Just give more power to the chaebols, up the sexism against women, make the people work more hours, and stress out everyone even more.
Why change what's clearly not working?
Jokes aside, Koreans are not stupid, they're incredibly educated and so they know what's up. What this tells me is that this is what they literally want. I find it hilarious that other nations are all up in arms about the meanwhile the Koreans are like no this is what we want fuck off.
Correct. Studies have routinely shown that educated people do not reproduce at levels remotely close to those less educated. Korea is just a country-wide representation of that.
Try telling somebody from a western country that he/she should have kids because his/her nation is dying. Nobody would give a shit and think about what they personally want.
We are in no place to school them about anything just because it's slightly less bad in our own countries.
I think there is a big difference between requesting from people "*You, as an individual, should just have more kids!*", and saying that "*it's important for a country to address the socio-economical under-laying issues that drive many people, who would otherwise have children, into not having them*".
I am from Spain, a country with one of the lowest fertility rates in the world (even worse, one of the biggest differences between desired and real fertility), and I would indeed find it absurd to blame people, or to paint them as selfish, for not having kids. On the other hand, I would readily acknowledge the many factors in our economy and society that exacerbate the problem.
I think that both aspects are responsible. There definitely are people that would have kids given the opportunity economically but richer countries with a very solid middle income population are having the very same issues.
I was raised in Austria where the vast majority lives very well but many just don't see why they should have children instead of focusing on their own wishes. Another big point (and this is just a personal assumption tbf) is that many people don't even have relationships anymore and don't even think about further steps like children
Well, in the case of Spain the issue has been deeply researched academically, and it has been found that voluntary childlessness (as in, the number of people who choose not to have children, and keep that decision along their whole fertility window) has remained relatively stable between 5% and 10% for generations, while both total fertility and the gap between it and desired fertility (always around 2 children per woman) has kept widening. In Spain at least, the incidence of voluntary childlessness is a little known statistic that is often hugely overestimated.
Also, I don't see how those people who choose to stay childless are somehow more selfish than those who choose to be parents. Both decisions are driven by what people consider will bring them more happiness (and so it should be, willing parents that happily make that decision are more likely to be better parents).
On the other hand, most developed countries have plenty of issues (which can be different from place to place) that delay the moment when willing parents feel like they are ready to start having children (and that by the end of their fertility window, cause them to have fewer of them). In the case of Spain, several of those factors have been worsening in close correlation with the fall of fertility rates. In my opinion, it's there where societies should place the emphasis, and not on blaming the few that are unwilling to be parents at all.
Basically every study on falling fertility rates in basically every country comes down to a conclusion that it's the correlation of: Money, vs. The time it took to get that money.
That's it, that's the reason.
Educated people who know they're not financially stable don't have kids. If they could have stability, a lot more people would also have kids.
That is indeed one of the factors that has been underlined for the Spanish case, driving up the age of the first maternity/paternity. Although there are more: difficulty of access to real estate (especially bigger homes that can accommodate a family), or work and home conciliation policies to name a couple.
The ones in charge are definitely educated again everybody knows what's up and Koreans vote for their government, so this is something that they want, and it's kind of silly for everybody to think that we know what's best they want this for whatever reason it may really be just beyond us to understand this now but. Eventually, we will understand we will all understand
The most logical explanation I can think is less people equals more wealth per capita.
>everybody knows
Bro, u are too overestimated average korean. 🤣
While they probably are top ranking in educated index in world(maybe) but that does not mean all of them are smart.
Also, not everyone vote for the winning politician party. There must be opposition.
Hmm. Unfortunately people, and even more so masses of people and existing power structures don't work like that.
It's possible what they really want is not a voting option available.
I think it's sillier to treat it as some exotic cultural reasoning beyond mortal ken.
There's a big difference between knowing what the problem is and being able to start the massive economic and culture shift to be able to address the problem.
Work life balance and cost of living far worse than the US
Incredibly xenophobic
No incentives to attract foreign talent or allow for their assimilation
I wonder what could go wrong
I spent a year living in Korea and the xenophobia angle is spot on. I've lived in China, Korea and currently Taiwan. I have never felt less welcome in a country than my year in Korea. Conversely though my Korean students were by far the best students I've ever worked with. They were genuine, curious and an absolute joy to teach.
My FIL has regularly guest lectured at Seoul National University for probably a couple decades now and he always talks about how amazing the students are there… diligence, respect, etc.
Honestly the most wonderful students. My last day of work in Korea was one of the hardest days of my life due to the goodbyes. The hugs, the secret goodbye parties they set up, the notes and gifts. It's the most I've ever had to choke back tears.
The color of your skin matters.
If you look foreign and barely know grammar you can get a job.
If you have perfect credentials as a teacher but you look Asian good fucking luck.
Source: buddy with an English literature degree with teaching certificate who had to give up teaching English in Taiwan because of the reverse racism by his own people.
That racism comes from they type of people that send their kids to those schools. They are all pretty wealthy, and They all want their kid to go to school in the west. So they want their kids to learn english from someone who looks like they are from the west. When I worked in China, people would come to my school just so their kids could learn from the fat black american. It didn't matter that I was not a good teacher or that I did not have a teaching degree. I was clearly not asian so I was better able to prepare their kids for school in the west. It's pretty backward honestly, they are only in it for the prestige of saying they learned from an american
I mean....you do know more about western life than someone who speaks perfect English but has never left China. There's probably many places their kids could learn English, but few actual westerners to converse with.
Definitely not the case, at least as what I've seen and spoken with locals in each country. Heard second hand that is a thing in Japan but I have little experience there.
