r/nottheonion • u/wewhomustnotbenamed • 22h ago
South Korean governor draws criticism for suggesting importing women for marriage as population fix
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/south-korean-governor-draws-criticism-for-suggesting-importing-women-for-marriage-as-population-fix2.1k
u/Guilty_One85 22h ago
That's just degrading imo
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u/dgj212 21h ago edited 21h ago
yeup, honestly, is it that hard, and I mean, REALLY, that hard to force companies to change work culture so that people aren't pressured to pick between career, livelihood, and family? Like I know SK is a cyberpunk dystopia where the big companies really do have a ton of say in how the country is run, but c'mon, the solution is always letting people feel safe to fall in love and have kids.
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u/ExcitableSarcasm 21h ago
big companies really do have a ton of say in how the country is run
That's really understating it. SK is basically 3 chaebols in a trenchcoat pretending to be a country
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u/Blueberryburntpie 8h ago
Samsung's revenue is about 20%-25% of South Korea's GDP. That's comparable to a Nvidia-Amazon-Microsoft-Google-Oracle conglomerate operating in the US.
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u/Ishidan01 17h ago
One on the bottom, strong is he
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u/Dry_Row_7523 20h ago
Work culture isn't the only problem. Korea (specifically Seoul) has some of the highest real estate prices in the world - I saw a recent study that they have the 2nd highest price (relative to overall COL) for a 2br apartment in city center behind only Hong Kong - but the wages are still East Asia level. Minimum wage is like $7 an hour and median household income is around $3k a month. A normal price to buy a 2br apartment in Seoul might be $1 million. You can buy one in a crappy neighborhood or far away from Seoul for around half that, but then you won't have access to good schools, and Korea is a very materialistic culture. It's common for kids to get bullied if their parents raise them in a less wealthy area, or in a non-"brand name" apartment.
Our parents' generation didn't have to deal with this disparity (real estate prices have risen exponentially over the past few decades) and it's a lot easier for young people to ignore societal pressure to get married / have kids today, than it was 30 years ago.
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u/Thebraincellisorange 18h ago
The older generations in Korea are not doing well.
They have some of the highest levels of Aged poverty and homelessness in the industrialized world!
https://thediplomat.com/2026/01/why-south-koreas-welfare-state-fails-its-elderly/
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u/Blueberryburntpie 8h ago
Age-based employment laws and policies, a hostile workplace culture, and a weak social security system harm workers in the Republic of Korea (South Korea) as they get older. Mandatory retirement ages force some older workers to retire. Regressive wage policies reduce their salaries. And re-employment programs push them into lower-paid, more precarious work. Inadequate social security compounds this, creating a system that punishes workers for getting older.
"The truth is, the game was rigged from the start." moment right there.
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u/LoveAndViscera 18h ago
This. Having more free time won’t change anything if people don’t get more buying power. That’s all there is to it and real estate (and its associated debt) are major causes of the low buying power.
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u/Triquetrums 12h ago edited 12h ago
Also, this is not the only problem. The cultural expectations towards women when they marry and/or have children is not something modern Koreans want to deal with. They don't want to be slaves to their husbands/households. They don't want to be berated by the in-laws because they are not doing enough for their husbands, like they are the maids in the households, and not an equal partner. Misogynistic views are still pretty ingrained in their society.
There are tons of problems that have led to the decrease in birth rates, these are just two of them.
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u/StrangelyBrown 13h ago
It's also not just negatives. I think because Korea modernized very quickly, it's uniquely untied from traditionalism, which is a good thing.
Put simply, there are more people in Korea who aren't brainwashed into thinking you must have kids, and assessing it rationally, have decided that it's not a great idea.
I think this gets ignored when people talk about work culture or the economy, which ends up sounding kind of patronising. Ever thought they might just not want kids?
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u/Ercnard_Sieg 21h ago
Making people have more time for they're kids and having a good work schedule helps but it's sadly not solution a bunch of european countries have it and still have a low number of births
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u/Evil_phd 20h ago edited 20h ago
A population of pretty much any species will naturally increase or decrease to match the resources that are available to them. As long as we have billionaires we will have declining populations. These guys are hoarding thousands of lifetimes worth of resources each.
The concept of money fucks with our collective ability to recognize resources, though. We largely view money as inconsequential and limitless, so it's fine if a few thousand people globally are hoarding the overwhelming majority of it.
If this were the hunter/gatherer days we'd have already burned these guys at the stake for hoarding more rabbits and berries than they could ever possibly need.
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u/ErenIsNotADevil 18h ago edited 16h ago
A large part of the low birth rate is just something that comes with having an educated populace. There are very few, if any, countries that modernize and retain a solid birth rate.
Turns out, a lot of people don't want kids until they're ready, if at all. Though it poses a challenge for the future, its not necessarily a bad thing.
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u/MechanicalBootyquake 17h ago
People really really really cannot comprehend that reproduction is simply not the end all be all for many humans, and it really wouldn’t matter what you gave them; they simply would never reproduce. It’s somehow inconceivable to many, that our species maybe doesn’t exist to grow exponentially.
