South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has announced plans to establish a new government ministry to address the country’s dire birth rate situation. Describing the situation as a “national emergency,” President Yoon emphasized the urgent need to confront the issue, which has reached unprecedented depths in recent years.
The Ministry of Low Birth Rate Counter Planning proposes to serve as a specialized “control tower” tasked with developing comprehensive policies spanning the education, labor, and welfare sectors. President Yoon stressed the necessity for parliamentary cooperation in revising the government’s organizational structure to accommodate the new ministry’s establishment, highlighting the gravity of South Korea’s demographic crisis.
President Yoon stated, “It will be more than just welfare policy, but a national agenda,” during a news conference marking the end of his second year in office. Last year’s fertility rate, which measures the average number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime, plummeted to 0.72, ranking among the lowest in the world.
This figure falls significantly short of the 2.1 threshold required to maintain a stable population. Alarmingly, the fertility rate is projected to decline further to 0.68 by the end of the current year, according to government projections.
In a country with a population of approximately 50 million, only around 230,000 babies were born last year. Without intervention, the population will decline dramatically in the coming decades, a prospect viewed with increasing concern by both the public and political leaders.
President Yoon highlighted the severity of the situation, declaring, “We will mobilize all of the nation’s capabilities to overcome the low birth rate, which can be considered a national emergency.”
Despite the South Korean government’s financial investments, exceeding $200 billion over the past 16 years, in initiatives aimed at reversing the declining birth rate, conventional strategies such as extending paternity leave and providing financial incentives to new parents have yielded little success.
The challenges faced in addressing the declining birth rate extend beyond economic and policy measures. Deep-seated social barriers, including stigma against single parenthood and discrimination against non-traditional partnerships, present obstacles to encouraging family formation and child-rearing. Legal constraints faced by same-sex couples further compound these challenges.
