South Korea’s World-Lowest Fertility Rate Set to Fall Further
time.com
Low fertility threatens to undermine South Korea’s economic future by shrinking its workforce and slowing consumption.

The latest forecast by Statistics Korea puts the population in 2072 at 36.2 million, a 30% decline from the current 51.7 million, even though the fertility rate may recover a bit to 0.68 in 2026. The population is expected to fall every year starting in 2025.

        • Cowbee@lemm.eeEnglish
          27·
          11 months ago

          There’s also a massive and rising anti-feminist incel subculture, which the current President Yoon took power from. Women in South Korea don’t trust men in South Korea as much.

          Insane work culture, huge wealth inequality, and rising anti-women movements all hurt birth rates.

            • Cowbee@lemm.eeEnglish
              25·
              11 months ago

              Unsurprisingly, a rising feminist subculture among women. Because Korea in general has been historically misogynistic, exposure to more feminist media and culture as well as societal progression has led to rises in feminism among women. As a response, men have felt threatened, and claim feminists are “going too far,” and call feminists “femi.”

              An example of recent incel “controversy” is when an idol character in a video game had a frame where her index finger and thumb appeared like this: 🤏 and incels took that to be offensive to Korean Penis size, and had the man who animated that fired from Nexien. I wish I was joking.

              • Rodeo@lemmy.caEnglish
                112·
                11 months ago

                So the exact same reaction that men the world over have when women start demanding equal rights.

                Because Korea in general has been historically misogynistic

                There’s nothing particularly Korean about this. Basically every culture is historically misogynistic, the exceptions are few and far between and are generally romanticized based on limited information.

                The exact same reactions took place in America 100 years ago during women’s suffrage, and are taking place again now with the abortion debacle.

                • Cowbee@lemm.eeEnglish
                  11·
                  11 months ago

                  That’s why I said “unsurprisingly,” and considering South Korea has developed far more recently, it’s also important to recognize that their social progress is behind much of other developed countries. I wasn’t implying that Korea has anything specific about them that made them especially misogynistic, rather, it’s pointing at their current conditions and trajectories.

              • chitak166@lemmy.worldEnglish
                62·
                11 months ago

                Lol, hilarious.

                I mean yeah, it’s sad this is going on. But that example is just too funny.

                Hopefully these men can get over themselves and start treating women with the respect they deserve.

                • Cowbee@lemm.eeEnglish
                  6·
                  11 months ago

                  Oh, absolutely, I agree. The only thing that truly brings solace is that reactionary movements get louder when progressive movements grow stronger.

      • IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social
        163·
        11 months ago

        Same in Japan. And it’s not just pop singers. Just saw a YouTube video about how a Japanese weather channel uses cute women to gain popularity and it’s basically the same strategy as what they do with idols. These women have to keep their dating life secret. Because they have to seem eligible to their fans. People on the internet found out that one of these weather girls was dating a tennis player. And lots of fans got really mad. Then in the video they showed an event where fans can see the weather girls live on stage and the audience was 99% men in their 30’s and 40’s. It’s no surprise that Japan is infertile when a significant portion of their men rather wants to be in parasocial relationship with a woman who’s miles out of their league then be in a real relationship.

        Also many Japanese men are otaku, it’s men who are super obsessed with their hobbies. But Japan being Japan these men take it to their extreme. They spend so much time on their hobbies that they don’t have time for other things like dating. They for example rather take pictures of trains than try to find a partner.

        And prostitution is way more normalized and socially accepted in Japan and Korea. Many Japanese women don’t even think it’s cheating if their husband visits a prostitute.

        Combine all of that with extremely long working hours, cost of living and expensive housing it’s not a surprise that these two countries have much lower birth rates than other developed nations. Why would their men go trough all the trouble of finding a spouse, getting kids and spend a shit ton of money on them when they can just fantasize of being in a relationship with a beautiful woman, play with their toys and then visit a prostitute to get off when society doesn’t shame these men for their infantile behavior but rather exploits it.

        • deus@lemmy.worldEnglish
          82·
          11 months ago

          Having North Korea as their only neighbour doesn’t help though

      • Rolder@reddthat.comEnglish
        4·
        11 months ago

        Seems to me that areas with crazy work life balance issues also have thriving idol industries. Makes me think they are related, guys don’t have time for real relationships so they have pretend parasocial ones instead

  • morrowind@lemmy.mlEnglish
    17·
    11 months ago

    It seems for the past few years, it keeps going lower than predicted, and thus the predications keep going down. I wouldn’t be surpised if it instead bottomed out at 0.51 in say 2030

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.caEnglish
    7·
    11 months ago

    The issue isn’t fertility, it’s the country, the culture, the labor laws. Nobody will want to get kids in a climate like that

  • over_clox@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1231·
    11 months ago

    I beg to differ. Nobody can beat my infertility rate, I have 0 children. Unless someone out there has -1 children…

      • over_clox@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        Ya know, I see I’m getting downvoted by some folks, and that’s perfectly okay. Just remember, the article is about adult fertility, not infant deaths. If folks stayed on topic, they might get my point.

        There’s no way I can have negative fertility, it’s either zero or a positive number. I have zero children, so what?

        To suggest negative fertility is absurd, sperm either fertilizes an egg or it doesn’t. Zero or one (or maybe even two or more sometimes), but there’s no such thing as semen unfertilizing a fertilized egg.

      • over_clox@lemmy.worldEnglish
        13·
        11 months ago

        That’s not my point at all.

        If Mary has 2 apples, and she gives Billy 3 apples, then Mary has -1 apples. That math don’t work homie, you can’t have -1 of something.