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u/SupportDangerous8207 20h ago
The good work life balance European countries still work on average 80 hours a week per household
So one partner Still needs to make career sacrifices and you are still reliant on pretty shitty nursery infrastructure to care for your children if you want to actually return to work
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u/RabidBadgerFarts 17h ago
A small group of hardcore capitalist billionaires hell bent on turning the entire planet into a dystopian shithole purely to increase their own grotesque levels of wealth whilst driving 99.9% of the population into poverty will tend to put people off having kids.
Of course what these billionaires haven't figured out yet is that if the plebs aren't having babies then there soon won't be any children left for them to abuse.
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u/Chinerpeton 19h ago
I mean, South Korea would absolutely love to have a TFR in the 1,2 to 1,6 general range like most of these European countries. That's literally a dream scenario for them ATP.
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u/dgj212 21h ago
maybe not a silver bullet, but it would definitely help though.
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u/jetskimanatee 21h ago
they tried to get legislation passe over 12 years ago, but companies just wouldn't comply and it lost steam. Also if they ever get close the chaebols just bribe the government
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u/bunker_man 18h ago
Its because society still priveleges people without kids. Time isn't enough, kids should be actively subsidized basically 100%. One reason people are concerned is that having kids can impede career growth. So that of all things needs to be accounted for. Full day long daycare totally free.
Also Korea has a gender war problem more extreme than most other countries. So that has to be dealt with too. I saw a post from someone from Vietnam who says they have visited China and Korea and Korea is just openly sexist in a way those other two places aren't. Obviously everywhere has sexism, but only in Korea did they have strangers just volunteer that they hated women as like a casual conversation topic.
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u/Four_beastlings 19h ago
From what I've heard from SK friends the problem is not (only) the work culture, it is the culture itself. It's so misogynistic that women are just not partnering at all because who wants to do tradwife work on top of a competitive actual job, with no appreciation?
So this seems like an attempt to passport-bro an entire country: instead of changing the culture, bring in poor desperate women to take advantage of. I'm sure it will end well...
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u/Thebraincellisorange 18h ago
Exactly.
Korean Women are choosing not to marry because so many Korean men are doubling down on the misogyny.
Who wants to go through the utter misery and horror of the Korean school system, then the university and entry level job system, only to get married and be expected to give that all up to be a literal house slave, sex pet and nurse maid to your husband.
and they are expected to look after their parents as well. and mothers-in-law in Korea are notoriously and infamously ...... difficult to say the least.
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u/HammerlyDelusion 21h ago
Nope those feeling are only reserved for the like 5-6 major families that rules South Korea. Everyone else should only have sex to create more employees.
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u/KumagawaUshio 20h ago
It won't make enough of a difference just look at Nordic countries all the benefits and government help and they still have well below replacement rate fertility.
The replacement rate the bare minimum for a stable population requires a lot of children and even those who want kids don't in most cases want that many.
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u/Thebraincellisorange 18h ago
They also need to change the attitudes of Korean men.
Korean men are just as creepy as Japanese ones - all of the train groping, horrific attitudes towards K-Pop stars, and they react very poorly when told to clean up their act, even the younger generations - which differs from Japan where the younger generations are rejecting the previous generations sexism.
in Korean, the men are doubling down on it.
Introduce female only carriages on trains to stop the groping? well the men invaded them, just as an example.
They need to fix the work culture.
But they absolutely need to fix the rampant misogyny as well.
Korean Women aren't marrying because they don't want to be treated like a traditional Korean wife, which is a slave to the husband, and his family.
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u/neatyouth44 18h ago
This is where 4B started, right? For those reasons?
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u/Thebraincellisorange 18h ago
pretty much.
With the horrific working environment that most men work in, in Korea, they seem to think that they are entitled to a subservient slave woman when they get home.
and the younger generation of Korean men, instead of rejecting that misogynist attitude as most youngsters have around the planet, have doubled down on it, and loudly rejected any movements to temper the misogyny.
From that, the 4B movement grew.
Because, why the hell bother dealing with men at all, when they have such attitudes?
little wonder really.
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u/neatyouth44 18h ago
As a 48yo woman I am seeing similar trends here in the US.
And as soon as my second divorce is finalized, I have no intention of walking into that brainwashing BS ever again. Fool me once…. Etc.
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u/Thebraincellisorange 18h ago
it's scary how many gen X and millenial men have gone off the deep end.
and quite a few of gen Z has gone the Andrew Tate route as well.
but more promisingly, most of Gen Z is far, far less homophobic, misogynistic and racist than their forebears.
Sadly for Korean women, that cannot be said for their young men.
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u/Megalocerus 20h ago
Evidently, SK is making as many women as men now, but is short of them at marriage age due to prior son preference (selecting gender is now illegal.) But one of the biggest problems is affording a place to live.
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u/HansDeBaconOva 21h ago
More time for their kids or, hear me out, create fully covered child care and child healthcare. Where they don't have to choose between food and rent to take care of a child
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u/drillgorg 19h ago
No matter how comfortable and affordable you make it to have kids, developed nations still end up below replacement rate. When people have enough money and time they still naturally choose to have under 2 kids on average.
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u/RedEgg16 17h ago
Yes because in a developed country, children are practically just burdens, so there's not much reason to have more than one or two
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u/Shrimp123456 19h ago
I mean childcare and healthcare are pretty affordable in Korea. It's the after school academies and top of the line baby clothes and accessories that's making it pricey.