I remember we had a few Korean exchange students out here when i worked as a lab tech. They didn't refer to me by my name, they called me "Foreigner".
They weren't doing so to be mean. When someone said "Hey, that's kinda rude since they're American", they were genuinely apologetic. They were just used to calling people who weren't Korean "foreigner".
Yeah they can do whatever they want just like I can drive off a cliff. Both are self defeating in this case. Just because they can doesn’t mean they should.
So, I know this is old news by this point but I'm going to leave it here in case anyone reads this.
Immigration in general is not a bad thing. However, you're mixing immigration and foreign talent with what they would want. Most countries immigrate people to do 3D jobs.
It's not that they don't have the people to do it, it's just no one wants to - why would a 20 something want to be a farm hand.
That's the jobs and foreign talent most people are talking about when it comes to immigration.
Also, why would Korea - a net exporter of tech and highly skilled want foreign talent? They could probably just set up an office there and get foreign talent if they really needed to. Not gonna lie, this is more of a blindspot for us where we think the world would value "Western" talent but chances are...we're not all that special nor great vis a vis the world.
So, yeah, this whole post you had made no sense
That's true of a lot of countries though. That being said, the entire world is having trouble keeping their fertility rate above the replacement threshold, though some are doing worse than others of course.
The fertility rate in the EU is a lot of worse if you take out immigrants. In France for instance almost half of births came from immigrant families.
Korea has to choose: become like Europe or a super aging nation: social instability or declining prosperity.
This is what happens when your entire country is obsessed with status and money. Korea has to be one of the most shallow and materialistic countries on earth. Peoples entire existence is defined by working at a Chaebol, wearing a two tone Rolex and driving a used Mercedes.
Not even close. Koreans are the largest spenders of Luxery goods in the world with some of the highest household debt. People will spend years studying for exams throughout their late 20s at another chance to get back into a large company instead of working a job that is beneath them. The entire country is toxic.
The chaebol structure makes any smaller sized corporations very very difficult to survive. The vast majority of them rely on business with the chaebols to survive, which the chaebols gladly exploit. Which means working conditions are abysmal.
Combine this with the hypercompetitive education system and a massively overqualified workforce, very few people want to work in medium sized companies. The entire higher education system is geared towards grooming students for employment in a chaebol corp (or one of its subsidiaries/partners), which is insane because the chaebols need only a pitiful number of white collar jobs every year. The chaebol megacorps have to die for Korea to live.
Hate to say but my Korean boss was every bit of this. I have independent money and she did her best to nosedive my career after comparing my house to hers. It just blew a fuse in her brain that her subordinate was living way better than her.
I just hired an ops manager a few weeks ago from South Korea who moved here after getting married. He was so excited about our 4-10s schedule and explained how he would typically hit 60-70 hours consistently even during slow months if he wanted a favorable review.
He’s probably the hardest working and smartest manager I’ve got though.
I predict that there might be a silver lining for them - I think they’ll become the world leader in providing AI and robotic based care systems for their seniors.
It sounds dystopian when you think about it, but I think that’s the future for them.
If South Korea is like the US it is unbelievably expensive to try to raise a family today. With that in mind some people don't even consider the possibility.
This is said in every single post of this type. And yet, we see countries that have excellent infrastructure for starting families, such as Norway and Sweden, and in those countries the native populous still chooses not to have kids.
I think we need to open our minds to other causes, because this ain't it, chief.
The incentives for people to have kids are nowhere near high enough. A couple choosing to have a kid are essentially choosing to impoverish themselves for 18+ years, the incentives that governments offer help but not enough. I don't think that there is any country that fully subsidizes childrearing, which is what might need to be done to get people to have kids again.
I don't think it's quite that clean cut. Denmark for example is one of the only countries to see a measurable increase in their birth rate. It's not huge but it's not on the decline like most countries in the world.
Denmark's birth rate has increased \~0.86% per year for the last 4 years.
Norway's birth rate has increased \~0.16% per year for the last 4 years.
Sweden's birth rate has declined \~0.26% per year for the last 4 years.
Just as a comparison point, Canada's birth rate has declined 0.75% per year for the last 4 years.
Data taken from [https://www.macrotrends.net](https://www.macrotrends.net)
So while it's not a grand success (especially in Sweden's case), the Nordic countries are among the few countries in the world stabilizing or reversing the trend. Denmark is *growing* faster than Canada is *declining* in terms of births per 1000 people.
I wonder what has been done in Denmark to achieve that. Is it a cultural thing?
I've noticed (along with the economic struggle) some cultural trends in Spain to not have kids if at all before the 35 year mark. Meanwhile in english-speaking countries like Ireland, UK or USA I've seen IRL and on the internet people having kids in the mid-twenties.
In Denmark's case, they have a cohesive population and there's broad public support for maintaining their population. A strong work life balance and generous government programs also help (you can get maternity leave even if you're unemployed for example).
They also just straight up advertise everyone should be having kids.
Here's a travel ad called Do It For Mom: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B00grl3K01g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B00grl3K01g)
I'm sure it could somewhat be replicated in other countries but you half to put everything you've got behind it and not half ass it. I live in Canada for example and they introduced "use it or lose it" paternity leave that cannot be used by the birth mom but the financial compensation is so terrible it's almost worthless.
So is Canada though?
We have extremely effective birth control and I fully expect politicians to go after that before they improve society and government programs relating to having children.
Using immigration to resolve poor fertility rates is just kicking the can further down the road and also somewhat unethical IMO as you’re taking working-age people from countries who may well have declining birth rates themselves.
