Our man at the NY Times, Choe Sang-hun, has written an interesting article about online match-making in Korea. Naturally many agencies take a “scientific” approach to the whole affair. One government agency head observes that such match-making services may
help the lower birth rates here in Korea and he suggested that:
The government should encourage the matchmaking industry. Perhaps it should start its own matchmaking service.
Read the article here.
15 Comments
Meh…The solution to the low birth rate is opening up the country to immigration (and I don’t mean just to foreign women who want to marry Korean farmers).
One might think that countries that import foreign laborers, as do Korea and the United States, do not have an overpopulation problem–just an overindulgence problem…
Of course it could stop exporting babies, too.
I don’t think Korea’s the world’s #1 supplier of babies anymore (China?), but I think it’s still in the top 3.
“Of course it could stop exporting babies, too.”
Maybe you should have worded that differently. You’re talking about innocent children who would otherwise have no parents, afterall.
Someguy–many Korean children put up for adoption have living parents, they just decide they can’t afford the kids and send them away. I know a few adoptees with this background.
Clearly the government would be better at running a match-making service than the private sector; just look at the success of all the English-language villages.
And on the adoptees, don’t confuse them with orphans. Many of them are given up because they aren’t convenient for one reason or another, such as the parents got divorced and both want to start fresh.
“Someguy–many Korean children put up for adoption have living parents, they just decide they can’t afford the kids and send them away. I know a few adoptees with this background.”
So do I. At the age of 11, a close friend and her two younger siblings were adopted by a family in our small midwestern town. After the father died, the mother struggled for a year to feed her three children back in the early 80s before finally surrendering them to Holt. My friend remembers very clearly how desperately poor they were, stuffed together in a tiny studio apartment.
Years later, the woman came to Korea and had a very tearful reunion with her mother, who had remarried and was raising two daughters. It must have been heartwrenching for that mom to give up her children forever, especially after losing a husband.
We citizens of welfare states with food stamps, WIC coupons, and food banks seem to forget that in developing countries, there is very little assistance for struggling families.
For a country with a declining birth rate the Korean gov’t really has its collective head up its ass on the adoption issue. As Sonagi said, there is very little assistance for struggling families, although I disagree that Korea can still use “developing country” as an excuse for not increasing support for low-income families when it constantly brags about being “Asia’s fourth-largest economy.”
I believe the problem is more acute, but yet much simpler than either lack of match-making or the (high) adoption rate of Korean children by foreigners.
Almost every developed nation does not have a high enough birth rate to sustain its population. That is, excluding immigration, almost every developed nation has a declining population. So, Korea is not alone in this. The reasons for this are many, not the least of which are rising costs and difficulties in raising children according to societal expectations.
In Korea, for instance, it costs an astronomical sum of money to send one’s child through all the years of mandatory hagwons, university, have enough money set aside for the marriage money, and then enough money for everything else.
I doubt Korea can solve the general “developed country declining population problem” with such silly things as a match-making service. I think Korea basically has just 2 choices:
1. Continue to shrink
2. Open up immigration
Yes, other things will help, such as better assistance for struggling families and a better education system that does not require expensive hagwons to supplement, but these will only be a drop in the bucket compared to opening up immigration.
Hey, Korea, how about making a clear path to citizenship for people not married to a Korean ?
That, alas, would involve letting go of the notion of Korea as defined by race and embracing Korea as defined by culture, which will likely not happen anytime soon.
So, I predict Korea’s population will continue to shrink despite whatever silly or catchy gimmicks or marketing campaigns it comes up with for Koreans to make more babies - it ain’t gonna happen.
“Someguy–many Korean children put up for adoption have living parents, they just decide they can’t afford the kids and send them away. I know a few adoptees with this background.”
That doesn’t change the fact that the kids are orphans.
No, it doesn’t. Nor does it change the fact that Korea, despite all the lip service to “humanism” and “families”, still relies on others to clean up its messes. Has money for everything but its orphans. But since they won’t be going to college nor be bringing much $$$ into the marriage we really don’t need them around here. Just another body competing for my seat on the subway.
Why does the world’s 10th or 11th largest economy get the idiot pass on this issue?
“Almost every developed nation does not have a high enough birth rate to sustain its population. That is, excluding immigration, almost every developed nation has a declining population. So, Korea is not alone in this. “
You are correct, and Korea is not alone in its restrictive citizenship laws. Germany and Japan have tried to lure Indian tech workers but can’t compete with a US green card path to citizenship and multicultural society with a large Indian-American community. According to immigrant friends of various nationalities, the US is still the preferred destination owing to its more dynamic and open economy as well as the relative ease in gaining citizenship.
Of course it could stop exporting babies, too.
If Korea banned the baby export tomorrow, then the slack would simply be taken up by increase in abortions and single mothers….sound familiar?
“Why does the world’s 10th or 11th largest economy get the idiot pass on this issue?”
What do you expect Koreans to do? The world’s largest economy hardly does better by its poor children. We have third world infant mortality rates. The US foster care system, our alternative to orphanages, is no better. There are more than 500,000 children in foster care, about 25% of whom are seeking adoptive parents. A majority of these children are over the age of ten, and therefore, not very likely to find families. When the kids turn 18, they’re turned out to fend for themselves.
There are an awful lot of judgmental comments about Korean orphans and adoptees on this thread, and that bothers me. Yes, adoption is much more widely accepted in North America than in Korea, but we still have half a million kids separated from their parents, mostly because of parental unfitness. Older children languish in foster care because most adoptive parents understandably want healthy infants rather than neglected or abused children with emotional, mental, or physical disabilities.
So, there are 500,000 in the states and we need to import more into a failed system? M’kay.
I have no issue about orphans and adoption; I do have an issue about a country, particularly a very wealthy one, that decides to export them rather that devote the resources to do right by its people. But is has the gall to charge the adoptive parents a sizable chunk of change–anyway I can get my cleaning lady to pay me for cleaning my house? Bizzaro World ought to be left to the comics.
I’ve reached the conclusion that Korean Baby Export Promotion Board is run by TV execs, who have grown overly dependent on the tearful-reunion stories to buttress the myth of Korean motherhood.
And those stories, crowbarred into the variety shows, break up the entertainment of celebs’ frolics on teeter totters & trampolines. The slapstick and hi-jinks just aren’t as funny after 22 minutes of weeping. That’s a bad thing. My cleaning lady is practically useless after she watches one of those stories.