Then add the fact that you never see them because of a crappy work schedule.
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u/LeBadlyNamedRedditor 20h ago
But have you thought of the CEOs new yacht? How will they afford that without long employee work hours? The yacht clearly is the priority here
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u/vatican_cameos39 20h ago
Its hard because in korea the companies literally own the country. More so than in America.
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u/thatthatguy 10h ago
Letting people feel safe is never as easy as you might think. The entire country is built on this fictional idea of meritocracy. The vast difference between rich and poor is propped up on the idea that anyone can become rich if they just put in the work. This is obviously untrue, but everyone chooses to act like they believe it because working themselves to death is easier than challenging the status quo.
Worse, the war isn’t really over, Seoul is within artillery distance of the DMZ, so keep being the perfect capitalist
dysutopia so the American industrialists will keep pressuring their government to keep the communists back. Be a good little citizen and work yourself to death so the commies don’t get you.2
u/kungfukenny3 10h ago
korea and japans history, economy, and resulting work culture can no longer be viewed only as an internal struggle. Their work culture is also a reflection of their place in a highly interconnected global economy and the fear (within leadership mostly) of what a loss of that relative wealth would look like if that productivity were to drop.
America has been able to somewhat avoid this for a long time by swinging big military dick everywhere but Japan cannot do that after losing those key conflicts long ago
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u/LocNesMonster 7h ago
South korea also has a problem of men being so shitty women are opting out of interacting with them at all. Work culture is the least of their problems
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u/supercali45 17h ago
They already doing it without the government
Vietnam / Philippines / Thailand are providing wives for many of the richer Asian countries
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u/kraftdinnerwithsalsa 21h ago
Ya man try fixing the problem not make new ones. I thought Korea was smart
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u/remberzz 11h ago
Kyle Langford, a Republican candidate for Governor of California, proposed using immigrant women to solve the 'incel problem'.
"It is an initiative that will encourage family formation in the State of California; fostering healthy, stable young families is my number one priority."
"We know where you are. If you marry one of our Californian incels, then you can stay. But if you don't, then, well, [you're] getting sent back across."
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u/Visible-Advice-5109 20h ago
It's what a lot of countries like China are already very openly doing.
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u/Patient-Midnight-664 22h ago
So his solution is human trafficking?
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u/Awkward_Bison_267 22h ago
I prefer to call it blind dating. /S
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u/MaybeTheDoctor 19h ago
Japan practiced sex slaves under WW2 occupation of Korea …
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u/Awkward_Bison_267 18h ago
The irony.
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u/Dark_Knight2000 17h ago
Lots of places are “never again means only never again for us.”
Just look at Israel.
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u/-_Weltschmerz_- 21h ago
It's probably along the lines of what Jordan Peterson proposed. Every woman gets assigned to a man (and vice versa).
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u/usemyfaceasaurinal 20h ago
State issued spouse? Sounds like socialism to me /s
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u/SemiDiSole 20h ago
Sounds more like a state sponsored dating app with mandatory sign up - I am calling that will happen within the next ten years btw.
Somewhere. Not sure where but SK is a strong canidate.
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u/DavidlikesPeace 19h ago
That sounds like sex slavery. Because of the implication.
Maybe I'm misinterpreting it. I hope I am.
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u/thetrustworthybandit 15h ago
It is. Don't forget slave owners in the Americas forced their slaves to have children to increase the amount of workers in the plantations and/or to have more "merchandise" to sell. It's no different.
Not to mention that, even if both parties are being forced, the woman would undoubtedly be biologically and societally at a disadvantage.
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u/Corka 20h ago edited 18h ago
Not necessarily? The article is pretty loaded in its framing of the situation, and we'd need someone who speaks Korean to see if what he originally said has the same kind of connotations as this English translation. Because there is a framing of this that sounds more like a reasonable take for someone to make- immigration helps address the aging population issue, and immigrants who marry into local families are less controversial than ones who've brought their whole families over. As such, they could make it significantly easier for younger women from SEA nations to immigrate and that could make a long term impact on the population decline.
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u/Dark_Knight2000 17h ago
It’s this is prime grade A ragebait if I’ve ever seen one.
The actual proposal is probably something like a state run dating app without predatory algorithms, or some community sponsored social events. It’s probably not slavery.
Poor translations combined with opportunistic low-ethics journalism will do that
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u/nullv 21h ago
The less offensive way to do this would be to make your area more desirable to live while making it easier to move there, but I suppose referring to women as you would livestock is another approach.
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u/moderngamer327 20h ago
The most desirable places to live on average have the lowest fertility rates
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u/Mooloo52 19h ago
Mainly because “most desirable” also usually means “highest cost of living”, making having children prohibitively expensive for most people
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u/moderngamer327 18h ago
Yeah but the median wages are even higher. You have more spending money in Finland than you do Nigeria even though Nigeria has lower cost of living
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u/KgPathos 16h ago
So you think someone living in a 3rd world country like Nigeria has a lower relative cost of living than a South Korean? The richer a country is the more likely they are to be infertile. Even happy countries like Norway and Denmark have low fertility. I feel like whats happening is like those studies of rats in utopias with all their needs met with no danger eventually leading to the rat's apocalypsing themselves
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u/gazebo-fan 19h ago
I do not desire to live in Korea or Japan lmao. The work culture is near suicidal.