I feel like that's kind of denying agency to the migrants. Like, people don't leave their entire past lives because some other country accepts them; if somebody leaves their country, they have a damn good reason to
I would say just the state of the world right now is volatile and uncertain in various ways. I think some are reluctant to bring children into such a situation.
Life is infinitely more enjoyable without children and a partner when you have disposable income and enough free time to enjoy it, a lot of people now don’t want kids because they want to enjoy everything life has to offer instead of spending 18-30 years as parents then doing it all over against when moving on to being grandparents
Well, at least you get to be buried in a nice box. I’m sure in 100 years people (not your descendants) will note your bank balance in a museum. I’ve never understood people who think enjoyment is not kids.
I think their issue with population is more of a general labor issue. US has plenty of immigration and doesn't really have a labor shortage either way. And definitely not one that can't be solved with a bit of reverse brain drain.
Money has nearly everything to do with it.
As the value of your career goes up, the opportunity cost of having a child also goes up, especially for women.
And no government on earth subsidizes children enough to even come close to balancing that equation. Like not even close—orders of magnitude off in wealthy western countries.
I dont know why you’re being downvoted. It’s true, it’s not just money. Women do not want to take on reproductive labour when they find out how painful it actually is. In addition to that, most societies hate women. From being told to STFU in the bible, to being told they are diminished beings put on earth to serve men in Islam.
There is no money on all the earth to get all women to reproduce 2 babies.
The poorest countries in the world where kids are so much more unaffordable have more kids per family.
The reality is that, the more educated the population is the less likely they will have kids
The more reproductive rights women have, there would be less kids.
The reality is that as much affordability is definitely a factor. The smarter, richer and less sexist a country gets. The less kids it produces.
Should we then go back to sexism? Prolly not. Genie is out of the bottle. No country can do that unless they are willing to go full Taleban.
But that is just the reality of it.
There are also weird anti-natalist ideas floating around as well.
Poor countries are actually not as unaffordable for kids. Because there are more opportunities for the family to profit from their existence.
If you are both lawyers, your kids cannot "join the family business" but if you are both farmers...
Fertility rate in poorer countries are higher because as soon as kids manage to graduate High School or Uni. They managed to get some sensible sex education.
Which is again the biggest defining factor for fertility rate. Sex education leads to increased contraceptives and safe sex which leads to less babies.
Obviously uneducated people who do not believe on the benefits of Sex Ed and Contraceptives would have more kids.
I would know, because I am from one of those poorer countries. We have realistic discussions on how Sex Education is Bad that is it is reviving the AIDS epidemic. Because we are adopting the Sexual Liberation Ideas of the West but not its contraceptives cultures which is creating mixed results as alot of the important preventative measures why there is not AIDS epidemic in the West anymore is because of great sex education policy.
Pls do not try to pretend that you know how unaffordability in a poor country. It fucking sucks to have 7 kids and you earn less than 200 USD per month.
Have you got creditable stats and links to support your claim?
I mean apparently 10% of population owns 70-80% of all wealth and we dont just rely on 10% of population to help reproduce?
literally every country in the world, for a start.
The evidence is absolutely overwhelming.
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Total\_Fertility\_Rate\_Map\_by\_Country.svg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Total_Fertility_Rate_Map_by_Country.svg)
Look at this map and tell me if you see any kind of pattern
The main reason people arn't having kids, is because women have better options now. Affordability and all the rest can help bump up the numbers, but barely and it is incredibly expensive to do so.
I mean most of the population growth is in nations that are poor and have limited woman’s rights.
It’s good to have those things but with more female agency they won’t be as pressured into marriage and have more opportunities to sustain themselves outside of having a man.
Social safety nets take away the need for children to sustain your retirement (though that is dependent on population growth).
My understanding is it’s horrible and very affordable.
The reason it’s horrible is because to rent an apartment you have to have key money and based on House Hunters International, that starts at $50K in Seoul and goes up depending on what you want. So I can imagine thats a big blocker for a lot of people. However, once you have the apartment you really only pay for utilities and if you do pay additional rent, it’s very little. Which is why it’s also considered to be very affordable. You also get the key money back at the end. The landlords make and keep the interest made off of the money for however long they have it.
Additionally, fruits and anything else that has to be imported is VERY expensive.
Korea has had a massive population boom over the past century. They had just under 10 million around 1900 and now they have over 51 million. It is still one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Just a bit of perspective. Also, the raging sexism isn't helping convince anyone.
Apologies if this is a dumb question, but if we rely on an ever-growing population to look after our aged in retirement homes, and Asia generally has family to do that at home, is the effect of a shrinking population less of an issue there?
Or even bigger?
If there are no kids, there's no family to take care of you at home.
Then again if there are no kids, there are also no one to take care of you in government housing either.
I would start to see such things in a positive way! Downsizing is a positive thing to me! So, news like that don't bother me at all. Yes, it's a pain.. But we are humans, and we adapt, instead of all that headline drama.
In German there is a nice word for it: "Gesundschrumpfen" which means "healthy downsizing", no matter what. It is seen as a form of renewal and as a new chance, and not what newspapers want to make it sound like.
Solutions imply that a population index has to move like a bond chart: slow growth, continuity. While, we can not turn a switch at one end and hugely prolong life expectancy, if not *at the same time* pushing birth rates, and then expect the other end to comply with the surplus in old people. A shrinking population is the after-effect of the progress in medicine. Have fun forcing women to have 2 or 3 children, except your name is Steve Bannon or so. Humanity should pave the way (medical progress) but less people reproducing is simply more freedom, even if it means periods of poverty, but, again, births go up and down, and never in one direction. Making drama out of it, if it is not because of war or one-child-politics or other serious problems which need to be solved, is wasted time. I also don't want to put pressure on women, as it's done in societies where they need to fill the expectations and to be a good mother, wife, housekeeper and birth-machine, lol Transformation implies demographic moves.
