I went to a wedding at Munhak Stadium in Incheon with my wife’s family yesterday. After the ceremony and requisite after-ceremony trip to the buffet line, we all gathered in the outside were the Mungyeong and Ansan branches of the family went over old times.
As we were getting ready to go, my mother-in-law gave my wife a couple of left-over chestnuts from the ceremony. The message was unmistakable; make another baby soon.
Considering that we have a super-cute but handful 10-month old baby right now, what’s the rush? As it turns out, my mother-in-law wants us to make a pig (as in the Year of the Pig). She is not alone (Chosun):
Korea’s birthrate is expected to inch up from 1.08 births per woman of child-bearing age to 1.1 in a sign that the downward trend that has worried pundits since 2001 is being reversed. Korea recorded the world’s lowest birthrate last year.
According to tentative figures, the number of newborns is expected to increase by some 8,000-10,000 this year from 438,062 last year. The birthrate is the number of babies a fertile woman gives birth to between the ages of 15 and 49. In fact, Korea will see something of a baby boom next year: marriages and pregnancies have increased due to superstitions surrounding this lunar year’s two first days of spring and the fact that next year is the Year of the Pig. Babies born in the Year of the Pig are said to have comfortable and prosperous lives. It remains to be seen whether the increase is a temporary or long-term trend.
To make things even more dramatic, next year is rumored to be the YEAR OF THE GOLDEN PIG (strobes, smoke, DongA):
Among young couples in Korea, there is a rapidly spreading rumor that 2007, the Year of the Pig, is actually the Year of the Golden Pig, which comes around only every 600 years. In East Asia, every year has a meaning of one of the five elements: metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. Accordingly, next year is the year of fire. The rumor says that since next year is the year of fire, next year can be viewed as “The Year of Red (the color of fire) Pig” and if you take into account yin and yang and the five elements, it is actually the Year of the Golden Pig.
That same DongA piece notes that the Chinese also seem to be pumped up about making babies this year. It also features scholars who insist that all this Golden Pig nonsense is just that (even by those who take such folklore seriously).
Be that as it may, anything that will help Korea boost its anemic birth rate is a good thing.
37 Comments
March of the Pigs.
good news for north korean babies born in 2007. your lives will be comfortable and prosperous!
no more tree bark and rock soup for you. you’ll be fat and healthy, gorging yourselves on steak and lobster, drinking the finest wines available to infants, whilst wiping your asses with $100 bills.
trust me, it’s the year of the golden pig!
Money, money, money. Don’t have a kid unless its prosperity is ensured, because a life without ugly Equus cars and ugly brown Louis Vuitton bags and an ugly apartment in ugly Gangnam ain’t worth living. Can someone tell me what if any influence Buddhism has had on the Korean mindset?
I have two staffers who will give birth to babies in 2007. I wish them the very best indeed. We were chatting the other day about the expense of living in Korea and the handbags and expensive real-estate did not come up. College and English hagwons was the big concern. My folks who are single probably had in mind what IheartB.B’s mentioned, but I think the window dressing quickly fades when the chillins come into the picture.
Railway: Hagwons are the route to the prestigious college, which is the route to Gangnam and the myeongpum.
Don’t confuse this with a devotion to education. If Seoul University demanded that applicants be able to unicycle with a basketball on their nose, you’d have unicycle-and-basketball-balancing hagwons, and education be damned.
Herod,
Good point! You do shatter my illusion that things may be changing. I think the silver bullet for that change must be emigration. Damn, I was enjoying my temporarily diluted state!
Another silver bullet could be a long economic downturn like in Japan. Their so-called “lost decade” actually widened the Japanese concept of success, made them realize there’s more to life than ostentatious consumption.
Maybe,
If you ask the rank and file where the lion’s share of IMF money came from, they would not offer up the answer “USA”. I would hope this would have a humbling effect but I think the years of subjugation has short circuited that virtue out of the Koreans DNA.
Hey, they still vilify the IMF as the nasty foreign institution that made them do un-Korean things like fire people.
Precisely!
I don’t think Korean society is mature enough to honestly deal with their dirty laundry. You can recall the kid in your neighborhood that was always picked-on. He could never deal and was always the shortest hog in the trough.
ok so,
chinese zodiac = pig
Elemental cycle = fire (which some how means gold)
that just might mean “Golden Pig” and all, but somewhere, somebody giving birth in Korea next year is going to end up with a hideously obese flamer for a son.
. . . and I will laugh.