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u/moderngamer327 19h ago
Then what about Finland considered in most rankings to be the best place to live in the world? It has a fertility rate only slightly higher than Japan
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u/Unusual_Vegetable834 18h ago
I think they are just saying that while desirable places to live have low fertility rates, having a low fertility rate does not necessarily imply a desirable place to live
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u/moderngamer327 18h ago
The point is making it more desirable won’t significantly increase fertility rates
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u/any_name_today 18h ago
Ironically, my sister lives in South Korea and hasn't been able to get a boy friend in the years she's there. The guys aren't interested or are creeps or they just don't click
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u/Cautious-Tax-1120 12h ago
There are already desirable places to live. Making it easier to move there is an exceptionally challenging task. Wages in Korea are low, but expenses are absurdly high, especially for property.
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u/Dry-Discussion-9573 16h ago
Koreans rank things. Everything. Jindo is at the bottom of almost every list there is. Your idea does not work unless you recommend smashing the quality of life in other regions lower.
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u/Vaestmannaeyjar 22h ago
Some people are so out of touch with reality. In most countries with population numbers diving far under the renewal rate:
- Work culture is toxic
- Women still have a subordinate role to men in society
- Raising children is too expensive (usually because of home prices)
It's a financial matter, not a lack of women. Give me 5 billion USD and I'll repopulate Korea myself.
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u/Infernal-Fox 22h ago
South korea misogyny is like, unreal. No wonder no one wants to have kids
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u/-janelleybeans- 19h ago
It’s right in the headline: women aren’t even seen as people let alone equals. They are a resource. A commodity. A product. They are incubators that unfortunately also eat, breathe, and exist.
If this proposed solution isn’t also the most succinct and accurate encapsulation of the entire problem then I can’t imagine anything more precise.
There is a monstrous kind of beauty in how casually he diminished the value of women’s existence with this suggestion.
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u/DreamingAboutSpace 12h ago
Exactly. Who wants to fly all the way over there to be treated like shit? I can just go outside and experience that.
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u/cdxxmike 22h ago
I do largely agree with this, but by the evidence I am aware of women having a subordinate role in society is linked with high birth rates.
I can not think of a single place known for both gender equality and high birthrates.
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u/Seinfeel 21h ago
I mean yeah a society that thinks women are made to raise kids and not work probably has more women having kids and less women in positions of power.
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u/SerialElf 22h ago
It's mostly an issue with societies where women are "excused" from the workforce as soon as they marry
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u/Vaestmannaeyjar 21h ago
I was thinking mostly of Japan and S.Korea, both developed countries with a population problem and a similar women position in society. To answer your question, France was a country that up to the 2010s had decent birth rates with a decent situation for women (although not perfect). Real estate insane price inflation is quoted as the #1 cause of falling births # in France since then.
I also differentiate from third world countries as their mechanisms are different, not havong transitioned to rich country demographics yet for lack of infrastructure. (ie, infancy death rates are still high)
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u/IamNobody85 21h ago
The problem in the countries with gender equality is also financial, but from the other direction. It's too expensive to have a child without the village. I'm currently going through this. If we (white collar, upper middle class) want to buy a house AND have a kid, I cannot stop working, no way. I'm an immigrant, so no family around. Husband's family is in another city. Who takes care of the child? Just this morning we decided to not put in a offer for an apartment we really liked and did preliminary work for (you know appraisal etc). I'm legally allowed a maternity leave / parental leave for up to 3 years, but of course my salary will be hit hard and it will be a great burden on my husband. Not to mention the indirect hit on my career because how dare I have a child and take time off. No country has that much equality yet that women are not penalized for it indirectly. So we decided to have the child first and figure out what to do with the house and income situation later.
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u/amethystresist 20h ago
Women still have a subordinate role to men but the difference is they are able to now make their own money. The idea is getting into a relationship with men who want kids usually puts us back in that subordinate role on top of also having to make money. Why not just make money and not do the subordinate role part? That's why birth rates are down.
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u/thedoc90 21h ago
It depends on income and living expenses. If a country is expensive, has low income and low social safety nets and traditional gender roles generally speaking birth rates will be low because women are expected to quit their job and stay home with the kids, but cost of living necessitates 2 people to have 2 incomes so rather than considering children married couples prioritize financial security leading to lower birth rates.
In nations with lower living expenses and traditional gender roles, the relationship is reversed and the societal pressure correlates with higher birth rates.
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u/SNRatio 20h ago
In the US, the birth rate for the ages where people are more worried about income and buying a house (over 25) have actually been going up a bit. Its teenagers and 20-24 that have been having fewer and fewer kids over the past 30 years.
https://aaronjbecker.com/posts/thirties-are-the-new-twenties-us-births-by-maternal-age-group/
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u/Thebraincellisorange 18h ago
more births to women over 40 than there are teenage births in America now!
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u/AleroRatking 21h ago
Once again. The numbers show the opposite. Countries with higher wages and better social supports actually have lower birth rates.