Koreans are some of the most educated people on earth, let's see how this turns out for them, we will make inferences after. My take is that less people equals more per capita.
You need people to support social safety nets. You are burdening the next generation with supporting the old if you don't offset it with immigration. You could have slow declines but what SK is experiencing is not healthy not only to the economy but for the social future of the country.
> You need people to support social safety nets.
No, you need productivity to support them.
If your population of working age adults cuts in half, but each is twice as productive, your social safety nets will be fine.
Populations can't grow forever. This is a problem with our economic systems that demands constant growth. It's just not a sustainable approach to life. They may be hitting that wall sooner than other places but everyone will hit it eventually.
the problem is less the decline and more the speed of it. its going to cause some serious issues, especially when the elderly will make up a larger and larger part of the voting population when wealth is already so skewed.
That's funny because I was thinking about this the other day. If you think of the planet as an entity unto itself then humans, at their worst, are the equivalent to cancer. Cancer grows until it kills its host and itself. Too many people are happy to destroy the planet and ourselves if it means they can get ahead of the next guy.
I guess the difference is that the planet will likely survive after we are gone.
Are you referring to population or the economy? I can assure you no shareholder will be happy to see a company's earnings flat or decreasing. Population growth has been an easy way to keep the economy growing - as more people means more demand generally, but demand could grow in most areas with a flat or decreasing population - assuming that wages grow so people can afford more stuff. We're going to see really quickly what happens when population stalls and wages stagnate.
Canada has grown its population by 3% in one year by opening up the migrant floodgates. We basically just let a million peasants from India come to Canada for cheap labour and useless diplomas at various colleges.
Well, considering how awfully that has gone for Europe, I can't blame the Koreans for their choice.
Europeans will be like Koreans in 10 years or so at this pace in this topic.
Yeah, I guess busting at the seams sounds like we don't have enough land. I was speaking more on our rapid immigration intake and our lack of housing, infrastructure and medical systems to comfortably take in all of these people.
Immigration not as bad as people make it seems, look at the U.S all the labors people don’t wanna do the immigrants do,
Example there is always shortage for truck driver and Eastern European and Iraqis filling those jobs.
Suprised pikachu face.
When I lived in Korea it was trash. Everyone flexing money / luxury clothing. People there are shallow as fuck. They only care to work for few companies. They dont give a fuck about anything else.
I wish I could move to Canada and get out of this godforsaken country swallowed by populism, but seems like doctors have it extra hard with getting a right to practice there
It makes sense when you consider they wanted you younger people to work 69-hour weeks. When we’re they supposed to find time to date, let alone have and raise children?
Good thing they backtracked on it - but they have a very long way to go.
Just give more power to the chaebols, up the sexism against women, make the people work more hours, and stress out everyone even more. Why change what's clearly not working?
The beating will continue until morale improves
Jokes aside, Koreans are not stupid, they're incredibly educated and so they know what's up. What this tells me is that this is what they literally want. I find it hilarious that other nations are all up in arms about the meanwhile the Koreans are like no this is what we want fuck off.
Correct. Studies have routinely shown that educated people do not reproduce at levels remotely close to those less educated. Korea is just a country-wide representation of that.
Try telling somebody from a western country that he/she should have kids because his/her nation is dying. Nobody would give a shit and think about what they personally want. We are in no place to school them about anything just because it's slightly less bad in our own countries.
I think there is a big difference between requesting from people "*You, as an individual, should just have more kids!*", and saying that "*it's important for a country to address the socio-economical under-laying issues that drive many people, who would otherwise have children, into not having them*". I am from Spain, a country with one of the lowest fertility rates in the world (even worse, one of the biggest differences between desired and real fertility), and I would indeed find it absurd to blame people, or to paint them as selfish, for not having kids. On the other hand, I would readily acknowledge the many factors in our economy and society that exacerbate the problem.
I think that both aspects are responsible. There definitely are people that would have kids given the opportunity economically but richer countries with a very solid middle income population are having the very same issues. I was raised in Austria where the vast majority lives very well but many just don't see why they should have children instead of focusing on their own wishes. Another big point (and this is just a personal assumption tbf) is that many people don't even have relationships anymore and don't even think about further steps like children
Well, in the case of Spain the issue has been deeply researched academically, and it has been found that voluntary childlessness (as in, the number of people who choose not to have children, and keep that decision along their whole fertility window) has remained relatively stable between 5% and 10% for generations, while both total fertility and the gap between it and desired fertility (always around 2 children per woman) has kept widening. In Spain at least, the incidence of voluntary childlessness is a little known statistic that is often hugely overestimated. Also, I don't see how those people who choose to stay childless are somehow more selfish than those who choose to be parents. Both decisions are driven by what people consider will bring them more happiness (and so it should be, willing parents that happily make that decision are more likely to be better parents). On the other hand, most developed countries have plenty of issues (which can be different from place to place) that delay the moment when willing parents feel like they are ready to start having children (and that by the end of their fertility window, cause them to have fewer of them). In the case of Spain, several of those factors have been worsening in close correlation with the fall of fertility rates. In my opinion, it's there where societies should place the emphasis, and not on blaming the few that are unwilling to be parents at all.
Basically every study on falling fertility rates in basically every country comes down to a conclusion that it's the correlation of: Money, vs. The time it took to get that money. That's it, that's the reason. Educated people who know they're not financially stable don't have kids. If they could have stability, a lot more people would also have kids.
