from famine, war the like. Just because you read a book with a funny title does not give you an understanding of the choices people voluntarily make and that does not push a country to a cliff.
Okay boomer
Be careful you’re not thinking like a neoliberal (endless growth) when you look at South Korea. In my opinion they’re a model, and we should be looking at depopulation everywhere.
Dear God, can we talk about issues like these without immediately dropping “nei liberal” and what not?
And if you think that South Korea is a model for the rest of the world then I’d urge you to think again.
Demographics are a bitch, and a big one. It’s slow, like a freight train, but once you hear the horn sounding it’s too late and you’ll be splattered. Any country should have a birth rate of about 2.1, make it 2 if you slowly and safely want to shrink the population over time. The problem with a Korea is that it’s going all way too fast and they’re not fixing anything.
They don’t get enough children for a number of reasons, one being that people are worked to death there while still not making enough money to start a family. If you want families having babies you’ll need a family where one works and yet can support that entire family. You want parents to be able to have time to raise their children too. Or hell, at least give free childcare facilities so that people can work while having children.
As far as I can tell, s Korea has tried a wide variety of incentives for people to have more babies, without actually doing anything about fixing the core issue: their work culture.
What will happen next is probably not very pretty. They have few to any immigrants, so no help there either. Schools start closing because not enough kids. People will have to move to the big cities for their children to have an education at all, so you’ll start seeing the small villages disappear over time
The current work force will get older and stop working but then who will do the work? There ain’t enough kids to replace them. Let the old continue working after 65? Sure. Until when? 70? 80? I mean, someone needs to actually do the work to get food on the table.
Meanwhile South Korea has a bit of a problem with it’s northern neighbor. So it needs a big standing army or be overrun or destroyed by the dictator from the north. How do you have an army when you don’t have enough kids to even feed your own population?
South Korea as a country is dying and by now I think it’s too late to do it naturally. They’ll have to start looking into immigration soon or within a decade or two it’ll be the end for them. Seriously, none of this is unexpected, and I’m sure the government there knows this yet they’re not doing shit about it.
I gave up on making a point. For some reason people think a massive depopulation in a short period of time will be just fine. You can argue depopulation but apparently there is never too quick or it’s “neoliberal talking points” or some other bullshit trope.
All nuance is somehow lost anymore.
I don’t get care whether or not you like a word, it’s the appropriate one.
I said South Korea is a model for depopulation. Respond to what I say instead of what you want to be angry about, please.
They have low birth rates because they’re a wealthy country. Wealth is the most simple indicator of birth rate. Projecting your weird Asian stereotypes onto South Korea is…odd.
No, Sourh Korea isn’t “dying”. That’s the neoliberal framing. It remains to be seen how they deal with a low birth rate…and we should be watching because the phenomenon is going to happen in more and more places. My country, Canada, contracted in the last quarter, for example.
Neoliberals are scrambling everywhere because they used to love immigration, legal or otherwise, but they brought in so many immigrants to ensure growth that they created a fascist black lash and are now fighting over “preferred” immigrants (which will result in population loss).
That’s why we had the plandemic. Don’t ask me how this helps the secret wealthy cabal that runs the world, I haven’t been able to get an answer to that yet.
The fuck are you talking about?
Stop eating Korean students: they’re endangered species nowadays!
