Many of us are aware that Korea is having a population problem. Earlier this year, Wangkon blogged about the Korean government looking to the French for the secret of having more babies. This was in response to an earlier posting that Marmot had made regarding the apparent decrease of Korean children. In that posting, Marmot noted that the number of Korean youth aged 6-21 in 2008 had dropped nearly 29% from 1980. This book, “South Korea”, by Andrea Savada, may provide a hint as to why Korea is going through this birth-rate crisis. According to Savada, in 1955, 41.2% of the population was under 15 years old. In 1966 it was 43.5%, and then dropped to 38.3% in 1975; 34.2% in 1980 and then to 29.9% in 1985. Savada states that the high population of young Koreans put great strains on the Korean economy and that Park Chung-hee, “alarmed at the way in which the rapidly increasing population was undermining economic growth, began a nationwide family planning program.” People were encourage to wait longer before getting married and having children, and in 1973 abortions were legalized. In the 1980s, families were encouraged to undergo sterilization. In 1983 there were 426,000 Koreans sterilized, this number increased to 502,000 the following year.
Savada predicted the South Korean population to be 46-48 million people by the end of the 20th century and it would stabilize (cease to grow) at 52,600,000 people in 2023.
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The less people, the better. But the problem is, there will be too many old people versus the young who will need to support the former. Perhaps Korea should change the focus a little. Put less emphasis in increasing the number of people, to somehow balancing out the age differences. A country of twenty five million would have been a nice number that would have cut down on pollution and putting less daily stress on people’s lives caused by population density.
“A controversial new study in the journal Science argues that increasing population density, rather than growth in the power of the human brain, is what catalyzed the emergence of modern human behavior.”
Did population density create modern humans?
Korean women are not sexy. Many of them border on “only if you are out of prison yesterday” category.
In old times(pre-videogame and internet), they were the only entertainment for drunken adjussis. But now, adjussis play StarCraft.
Hence, no babies.
Korea looking to the French for the secret to having more babies is like post-Reagan America looking to liberal Holland for the secret to winning the drug war.
Humorous, nevertheless, that a country which demonizes unwed motherhood, criminalizes adultery, and makes it a virtually impossible for men to marry until they are 30, meanwhile treating women as children until they day they suddenly find themselves stuck at home with the requisite one child and no career and no one to help them and a husband who “works” till long after she’s fallen asleep exhausted (assuming his company is benevolent enough to even post him in the same city), and generally whether as a matter of policy or not does everything humanly possible to increase the misery of its citizens and crush the possibility of love (which is taboo in all but the narrowest instances, while prostitution flourishes and is perfectly OK) ~
[pause to take a breath]
~ should then turn around and wonder why its stressed and exhausted citizens have stopped having kids. Here’s a clue: let your employees go home to their families at the end of the day.
Never ever stop Baduk. Keep on trucking on.
“let your employees go home to their families at the end of the day.”
WeikoBoy nailed it. Time to close the comments.
Seconded.
The fewer people, the better, isn’t necessarily good policy – even for environmental considerations. Growing (rather than ‘larger’) populations are more productive, vibrant, and healthy. The “하나, 제대로 기우자,” (raise just one, but properly) attitude has definately come back to haunt Korea. Korea’s system of social security doesn’t nearly come close to covering the costs for the aging population. The custom is for Korean parents to live with (and be provided for by) their eldest son and his family. If two of these ‘just one’ babies end up marrying each other, it’s quite conceivable that one couple could be saddled with the burden of caring for both pairs of aging parents. Yikes!
“Savada predicted the South Korean population to be 46-48 million people by the end of the 20th century and it would stabilize (cease to grow) at 52,600,000 people in 2023.”
That sounds optimistic to me. Articles that I’ve seen predict not stabilization but population decline. As for France’s solution, their extra babies probably reflect the tendency of France’s immigrant population to have many children. I’m not sure that this ‘solution’ would appeal to Koreans.