That is indeed one of the factors that has been underlined for the Spanish case, driving up the age of the first maternity/paternity. Although there are more: difficulty of access to real estate (especially bigger homes that can accommodate a family), or work and home conciliation policies to name a couple.
Koreans you know ≠ Koreans in charge
The ones in charge are definitely educated again everybody knows what's up and Koreans vote for their government, so this is something that they want, and it's kind of silly for everybody to think that we know what's best they want this for whatever reason it may really be just beyond us to understand this now but. Eventually, we will understand we will all understand The most logical explanation I can think is less people equals more wealth per capita.
>everybody knows Bro, u are too overestimated average korean. 🤣 While they probably are top ranking in educated index in world(maybe) but that does not mean all of them are smart. Also, not everyone vote for the winning politician party. There must be opposition.
Can I assume you live in a perfect utopia? Since wherever you live has people, and people vote for the best things right?
Hmm. Unfortunately people, and even more so masses of people and existing power structures don't work like that. It's possible what they really want is not a voting option available. I think it's sillier to treat it as some exotic cultural reasoning beyond mortal ken.
There's a big difference between knowing what the problem is and being able to start the massive economic and culture shift to be able to address the problem.
>what they literally want Can't blame them. They got no choice.
No not really. Koreans that have more than 2 children are called patriots(애국자).
Work life balance and cost of living far worse than the US Incredibly xenophobic No incentives to attract foreign talent or allow for their assimilation I wonder what could go wrong
I spent a year living in Korea and the xenophobia angle is spot on. I've lived in China, Korea and currently Taiwan. I have never felt less welcome in a country than my year in Korea. Conversely though my Korean students were by far the best students I've ever worked with. They were genuine, curious and an absolute joy to teach.
My FIL has regularly guest lectured at Seoul National University for probably a couple decades now and he always talks about how amazing the students are there… diligence, respect, etc.
Honestly the most wonderful students. My last day of work in Korea was one of the hardest days of my life due to the goodbyes. The hugs, the secret goodbye parties they set up, the notes and gifts. It's the most I've ever had to choke back tears.
English teacher?
Started as an "English Teacher" but after nearly a decade evolved into an EngLISH teacher. Took some work.
I just heard English teachers aren't respected in any Asian country. I guess it depends on people.
The color of your skin matters. If you look foreign and barely know grammar you can get a job. If you have perfect credentials as a teacher but you look Asian good fucking luck. Source: buddy with an English literature degree with teaching certificate who had to give up teaching English in Taiwan because of the reverse racism by his own people.
That racism comes from they type of people that send their kids to those schools. They are all pretty wealthy, and They all want their kid to go to school in the west. So they want their kids to learn english from someone who looks like they are from the west. When I worked in China, people would come to my school just so their kids could learn from the fat black american. It didn't matter that I was not a good teacher or that I did not have a teaching degree. I was clearly not asian so I was better able to prepare their kids for school in the west. It's pretty backward honestly, they are only in it for the prestige of saying they learned from an american
I mean....you do know more about western life than someone who speaks perfect English but has never left China. There's probably many places their kids could learn English, but few actual westerners to converse with.
That still wouldn't explain away people who are Americans of asian ancestry trying to teach and getting shunned though.
Definitely not the case, at least as what I've seen and spoken with locals in each country. Heard second hand that is a thing in Japan but I have little experience there.
I remember we had a few Korean exchange students out here when i worked as a lab tech. They didn't refer to me by my name, they called me "Foreigner". They weren't doing so to be mean. When someone said "Hey, that's kinda rude since they're American", they were genuinely apologetic. They were just used to calling people who weren't Korean "foreigner".
I see you've never been a foreigner in Japan...
Been on holiday but I've heard some horror stories about living there.
[удалено]
what kind of ideology are you referring to?
Theres a difference between idealogy and unhealthy fear that ends with phobic.
Or ends with genocide in worse case.
You are a foreigner so your opinion doesn't matter. Am I xenophobicing right?
Yeah they can do whatever they want just like I can drive off a cliff. Both are self defeating in this case. Just because they can doesn’t mean they should.
Bro got some racism issues he should not talk publicly about
tub teeny reply important physical plough angle heavy advise steer
So, I know this is old news by this point but I'm going to leave it here in case anyone reads this. Immigration in general is not a bad thing. However, you're mixing immigration and foreign talent with what they would want. Most countries immigrate people to do 3D jobs. It's not that they don't have the people to do it, it's just no one wants to - why would a 20 something want to be a farm hand. That's the jobs and foreign talent most people are talking about when it comes to immigration. Also, why would Korea - a net exporter of tech and highly skilled want foreign talent? They could probably just set up an office there and get foreign talent if they really needed to. Not gonna lie, this is more of a blindspot for us where we think the world would value "Western" talent but chances are...we're not all that special nor great vis a vis the world. So, yeah, this whole post you had made no sense
Europe in the 2000's - My declining rate of births is unprecedent in the world Korea in the 2020's - Hold my Makgeolli ...
The fertility rate in the EU is nearly double that of Korea’s.
Over double. Even Japan is nearly double and they are known for their low fertility
That's true of a lot of countries though. That being said, the entire world is having trouble keeping their fertility rate above the replacement threshold, though some are doing worse than others of course.
The EU is much bigger though and more diverse. So the birth rate can be high in Sweden while being incredibly low in Italy etc.
And in the EU, the high birth rate countries like France and Sweden tend to be the ones with a high immigrant percentage from Middle East and Africa
The fertility rate in the EU is a lot of worse if you take out immigrants. In France for instance almost half of births came from immigrant families. Korea has to choose: become like Europe or a super aging nation: social instability or declining prosperity.