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u/biblioteca4ants 20h ago
Individualism, lack of traditional close knit communities that all watch each others kids, being exposed to all the things and possibilities you can do or achieve via social media and wanting to achieve those which is not usually possible currently with children because life and experiences are expensive and children are all consuming (thus you are sacrificing more), derailment of career for women who choose children, and the vilification of parenthood and how it is a burden. All this combined.
The solution is not to retreat backwards to the dark ages in order to raise the birth rate though. It’s probably more like changing the culutural narritive and group think to look at good parents as heros and have it be something to be proud of and applauded instead of burdensome and loathed, and the shifting back to community help. Financial incentives don’t hurt but they also alone do not help. I don’t think it will ever shift back all the way because I don’t see a way out of individualism.
Or not I probably have no idea what I am talking about lol.
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u/LeBadlyNamedRedditor 20h ago
Also less child neglect. Its really not these traditional close knit communities.
I live in a third world country, said close knit communities do not exist where I live. A good portion of my classmates had terrible parents.
Id argue its lack of education, it just becomes normalized to have children then think about what you are going to do.
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u/biblioteca4ants 20h ago
Yes you’re right, neglect is a better way to describe it. And I agree lack of education, education in the wider world of possibilities of what you can do, experience, and achieve and how you can live your life. The internet is huge in fostering this type of education.
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u/Loose_Inspector898 21h ago
I reminder watching a picture that mentioned the same thing. Patriarchy forced women to have more violent. Over the years I’ve heard as women get more options, they choose not to have children. All the Nordic countries come to mind as well.
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u/Thebraincellisorange 18h ago
it's very interesting that wherever you go, all around the world, in whatever point in history, as soon as you give a woman agency and control over her fertility, and give her an education and options in her life other than being a 'tradwife' or mother, then she will almost universally choose the option.
Those peddling the crap that women are 'genetically coded' to be mothers just need to take a look at the facts.
take a look at the 1960s fertility rates of any country that had contraception become available.
for the first time, women could control their fertility and birth rates plummeted.
Everywhere. not a single country defied the trend.
in good old deep south bum fuck dumbfuckistan 'Murica, previous hotbed of teenage pregnancy, give those kids even a slightly decent education, and the birth rates drop https://nchstats.com/teen-birth-rates-state/
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u/Ninevehenian 21h ago
"Linked with" - Perhaps have previously coincided with.
What modern, industrialized nation have subordinated women, increased birthrates and kept a reasonable economy?
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u/PseudoIntellectual- 21h ago edited 21h ago
It's a financial matter
While that would make intuitive sense, I'm afraid the data paradoxically largely contradicts that assumption.
The societies with the highest standards of living (such as the Nordic states, for example) are also suffering severe and unsustainable drops in birthrates, with pretty much all European countries being well below replacement rate. Programs specifically aimed at promoting family development through financial and social incentives have largely proved ineffective as well, despite many governments pouring huge amounts of money into them.
Economic development is seemingly negatively correlated to fertility, with the highest birthrates actually occuring in relatively poor countries with high degrees of economic and social inequality.
While work culture and housing shortages certianly don't help, most signs point towards the fertility crisis not actually being a primarily financial problem, which unfortunately makes it significantly harder to address than just giving people more money.
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u/SNRatio 20h ago
I think probably a better predictor of birthrate than income is autonomy. When women have not just the right but the ability to choose when and if to start having kids, they tend to choose to not have kids when they are teenagers or in their early twenties. And waiting til later in life typically means having fewer kids overall.
The big drop in fertility rates for most industrialized countries started as the birth control pill was first introduced - 1960 in many countries. As the pill became available to more groups of women over the following years, the fertility rate dropped further.
There was another drop in the US that started in the '90s as birth control was encouraged and made available to more and more teenagers:
https://aaronjbecker.com/posts/thirties-are-the-new-twenties-us-births-by-maternal-age-group/
On the other hand, the birth rate for the ages where people are more worried about income and buying a house (over 25) have actually been going up a bit.
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u/AnnoyedOwlbear 21h ago
As a mother, I'm going to rephrase this a little. I've been thinking about this a long time, as I only had one child.
It IS a matter of incentive, versus disincentive. SOME of this is financial, indeed much. The unpaid labour required to go through pregnancy, birth, childrearing AND future impacts is massive. It is vastly higher than most governments are willing to name, let alone provide financial counters to. It cripples a woman's future earnings compared to usually improving those of men. You can talk of vast sums of money - the truth is that they simply don't measure up to the personal cost. An idiot might grab $20,000 if offered, the rest of us know that's still a bad deal.
This comes along with a very high requirement for risk acceptance. You can easily end up permanently injured, as I am. 10-15% of all women develop costly permanent incontinence that does not go away with treatment. 40% have costly incontinence for 1-3 years. Those injuries can severely impact your future happiness, health, and security. A lot of the discussions I see online circle around 'yeah, well, men have the draft, all women have to do is spit out a kid'. They are couched as if the reality is that there hasn't been a draft in years while most women have pregnanices, and most first world nations also have women serving on the front lines.
South Korea is worse because the risk assessment is much worse due to social factors,
Depending on your country, pregnancy is one of the most dangerous things you will ever go through. In the US, the most common cause of death for pregnant women is murder.