Jeffery Hodges
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“The less people, the better. But the problem is, there will be too many old people versus the young who will need to support the former”
Logan’s Run
Can someone please explain the title of this post? What the hell is the “unkind cut”?
Google says it’s a texas way of saying “sterilization”.
I assumed it was a reference to the abortion procedure itself.
Many thanks – my head was on the verge of exploding.
“Race suicide” is what they used to call it. Students doing a presentation on the topic informed me that at the going rate, Koreans will be extinct by the end of millennium.
Granted, that’s a lot of leeway time to turn the situation around, but we need only to look at the continent soon to be known as Eurabia to see where abortion, contraception, sterilization, and euthanasia can lead in the short-term.
Interesting that the people most likely to reject the Theory of Evolution are the same ones passing on their genes in the Darwinian “survival of the fittest.”
“Korean women are not sexy. ”
Are you crazy? With this nice weather raising the hemlines, my head might as well be on a swivel.
Or at least where abortion, contraception, sterilization and euthanasia can lead when they’re combined with another demographic trend.
So here is Korea having a severe shortage of babies. So why are they still exporting orphaned babies abroad? Where is the leadership from the Korean government and the Korean society in saying “we can’t have our precious children going abroad, we need to take care of them on our own because we need them to build our country”?
#8 should read: ‘하나만 낳아 제대로 키우자’ or ‘하나만 낳아 잘 키우자.’
“Soylent Green is made of people!!!!!!!!”
Though it will cause a real shift in the current fiscal track and cause some difficulties, this country is in serious NEED of a population decline.
The overpopulated, uber-competitive, ridiculously super stressed Korean people need some breathing room!
Korea has an overabundance of orphans partly due to ssangnoms being overly and wrongly convinced that they are some sort of royal descendant.
Mr. Kim may incorrectly assume that because he is a Gimhae Kim, he is in fact a Shilla royalty. In truth, if they are unable to expand further than simply Gimhae Kim, the probability that they are ssangnom is astronomically high. Similar situation to someone saying that he is a Lee, and therefore a Yi Soonshin relative.
All in all, they look at the prospect of a STEP son with a different Blood Line, say a Park, as basically unfathomable. Unthinkable. Or an ADOPTED son. Heaven forbid !
1/ kids in need of adoption are exported. When they reach college age, they become all messed up inside.
2/ step children? I think that one never rolls too well in Korean-Korean 2nd marriages, although from my observation it is tacky as well in white, black, uniquely Latina type marriages. Shout out to Sotomayor. I hope she finds a uniquely Latina doctor for her ankle. Hat tip to Rush.
Koreans will continue to export unwanted babies, and somehow spin it as they were adopted by white barbarians by choice, because they were ‘smart’.
Bullshit.
Although, relatively, all the land of old India has some more fucked up marriage rules.
cm is ssangnom. I can sense it. Majority of Koreans are ssangnoms. Just the way it is, if you want to mathematically support aristocracy.
cause for sure,
they are doing enough fucking all over Korea.
abortion, suicide, is higher in Korea/Japan.
I think Korea beats Japan in baby exporting.
I rarely see little Daisuke having an identity crisis in college in the US. Plenty of Chulsoos.
I stand corrected…and I spelled it wrong too – I was typing fast and from memory, please forgive…하나만 낳아 제대로 키우자 is the correct phrase for the concept.
As crowded as Korea is, I would think that a decline in population would be a good thing.
It seems rather premature to be already worried about “race suicide.” Solutions will be found, just as they were able to solve the problem of run away population growth in the 1960s.
Worrying about a shrinking labor pool having to support an increasing population of retirees also seems unwarranted. In the current situation company workers are forced into retirement long before they have exhausted their ability to make productive contributions. And with the job market being so tight, the majority of college educated women are currently unable to find employment commensurate with their education.
In the future, healthy people will be able to continue working till 70 or beyond, and newly minted college graduates will have more career opportunities than at present.
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