Dear Colleague:
South Korea, an important American ally, may have the lowest fertility
rate in the world.
Steven W. Mosher
President
PRI Weekly Briefing
5 January 2007
Vol. 9, No. 1
The New Global Leader in Demographic Decline
By Joseph A. D'Agostino
In the race to the birthrate bottom, it's always neck-and-neck. The
anti-child behaviors of Western and Westernized societies have been
worsening so quickly that new lows get set all the time. In their quest
for self-destruction, Italy, Spain, and Japan have often competed for
first place. But there could be a new winner in town. According to her
government, South Korea's total fertility rate has reached an
unprecedentedly dismal 1.08. Replacement rate is 2.1. Yes, South Koreans
are halving their numbers with each generation, for now. What's to
prevent that 1.08 turning into 0.9 in a few years, especially as the
population's rapid aging continues and a greater and greater proportion of
South Korea's women are past child-bearing age?
So after decades of trying to coerce women into having fewer children, the
government is doing an about-face. The logic of command-and-control: Come
in and tell people what to do, and then increase your power to deal with
the disastrous consequences of that first intervention. If the government
hadn't meddled in the first place, perhaps South Korea would not be in
such a mess.
In 1961, with the encouragement of our government, South Korea established
a rigid population control program. Government employees with more than
two children were denied promotions. Third and younger children were
denied many benefits, and small families received preference in housing
allotments. The birthrate plummeted to 1.7 by the '90s, and South Korea
finally abandoned her population control program in 1996. But it was too
late. Cultural attitudes and economic realities had changed.
The government hopes that soap operas may help. It works closely with the
local Planned Parenthood affiliate, which is now talking about raising the
birthrate (seeing is believing:
www.ppfk.or.kr/eng/index.asp). Is this
credible? "Faced with a tumbling birthrate and women souring on the idea
of marriage and family, the South Korean government is reaching out to a
small group of people believed to have the power to avert a demographic
catastrophe: prime-time drama writers," reported the Los Angeles Times on
December 10. "Last month, the Planned Population Federation of Korea held
a two-day seminar for writers of TV soaps and dramas and urged them to
create more situations that show happy mothers with their children. The
aim is to counter an anti-baby mood that is leading South Korea down the
path to being, well, a smaller country."
It is a peculiar evil of secular post-modernity that not only are many men
reluctant to marry and have children-a circumstance that has occurred in
many societies in history-but now women don't want to, either. Not
strictly speaking peculiar, however, since a few other societies
historically have faced the same cultural phenomenon-just before they
vanished from the face of the Earth forever.
"The idea of leaning on TV writers for social engineering followed the
release of a government study of 50 South Korean dramas that shows a
television landscape in which single life is portrayed as cool, children
as a burden, and love as something that does not always have to lead to
marriage and a family," said the Times. "And that's important in a
country where the audience of potential mothers--women in their 20s and
30s--is known to be heavily influenced by TV dramas."
How influenced? Go Bong-hwan, a female screenwriter, said, "They tend to
see the TV character's problem as their problem, to the point that some
Korean husbands worry that their wife might have an extramarital affair
just because her favorite character in a drama is having an affair."
I do not know if young Korean women are as divorced from reality as that
statement suggests, but I doubt even such powerful TV soaps can reverse
trends as deep-seated as materialism, hedonism, and feminism, especially
if Planned Parenthood is to have a leading role in promoting higher
birthrates. When men and women have been raised with the notions that
material accumulation and immediate gratification lead to happiness, and
women to believe that their value lies in being as much like men as
possible, something more systematic is needed, and from people who believe
in it-and who don't profit by culling human numbers.
Unfortunately, the South Korean government plans to embark on a course
that may have some short-term benefits but will, in the long-term,
encourage the very trends that are exterminating its people, as well as
all the other peoples of the Westernized world. The Yonhap News Agency
reported today that South Korea's sinister-sounding Minister for Gender
Equality and Family wants to move more women into the workforce. Of
course, working mothers, on average, have fewer children than traditional
mothers, and most women who place career first don't want to "waste" time
and money on more than one child, if that. Jang Ha-jin also wants to
increase government funding for child care, including infant care, further
fraying the bonds between parents and their children. Instead of making
it easier for men and women to form traditional families, the government
is using taxpayer dollars to promote the opposite.
South Korea's demographic situation is dire. Between 2000 and 2005, the
proportion of women 25 to 34 who were single rose 12.4 points to 37.9%
while the proportion who were married dropped 12.7 points to 60.3%. In
the same time period, the number of single-person households rose by
42.5%. Even among married women, over a third say that having children is
not a priority. Marriage, family, and children are going out the cultural
door as fast as Hello Kitty dolls go out the toy store's.
Just after Christmas, Finance Minister Kwon O-kyu said that mounting debt
and slowing export growth were threatening South Korea's economy. What
else? "A low fertility rate and the aging of society are among major
factors that weaken the country's growth potential," he said.
South Korean medical students are even using robot mothers and babies to
practice assisting at childbirth because there aren't enough real ones.
Homogeneous, disciplined, top-down Asian societies can sometimes change
direction quickly. If the government stops consulting Planned Parenthood
and ever looks at what has actually worked to sustain societies over
millennia, perhaps South Korea can be saved.
Joseph A. D'Agostino is Vice President for Communications at the
Population Research Institute.
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Media Contact: Joseph A. D'Agostino
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The pro-life Population Research Institute is dedicated to ending human
rights abuses committed in the name of "family planning," and to ending
counter-productive social and economic paradigms premised on the myth of
"overpopulation."