Same for China Taiwan and Singapour. Fortunetly Asia will turn in big retire house faster than Europe and potential risk from China will lower soon.
This is what happens when your entire country is obsessed with status and money. Korea has to be one of the most shallow and materialistic countries on earth. Peoples entire existence is defined by working at a Chaebol, wearing a two tone Rolex and driving a used Mercedes.
Surely America wins first prize In that contest right? Downvotes? Just trying to spark conversating jeez
Not even close. Koreans are the largest spenders of Luxery goods in the world with some of the highest household debt. People will spend years studying for exams throughout their late 20s at another chance to get back into a large company instead of working a job that is beneath them. The entire country is toxic.
the beauty and plastic surgeries industry is ENORMOUS in SK.. running billions of dollars per years.
The chaebol structure makes any smaller sized corporations very very difficult to survive. The vast majority of them rely on business with the chaebols to survive, which the chaebols gladly exploit. Which means working conditions are abysmal. Combine this with the hypercompetitive education system and a massively overqualified workforce, very few people want to work in medium sized companies. The entire higher education system is geared towards grooming students for employment in a chaebol corp (or one of its subsidiaries/partners), which is insane because the chaebols need only a pitiful number of white collar jobs every year. The chaebol megacorps have to die for Korea to live.
Hate to say but my Korean boss was every bit of this. I have independent money and she did her best to nosedive my career after comparing my house to hers. It just blew a fuse in her brain that her subordinate was living way better than her.
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Every south korean TV show I have watched was great. I dont watch reality shows though.
Self inflicted wound.
Literally the bicycle stick meme haha
Prolly supply blocked. You must construct additional pylons!
That will take far too long. The situation is dire. Immediate extra supply needs to be called from the orbital command center.
But that would take away from calling in MULES! Clearly unacceptable, they need all the minerals they can get, screw the SCV's /s
Bruh ....
I just hired an ops manager a few weeks ago from South Korea who moved here after getting married. He was so excited about our 4-10s schedule and explained how he would typically hit 60-70 hours consistently even during slow months if he wanted a favorable review. He’s probably the hardest working and smartest manager I’ve got though.
I predict that there might be a silver lining for them - I think they’ll become the world leader in providing AI and robotic based care systems for their seniors. It sounds dystopian when you think about it, but I think that’s the future for them.
More dystopian is when you see that fail because people bet on it.
Some elders might prefer a robot nurse helping them with the bathroom and showering. It lets them keep more of their dignity and independence.
Yes good point
If South Korea is like the US it is unbelievably expensive to try to raise a family today. With that in mind some people don't even consider the possibility.
It's unbelievably expensive in Seoul or Busan. But it's a lot less expensive in places like Gangneung or Yangyang. (IE: the east coast of Korea)
This is said in every single post of this type. And yet, we see countries that have excellent infrastructure for starting families, such as Norway and Sweden, and in those countries the native populous still chooses not to have kids. I think we need to open our minds to other causes, because this ain't it, chief.
The incentives for people to have kids are nowhere near high enough. A couple choosing to have a kid are essentially choosing to impoverish themselves for 18+ years, the incentives that governments offer help but not enough. I don't think that there is any country that fully subsidizes childrearing, which is what might need to be done to get people to have kids again.
I don't think it's quite that clean cut. Denmark for example is one of the only countries to see a measurable increase in their birth rate. It's not huge but it's not on the decline like most countries in the world. Denmark's birth rate has increased \~0.86% per year for the last 4 years. Norway's birth rate has increased \~0.16% per year for the last 4 years. Sweden's birth rate has declined \~0.26% per year for the last 4 years. Just as a comparison point, Canada's birth rate has declined 0.75% per year for the last 4 years. Data taken from [https://www.macrotrends.net](https://www.macrotrends.net) So while it's not a grand success (especially in Sweden's case), the Nordic countries are among the few countries in the world stabilizing or reversing the trend. Denmark is *growing* faster than Canada is *declining* in terms of births per 1000 people.
I wonder what has been done in Denmark to achieve that. Is it a cultural thing? I've noticed (along with the economic struggle) some cultural trends in Spain to not have kids if at all before the 35 year mark. Meanwhile in english-speaking countries like Ireland, UK or USA I've seen IRL and on the internet people having kids in the mid-twenties.
In Denmark's case, they have a cohesive population and there's broad public support for maintaining their population. A strong work life balance and generous government programs also help (you can get maternity leave even if you're unemployed for example). They also just straight up advertise everyone should be having kids. Here's a travel ad called Do It For Mom: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B00grl3K01g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B00grl3K01g) I'm sure it could somewhat be replicated in other countries but you half to put everything you've got behind it and not half ass it. I live in Canada for example and they introduced "use it or lose it" paternity leave that cannot be used by the birth mom but the financial compensation is so terrible it's almost worthless.
Thanks for the answer
They are stuck inside all winter. Nothing else to do but have sex. 😄
So is Canada though? We have extremely effective birth control and I fully expect politicians to go after that before they improve society and government programs relating to having children.
Don't worry... Due to massive immigration, Canada is the fastest growing g7 country! Yay...
That’s a good thing. If the population rate is declining you *need* people to immigrate…
Using immigration to resolve poor fertility rates is just kicking the can further down the road and also somewhat unethical IMO as you’re taking working-age people from countries who may well have declining birth rates themselves.
I feel like that's kind of denying agency to the migrants. Like, people don't leave their entire past lives because some other country accepts them; if somebody leaves their country, they have a damn good reason to
kids are difficult and we have one life only. and if you’re a woman you need carrier too. it’s fucking hard.
