South Korea is today synonymous with cutting-edge technology and export, both of continents and contents. A story of resurrection and success that, however, is threatened by demographic decline. Its population peaked three years ago and has begun to decline, accelerated by the lowest fertility rate on the planet: 0.7 children per woman.
“Accepting more immigrants”, said this Wednesday its Minister of Justice, Han Dong-hoon, “is no longer an option, but a necessity, because without them the country could be thrown into extinction”. Han defended, in front of his co-religionists from the Popular Power Party, the creation of a state immigration agency, which would be under his ministry.
The latter says that it has been inspired by the model of Germany and Japan. It would not only be a question of accepting more immigrants, but of accepting them judiciously, while tightening the measures against illegal immigration.
The minister also considers that birth support measures are still more indispensable than migration policies. However, billions of euros have been invested over two decades in this effort, without results.
However, in North Korea, where the fertility rate is 1.8 children per woman, dictator Kim Jong-un is far from satisfied. This week he was moved to tears as he implored North Korean women to have more children.
It should be said that the population of South Korea is still double that of North Korea, but the difference tends to narrow. Some demographers warn that, if this continues, half of South Korea’s population will be retired in just over forty years.
Twenty years ago, South Korea opened the door to immigrants from Southeast Asia – previously, in the nineties, Koreans arrived from China and the former USSR –, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. For jobs, as it was said, “difficult, dangerous or dirty”.
Seoul is now forced to open the range of jobs in various industries, as well as the visas that give them access, to more pre-selected countries, such as Nepal, India or Lithuania. Fluency in Korean will count.
In some rural areas, however, “mail-order brides”, especially in Southeast Asia, have been giving birth to one in seven babies for years.
So, what was one of the most homogeneous states in the world is ceasing to be so. But if South Korea lights up the future with smartphones, cars, K-pop and cosmetics, it also lights it up with words like goshiwon , for flats of five to ten square meters. Because in Greater Seoul, where half of South Koreans live, the average house price is equivalent to 43 years of salary. South Korea is also the OECD country with the largest gender pay gap. As if that wasn’t enough, the current prime minister, the right-wing Yoon Suk-yeol, elected last year by a very narrow margin, mobilized the anti-feminist vote of the boys in his favor. The latter are part of the so-called generation “of the three renunciations”: love, marriage and having children. Or, “of the five renunciations” – a job and a house -, or even of the seven renunciations, also to relationships or to a better life. It remains, finally, the total resignation.
Not surprisingly, South Korea has the highest suicide rate in the world, especially among students and – even worse – among the elderly.
A municipal study of the South Korean capital, released yesterday, confirms this: “Almost half of the young population in Seoul lives in poverty.” It is understood to live with less than half the resources of the average.
In fact, 41% of Koreans aged between 18 and 35 live with their parents and their interest in getting married and having children is below minimum. Expensive private education and intermittent jobs don’t make it viable.
As specialist Juliette Morillot says, “Today’s Korea hides, after an insolent economic success, a cruel and unknown world: that of the deep hopelessness of its youth, trapped in a hierarchical and ultra-competitive society.”
Meanwhile, in Tokyo, the multinational Itochu has tripled the birth rate of its workers in nine years with a simple recipe: banning overtime and nursery schools.