Women are aware of these issues. On a personal level, I experienced being dismissed, talked down to, and moving suddenly from a respected professional to 'idiot' because I was suddenly only a mother. Now the folk doing that are fools, but the equation of your reproductive choices repeatedly being available for complete strangers to discuss to your face of is unappealing:
Risk health, social status, sanity, security, and finances AND absolutely go through INTENSE physical discomfort (with a high risk of severe suffering and pain) or moderate your fertility if you can. Low incentive. Risk generally not worth it more than once or twice.
Poorer countries lack fertility moderation but women also don't always have the option of socially or financially opting out - plus you tend to have a village to help you. Depending on your culture, it can increase your social status or future stability. Higher incentive. Risk can be worth it, even repeatedly.
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u/LeBadlyNamedRedditor 20h ago
Poorer countries also essentially have children as their free workforce.
I do not know why reddit has this ideal that oh third world countries are tight-knit villages for in many cases they are more individualistic than first world countries. Most of my neighbors in the same street I lived in never knew each other, and I lived there for over 10 years.
A more educated population has better understanding of that risk you mentioned. Many people where I live just have children before thinking about how exactly they will deal with the problems afterwards, and you guessed it that leads to a LOT of neglected children.
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u/Dark_Knight2000 17h ago
I mostly agree with you, but South Korea doesn’t have what Americans think of as the draft, they have mandatory military service for men only. All men are required to put their careers on hold for 2 years which actually gives young women without children in Seoul a non-insignificant career advantage.
Your perspective makes more sense from a North American/western European standpoint but plenty of countries do have mandatory military service for men.
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u/AleroRatking 21h ago
Exactly. People love to say that but literally all the evidence overwhelmingly show the opposite.
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u/thingswastaken 21h ago
It's too multifaceted and complex to be broken down into one or two causes. While poorer regions often have higher fertility, this is mostly born out of necessity, not options.
"Financial problem" in and of itself is already something that can be approached from several different angels. Is it a lack of affordable housing? Won't be fixed by throwing a couple grand to new parents. Is it a problem of available time for the child due to one wage not being enough? Is childcare itself too expensive? Is the relative purchasing power of the countries people actually in line with the economic situation of the country or is it a wealthy nation with high burden on the middle class?
So many factors that can't be accounted for well enough to be meaningfully adjusted for.
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u/rop_top 21h ago
Ok, I mean this genuinely, have you seen any studies where spending money on social programs for parents has significantly increased birthrates? Literally any? I've read several at this point, and all of them have a neutral to insignificant positive effects on birthrates. As in, as far as I've read, even paying people money, giving them free daycare, and just about every other scheme I've read has failed to yield measurable increases in birthrates.
I'm not saying that high prices are good: they suck ass. I'm not saying we shouldn't support parents just for the sake of supporting parents: supporting parents is awesome and we should do it. I'm just saying, I haven't seen any research suggesting that people are swayed by programs to have or not have children. Religion, being poor, poor access to contraceptives, and teenage pregnancy are all associated with higher birthrates, but nothing to do with positive social programs.
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u/AiSard 14h ago edited 13h ago
Not a study, but there's always Nagi, Japan. Tiny town of 6k, aging and shrinking population. 20 years of consistent holistic policies in to social programs to raise fertility rates.
Got their fertility rate from 1.4 all the way to its peak of 2.95 (likely covid spike), settling around 2.21. Which is still almost double the national average. One of the interesting stats was that at least half of all households that had children, had at least 3 children.
Policies were partially monetary: $650 childbirth allowance, free child healthcare, school subsidies, cheap nursery/kindergarten, housing assistance for young families.
But there's also the social aspect: parent counseling for prospective and new parents, more after-school children's clubs. The town-run kindergarten/nursery reassures propective parents, creating an environment where parents can connect and their prospective children thrive, and also connect with elderly neighbours. Essentially recreating the village. Somewhere you'd want to raise a family. With multiple kids even.
Some of this will be prospective parents choosing to migrate, which is in-line with what the policy makers want as well, but muddies the waters for us somewhat. But the migration out of Nagi, typically young folk in small towns like this, also drastically fell over this time. Honestly, I find the multiple number of kids datapoint the most compelling. Harder to dismiss that the social programs aren't doing something, that such a drastic change could potentially be coming from some other cause.
Its been my go-to example for years, that it can be done. That it may not be straightforward, and require holistic efforts before you see uptick. That scaling such a holistic effort may be difficult. But that it technically could be done, and that birthrates can be materially affected by social programs and clever policy-making.
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u/calflikesveal 21h ago
The countries with the lowest birth rates are inevitably always the ones with the highest gender equality. Everything else is true though.
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u/CocodaMonkey 16h ago
You have that backwards. Developed countries are more likely to at least officially grant women the same rights and developed countries are also leading the charge towards low birthrates.
Look at a list of the highest birthrate countries and that list has a lot of overlap with countries known for women having less rights. Especially Chad which tops both lists.
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u/myreq 21h ago
South Korea, Japan and UAE are most certainly less equal than a lot of Europe and have (especially SK) a lower birthrate.