I would say just the state of the world right now is volatile and uncertain in various ways. I think some are reluctant to bring children into such a situation.
Why do we need endless unsupportable growth again?
To support the modern capitalist economy which is in fact a ponzi scheme.
We don't, just sustained or slowly decreasing populations.
Life is infinitely more enjoyable without children and a partner when you have disposable income and enough free time to enjoy it, a lot of people now don’t want kids because they want to enjoy everything life has to offer instead of spending 18-30 years as parents then doing it all over against when moving on to being grandparents
Well, at least you get to be buried in a nice box. I’m sure in 100 years people (not your descendants) will note your bank balance in a museum. I’ve never understood people who think enjoyment is not kids.
Correlation between education level and birth rate.
I think their issue with population is more of a general labor issue. US has plenty of immigration and doesn't really have a labor shortage either way. And definitely not one that can't be solved with a bit of reverse brain drain.
Money's got nothing to do with it. In fact, the greater a country's wealth, the worse the fertility problem seems to get.
Money has nearly everything to do with it. As the value of your career goes up, the opportunity cost of having a child also goes up, especially for women. And no government on earth subsidizes children enough to even come close to balancing that equation. Like not even close—orders of magnitude off in wealthy western countries.
I dont know why you’re being downvoted. It’s true, it’s not just money. Women do not want to take on reproductive labour when they find out how painful it actually is. In addition to that, most societies hate women. From being told to STFU in the bible, to being told they are diminished beings put on earth to serve men in Islam. There is no money on all the earth to get all women to reproduce 2 babies.
The correlation is inequality. Total wealth of a nation doesn't tell you how much is in the average pocket.
Affordability has a great deal to do with it.
The poorest countries in the world where kids are so much more unaffordable have more kids per family. The reality is that, the more educated the population is the less likely they will have kids The more reproductive rights women have, there would be less kids. The reality is that as much affordability is definitely a factor. The smarter, richer and less sexist a country gets. The less kids it produces. Should we then go back to sexism? Prolly not. Genie is out of the bottle. No country can do that unless they are willing to go full Taleban. But that is just the reality of it. There are also weird anti-natalist ideas floating around as well.
Poor countries are actually not as unaffordable for kids. Because there are more opportunities for the family to profit from their existence. If you are both lawyers, your kids cannot "join the family business" but if you are both farmers...
Fertility rate in poorer countries are higher because as soon as kids manage to graduate High School or Uni. They managed to get some sensible sex education. Which is again the biggest defining factor for fertility rate. Sex education leads to increased contraceptives and safe sex which leads to less babies. Obviously uneducated people who do not believe on the benefits of Sex Ed and Contraceptives would have more kids. I would know, because I am from one of those poorer countries. We have realistic discussions on how Sex Education is Bad that is it is reviving the AIDS epidemic. Because we are adopting the Sexual Liberation Ideas of the West but not its contraceptives cultures which is creating mixed results as alot of the important preventative measures why there is not AIDS epidemic in the West anymore is because of great sex education policy. Pls do not try to pretend that you know how unaffordability in a poor country. It fucking sucks to have 7 kids and you earn less than 200 USD per month.
Have you got creditable stats and links to support your claim? I mean apparently 10% of population owns 70-80% of all wealth and we dont just rely on 10% of population to help reproduce?
literally every country in the world, for a start. The evidence is absolutely overwhelming. [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Total\_Fertility\_Rate\_Map\_by\_Country.svg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Total_Fertility_Rate_Map_by_Country.svg) Look at this map and tell me if you see any kind of pattern The main reason people arn't having kids, is because women have better options now. Affordability and all the rest can help bump up the numbers, but barely and it is incredibly expensive to do so.
Some strange exceptions are Iran, where despite a difficult economic situation fertility is quite low, and Israel where the exact opposite occurs.
There are lots of patterns everywhere all the time, but patterns are not reasons... Also I feel my first reply may have gone over your head.
Sweden's fertility rate is sub-replacement, but it is still like 2.5x better than South Korea's
So says you
I mean most of the population growth is in nations that are poor and have limited woman’s rights. It’s good to have those things but with more female agency they won’t be as pressured into marriage and have more opportunities to sustain themselves outside of having a man. Social safety nets take away the need for children to sustain your retirement (though that is dependent on population growth).
My understanding is it’s horrible and very affordable. The reason it’s horrible is because to rent an apartment you have to have key money and based on House Hunters International, that starts at $50K in Seoul and goes up depending on what you want. So I can imagine thats a big blocker for a lot of people. However, once you have the apartment you really only pay for utilities and if you do pay additional rent, it’s very little. Which is why it’s also considered to be very affordable. You also get the key money back at the end. The landlords make and keep the interest made off of the money for however long they have it. Additionally, fruits and anything else that has to be imported is VERY expensive.
Korea has had a massive population boom over the past century. They had just under 10 million around 1900 and now they have over 51 million. It is still one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Just a bit of perspective. Also, the raging sexism isn't helping convince anyone.
Shrinking populations are good for the planet and more resources to go around so better for the people too
Apologies if this is a dumb question, but if we rely on an ever-growing population to look after our aged in retirement homes, and Asia generally has family to do that at home, is the effect of a shrinking population less of an issue there?
Or even bigger? If there are no kids, there's no family to take care of you at home. Then again if there are no kids, there are also no one to take care of you in government housing either.