Buy gold in the year of the Golden Pig. Gold has been appreciating 20-30% every year for the last five years.
Buy gold in new year. You won’t be disappointed.
That’s just what we need.
Another human being.
As if SIX BILLION isn’t enough.
yankabroad,
We will need them to change our diapers when we live too long and become infirm. Damn modern medicine!
Congratulations on your baby daughter Robert.
Oops, I mean congratulations Andy.
Sorry Robert — maybe later for you.
captbbq,
I bet many of those golden piglets will be spoiled brats. I predict the kindy hagwon teacher’s salaries will jump a few ‘10 man won’ in 4 or 5 years because job offers will not meet the demands for those positions as a result of this.
Hey, I’m not married to a Korean… But I was thinking of practicing the baby-making with my girl.
Do you think that’d be acceptable?
Sure, William. But she may well practice conceiving too.
William, cover your rig and your a$$
she doesn’t need any practice. trust me.
Thanks
The newspaper article linked above says that scholars and folklorists think that the rumor of the golden pig is absurd. Any skeptic could have told them that.
Oh, and by scholars, they mean astrologists.
…and one scientist.
Mr. Jackson, congrats on your child. There’s already one pig in our family, me
And I ain’t golden, either.
Happy holidays all.
If it makes its way to TV, it will be scientifically proven! You all take care over the holidays.
if koreans would stop worrying about what year the kids are born in to make them smarter, healthier, stronger, richer and just make babies!!!!
also its hard to have a high birthrate when at the same time you have the highest abortion rate in the modern world!!
mcnut…and if people have kids once every 12 years.
The answer is much simpler… Harvest from the orphanages…Oh, I forgot, the blood thing…..
SomeguyinKorea,
It’s painfuly obvious that the next generation of Koreans are spoilled hellions and many will likely grow up to be sociocopaths. I can just watch on the subway little children beat their parents relentlessly because they did not get what they want, while their mother just tells them to stop and tries to block it. No attempt at discipline (other than verbal).
I can see English teachers demanding more money, not beause demand is high due to birth rate, but rather demand is high for anyone who will put up with the brats.
Andy,
Congrats on the (relatively) new one. I trust you won’t have this problem with yours
I’ve heard somewhere that next year is NOT the Year of the Golden Pig but the Year of the Red Pig(or is it Blue?)
Anyway, if you have any plans for kids next year and if you are into the pig stuff, my suggestion is do some research before making the next big leap.
captbbq: I’m sure the sight of their aggrieved chocolate-smeared faces on the subway is part of the growing aversion to having kids. Korean mothers have never disciplined their offspring, but in the past society used to beat the resulting egocentrism out of people. Now it’s left to run rampant, which leads to the me-centeredness you see everywhere - parking in the middle of the road, placing shopping bags on the empty subway seat while others stand, placing an order (as already discussed on this blog) while others are ordering, etc.
My Golden Pig is due in late June.
Let the good times roll.
“I can see English teachers demanding more money, not beause demand is high due to birth rate, but rather demand is high for anyone who will put up with the brats.”
When you read between the lines, you’ll find that’s exactly what I meant.
A quick question - shouldn’t that be ‘once every 60 years’? The Chinese zodiac features 12 animals and 5 elements, and multiplying them gives you 60 (which is why a 60th birthday is important in Korea). Did the Donga Ilbo add a zero by accident?
Bulgasari, you stole the words from my mouth, yes indeed every cycle is 60 years long, and the last 丁亥 year, the 24th of the cycle, was in 1947. 丁, along with 丙, stands for:
• South / 南 [五方, 5 Directions]
• Summer / 夏 [四時, 4 Seasons]
• Fire / 火 [五行, 5 elements]
• Mars / 火星 [五星, 5 stars]
• Red / 赤 [五色, 5 colours]
• Bitter / 苦 [五味, 5 tastes]
• Heart / 心 [五臟, 5 viscerae]
• Proper demeanor[?] / 禮 [Virtues]
• 徵 4th note of the pentatonic 五音
So Pig of Fire indeed… Arguably, there is no “gold” in the five elements, or anywhere in the 天干, for that matter. The closest would be 金 – usually translated in that case as “metal”, but more generally as gold – which is the fourth element, and represented by 庚 and 辛; the next 辛亥 [Pig of Metal] is in 2031, the last one in 1971.
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[...] for why there was a boost in 2007, see here. That that was only a temporary blip was confirmed by the National Statistical Office on Thursday, [...]