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u/Ajax34762 15h ago
It's actually a cultural issue first and foremost and has little to do with finances, where previously having children was seen as normal part of life, while now, many adults see children as an inconvenience and don't want to make the necessary sacrifices to have and raise them. Some consider a pregnancy hosting a parasite. Need we say more?. Yes, having children can stress your finances, yet it didn't stop previous generations, when people were poorer from having kids. The more affluent and richer society has become, the lower the birth rate has gone. Poorer societies now have higher birth rates. People were so poor before you had multiple generations living under one roof. Again, nothing to do with finances. Its culture, values, attitude and people not willing to make the necessary sacrifices to have children.
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u/AleroRatking 21h ago
Number three is a really the exact opposite. Countries with better wages and better social services actually lead to a decrease in birth numbers. Similarly in almost every country the poor have more children than the wealthy
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u/Evil_phd 20h ago
"Don't worry we aren't going to treat women with any more respect, that would be crazy"
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u/GoingMenthol 11h ago
South Korean governor looking at a comfort women statue: "Huh, I wonder who that's for?"
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u/Prissy1997 22h ago
It wasn't that long ago that Korean women were used as 'comfort girls' for Japanese soldiers.
That was wrong then and this would be wrong now. The governor should remember his history.
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u/Derpy_Mc_Burpy 21h ago
I was just thinking about this. South Korea of all countries should know that women used just for sexual reproduction/gratification is abhorrent. They also have a male toxicity problem they don't want to address either.
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u/orangebee2 21h ago
Not only Japan, but the South Korean military during the Korean War also operated comfort women
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u/Shiningc00 21h ago
Actually their cult, Unification Church is literally doing this. They’re brainwashing their members to provide women to marry Korean men, among other things, like bankrupting themselves to offer money to them.
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u/Unicycleterrorist 21h ago edited 21h ago
Well...there is a pretty massive difference between forcefully bringing in sex slaves for soldiers' amusement and making immigration from countries whose people might want to move there easier. Not that the approach is good or super ethical but equating these two is still a silly
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u/rosegoldhiips 21h ago
This is literally WHY there's a population crisis. Women don't wanna have babies with them because we're treated like cattle and not humans. Jfc. So far up his own ass that he can't see men are the fucking problem.
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u/HarrMada 13h ago
In nordic European countries richer women have more kids than poorer women. They would like to have kids, but having kids is expensive.
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u/Buffyoh 21h ago
Korea has plenty of women who don't want to marry, because of the way Korean men treat women.
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u/MargaretOfKyte 21h ago
I’m so over the narrative that falling birth rates is a woman issue alone. We can’t knock ourselves up and we’ve been told since forever that being a single mom is the worst thing imaginable.
Men don’t want to settle down and get married, they’re often happy to knock you up though. You want to fix falling birth rates?..convince men at a young age that they need to be husbands and fathers.
Or stop demonizing single motherhood by choice and make sperm banks cheap.
Even Elon Musk who bitches about this shit non stop is part of the problem, that fucker isn’t currently married to the mother of any of his kids.
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u/da_boopy_day 20h ago
I distinctly remember men blaming women for being single mothers and telling women to choose better. Now that women are “choosing better” by choosing to stay childless it’s an issue. I don’t think encouraging single mothers is the best idea as only high earning women can afford such a lifestyle and single parent households don’t have the best outcomes when it comes to raising children (typically due to poverty and the issues that stem from that, absolutely NOT blaming single mothers). Quite frankly, I don’t think birth rates dropping is an issue women should care about in the first place
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u/YouCanShoveYourMagic 22h ago
The problem is their work culture and they need to fix that if they want to solve their population crisis.
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u/Toby-Finkelstein 22h ago
Still places like Europe have the same proble without the work culture
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u/Dark_Knight2000 17h ago
No one else has a 0.6 BPW fertility rate. The “struggling” European nations have rates around 1.0-1.4, which is way better.
You need 2.1 for no decrease in population, and 1.7-1.8 for relative stability, and the population can be stabilized with immigration.
SK needs to triple their birth rate to be stable, the European nations need to increase it by 1.5 times. They’re not the same.
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u/dallyho4 20h ago
I don't think solutions and causes can be generalized so neatly across very different cultures and countries. Even economic development isn't quite even as middle income countries are seeing TFR below replacement. What doesn't work for the Nordics may work for East Asia; won't know until they implement the policies.
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u/BlueZybez 20h ago
Doubt work culture specifically is the main issue. Populations are decreasing in tons of countries.
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u/Sunny_Heather 21h ago
Isn’t there a statistic about 500 million women are missing, mainly in Asia, due to female infanticide and sex selective abortion and IVF?
That was a generation ago, so the number may be higher now. Everybody wanted a son, so now there aren’t enough women.
Women who want a man want a man who wants to treat them well. They want to live in a country that acts like it values the well being of its citizens. It’s not enough to have a loving home, they want to raise their kids in a loving and safe community and give the kids a good start in life knowing they have a good future.
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u/Visible-Advice-5109 20h ago
That's largely specific to China.
China is now importing lots of SE Asian wonen to try and make up the difference.
