South Korea’s birthrate is so low, the president wants to create a ministry to tackle it

Seoul, South Korea CNN —

South Korea’s leader on Thursday said he plans to create a new government ministry to tackle the “national emergency” of the country’s infamously low birth rate as it grapples with a deepening demographic crisis.

In a televised address, President Yoon Suk Yeol said he would ask for parliament’s cooperation to establish the Ministry of Low Birth Rate Counter-planning.

“We will mobilize all of the nation’s capabilities to overcome the low birth rate, which can be considered a national emergency,” he said.

Speaking later in his first news conference since August 2022, held to mark two years in office, Yoon admitted his administration had fallen short in its efforts to improve people’s lives. He pledged to use the next three years of his term to improve the economy and address low births.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol at a press conference in Seoul, South Korea, on, May 9, 2024.

South Korea has the world’s lowest fertility rate, which indicates the average number of children a woman will have in her lifetime. It recorded a rate of just 0.72 in 2023 – down from 0.78 the previous year, the latest drop in a long string of yearly declines.

Countries need a fertility rate of 2.1 to maintain a stable population, in the absence of immigration.

The data underscores the demographic time bomb that South Korea and other East Asian nations are facing as their societies rapidly age just a few decades after their rapid industrialization.

Many European nations also face aging populations, but the speed and impact of that change is mitigated by immigration. Countries like South Korea, Japan and China, however, have shied away from mass immigration to tackle the decline in their working age populations.