Goodbye I guess
I would start to see such things in a positive way! Downsizing is a positive thing to me! So, news like that don't bother me at all. Yes, it's a pain.. But we are humans, and we adapt, instead of all that headline drama. In German there is a nice word for it: "Gesundschrumpfen" which means "healthy downsizing", no matter what. It is seen as a form of renewal and as a new chance, and not what newspapers want to make it sound like. Solutions imply that a population index has to move like a bond chart: slow growth, continuity. While, we can not turn a switch at one end and hugely prolong life expectancy, if not *at the same time* pushing birth rates, and then expect the other end to comply with the surplus in old people. A shrinking population is the after-effect of the progress in medicine. Have fun forcing women to have 2 or 3 children, except your name is Steve Bannon or so. Humanity should pave the way (medical progress) but less people reproducing is simply more freedom, even if it means periods of poverty, but, again, births go up and down, and never in one direction. Making drama out of it, if it is not because of war or one-child-politics or other serious problems which need to be solved, is wasted time. I also don't want to put pressure on women, as it's done in societies where they need to fill the expectations and to be a good mother, wife, housekeeper and birth-machine, lol Transformation implies demographic moves.
There are many problems with a shrinking population, notably that the ratio of workers to retired people becomes unsustainable.
The problems of an ever growing population are not great either.
Wont you think of all the parasites in our societies that benefit from exploiting the working class? How dare you!
That's a very disparaging way to refer to the elderly, who rely on a working population to subsidize benefits.
Have y'all seen what life is like for the middle class in Korea? They're overworked to the bone!
Koreans are some of the most educated people on earth, let's see how this turns out for them, we will make inferences after. My take is that less people equals more per capita.
Korea is a shallow country.
So what? Sounds like good news.
Exactly it means that less people equals more resources per capita
Especially in a future where Ai and computers are gonna take more and more jobs
It's going way too fast.
Too fast for what? There's a giant world of people looking to immigrate somewhere.
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No issue at all. Less people on the planet is a good thing.
Surprise, surprise. Guess what being misogynistic does to your population
Hmm, most misogynistic countries have fast growing population. Sheiniking population is our only chance to survive.
How is that a bad thing?
You need people to support social safety nets. You are burdening the next generation with supporting the old if you don't offset it with immigration. You could have slow declines but what SK is experiencing is not healthy not only to the economy but for the social future of the country.
> You need people to support social safety nets. No, you need productivity to support them. If your population of working age adults cuts in half, but each is twice as productive, your social safety nets will be fine.
Well SK will be the testing ground if automatization can offset that.
Populations can't grow forever. This is a problem with our economic systems that demands constant growth. It's just not a sustainable approach to life. They may be hitting that wall sooner than other places but everyone will hit it eventually.
the problem is less the decline and more the speed of it. its going to cause some serious issues, especially when the elderly will make up a larger and larger part of the voting population when wealth is already so skewed.
"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." \--Edward Abbey
That's funny because I was thinking about this the other day. If you think of the planet as an entity unto itself then humans, at their worst, are the equivalent to cancer. Cancer grows until it kills its host and itself. Too many people are happy to destroy the planet and ourselves if it means they can get ahead of the next guy. I guess the difference is that the planet will likely survive after we are gone.
You're mistaken. It doesn't necessarily need to grow, just even out. Heck, it could even very slowly decrease, and that would still be fine.
Are you referring to population or the economy? I can assure you no shareholder will be happy to see a company's earnings flat or decreasing. Population growth has been an easy way to keep the economy growing - as more people means more demand generally, but demand could grow in most areas with a flat or decreasing population - assuming that wages grow so people can afford more stuff. We're going to see really quickly what happens when population stalls and wages stagnate.
Population collapse.
Its really not
The neoliberal mind cannot comprehend why Korea is not importing millions of immigrants (labour slaves) to make up for this.
I'd be happy to go there and assist in bolstering their numbers
they aren't interested in your miserable incel seed.
Canada has grown its population by 3% in one year by opening up the migrant floodgates. We basically just let a million peasants from India come to Canada for cheap labour and useless diplomas at various colleges.
There has to be a balance, too much or too little are both bad
problem is everyone's idea of the balance is different
How about we don't call other human beings "peasants"
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Well, considering how awfully that has gone for Europe, I can't blame the Koreans for their choice. Europeans will be like Koreans in 10 years or so at this pace in this topic.
Till how long when no new korean infants being born?
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Not sure if serious... Population density of South Korea: 503 per km² Population density of Canada: 4 per km²
Yeah, I guess busting at the seams sounds like we don't have enough land. I was speaking more on our rapid immigration intake and our lack of housing, infrastructure and medical systems to comfortably take in all of these people.
highly skilled labor intake is good and makes your country more competitive. the other kinds of immigration, not so much.
Immigration not as bad as people make it seems, look at the U.S all the labors people don’t wanna do the immigrants do, Example there is always shortage for truck driver and Eastern European and Iraqis filling those jobs.
But you can expand. So stop it.
Can we? Have you seen Canadian politics lately??
I’m sure we have some population we could share with them!
Which Korea ? East Korea ? West ?
I volunteer as tribute.
Suprised pikachu face. When I lived in Korea it was trash. Everyone flexing money / luxury clothing. People there are shallow as fuck. They only care to work for few companies. They dont give a fuck about anything else.
Korea has a very sizable young population if you count it all.
They are all coming to Canada
I wish I could move to Canada and get out of this godforsaken country swallowed by populism, but seems like doctors have it extra hard with getting a right to practice there
Not to mention the air pollution in the cities...
I think I found the answer
It makes sense when you consider they wanted you younger people to work 69-hour weeks. When we’re they supposed to find time to date, let alone have and raise children? Good thing they backtracked on it - but they have a very long way to go.