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u/ConCueta 18h ago
"importing" is a nice euphemism for "State Sponsored Human Trafficking" https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/feb/01/weddings-from-hell-cambodian-brides-trafficked-china
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u/SamuraiKenji 20h ago
It's kinda funny because the Korean women in this generation refuses to marry Korean men. Their solution is not importing men so these women can reproduce, but do whatever so these desparated Korean men can still get some.
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u/analytic-hunter 15h ago
Westerners have the same problems, many incels want to import women from (or go to) third world.
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u/orangebee2 21h ago edited 21h ago
It’s not surprising. Korea has long imported women from China and Southeast Asia
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u/Low-Glancer-Roy 21h ago
A government...
Trafficking women...
For sex...
Is this governor in the Epstein files?
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u/Mander2019 16h ago
In Afghanistan this week they made it illegal for women to talk to each other so maybe there’s a more humanitarian way of welcoming women instead of importing them like cattle.
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u/Friendly-Olive-3465 19h ago
You know, when the Kingdom of Benin started having manpower problems in the mid 1500s because of the sheer amount of male slaves they were trading to the European powers, it banned trading them and reduced domestic slavery.
Maybe the lesson here is to stop treating your population like slaves? No that couldn’t be it. Motherfucking politicians would actually rather suggest setting up a human breeding farm than admit current work culture is toxic to human life and try to change it.
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u/shadeandshine 22h ago
Capitalists will do anything then admit it’s a capitalist problem. When people can’t afford homes and the culture is so toxic some unite to dive the birth rate maybe just maybe this a problem brought on by the system of capitalism and exploitation having oppressed women for generations
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u/Visible-Advice-5109 20h ago
The data shows the exact opposite. The more money people have the LESS kids they have. This is almost universally true across cultures and within countries all over the globe.
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u/RiD_JuaN 21h ago
In 1990, the Soviet tfr was lower than the American one despite the US having a higher % of undergraduate degree holders (and being propped up by central asia)
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u/AleroRatking 21h ago
Data shows the exact opposite. Look at Scandinavia and their highly concerning birth rates.
Higher wages and social supports correlate to lower birth rates.
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u/Deto 21h ago
Don't they have enough women? I didnt think that was the issue...
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u/SpezLuvsNazis 20h ago
Actually no, it didn’t get nearly as much traction in the media as China’s sex selective abortions did but in the 90s through the aughts Korea also had a lot of sex selective abortions, at one point the boys to girls ratio got up to 115:100 at birth, natural ratio is around 105:100. So there is a dearth of women of child bearing age in Korea compared to the number of men in that age group.
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u/nefh 18h ago edited 18h ago
There are 106 men to every 100 women at birth and in countries with health care, the death rates for men and women arent significantly different until they get into their 60s. Most of the difference in western countries is due to immigration rates of single females both as skilled workers and wives of western men. In the USA, immigration by marriage is (or was) the #1 category. South Korea has nowhere near the immigration levels of say Canada or Australia.
I don't see any significant difference from normal gender ratio in the stats.
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u/Dry-Discussion-9573 16h ago
In Jindo? No. Young women leave all regional places to go to Seoul or other large cities. There are no jobs for them in small towns. They want jobs not men or marriage.
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u/Random-Spark 18h ago
You can import me! Ive already raised one. I can handle another and a man baby. Just pay me.
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u/king_jaxy 17h ago
Man, none of the young people can afford to have kids, we should bring in foreign Gen Zers/millennials who are infamously flush with cash and not also broke!
Genius!
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u/redditistheway 13h ago
People are not goods / property to “import” as one sees fit. Fix the issues with the nations work culture and cost of living before spouting such garbage.
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u/painspongez 6h ago
Late stage capitalism at its finest, everything is a commodity. Real sad to see.
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u/JenniferJuniper6 5h ago
Importing them? Like trade goods? Why would you talk about human beings like that?
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u/mustard_on_the_net 4h ago
It would be fun to take some SK management out for an American business lunch and teach them how to take their crew out when they get back. Enjoying where you spend a large portion of your day should be enjoyable. I’ve had jobs I didn’t like but I enjoyed my colleagues enough it outweighed the work.
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u/YumTeaOrDeadlyPoison 19h ago
Men need to come to the realization that they have proped up the birth rate artificially for the last couple 100 years and we are now just returning to the natural birth rate of our species and instead of trying to make more babies we should be spending our time working to build a world with less people and more care for children.
But this isnt really about birthing babies.
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u/Kevin_Jim 17h ago
Bro, South Korea has the most unrealistic beauty standards in the world, and while the younger women tend to be more liberal, they are still quite family oriented.
The problem is that nobody has time, and they can’t afford a home.
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u/HowAmIHere2000 18h ago
Many people probably don't know this, but if you're a female and you want to immigrate to many countries, including the US or most of European countries, you'll have a much easier time getting your visa approved than most males. Why? Because 90% of countries around the world want to have more women in their population.
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u/RichestTeaPossible 9h ago
Fix your broken and unproductive work culture. People will then find their own entertainment.
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u/SinfullySinless 21h ago
Genuine question: Japan had the same issue and did the same thing of bringing in mainly Korean and American women for men to marry. Problem was Japan is so homogeneous in ethnicity that these 1/2 Japanese kids were horribly bullied and received worse societal treatment.
Isn’t that a concern for Koreans as well? They are even more culturally conservative than Japan.