Demographics of South Korea

Based on Wikipedia: Demographics of South Korea

South Korea is disappearing. Not through war or disaster, but through a quiet demographic collapse that has demographers around the world watching in disbelief. In 2024, the country recorded a total fertility rate of 0.75 children per woman—the lowest anywhere on Earth. To put that in perspective, a country needs a fertility rate of about 2.1 just to maintain its current population. South Korea isn't even at half that threshold.

If current trends continue, some researchers predict South Korea's population will shrink from roughly 52 million today to just 28 million by the end of this century. That's nearly cutting the nation in half within a few generations.

The Numbers Tell a Stark Story

South Korea crossed a grim milestone in 2020: for the first time since modern record-keeping began, more people died than were born. The country's population, which had grown steadily since the republic's founding in 1948, actually shrank.

This wasn't a sudden shock. The warning signs had been mounting for years. In 2018, only about 325,000 babies were born in the entire country—just 26,500 in October alone. That number made international headlines and sparked worried debates about the country's future.

But even that alarming figure looks almost optimistic compared to what came later. By 2019, the fertility rate had fallen below 1.0 for the first time, hitting 0.98. It kept falling. And falling. Seoul, the capital city, now has a fertility rate of just 0.64—likely the lowest of any major city anywhere in the world.

A Complete Reversal in a Single Lifetime

Here's what makes South Korea's demographic story so striking: this is a country that successfully convinced its people to have fewer children, and then couldn't figure out how to convince them to have more.

In 1960, the average South Korean woman had 6.1 children over her lifetime. The country was poor, recovering from a devastating war, and struggling to feed its rapidly growing population. The government under President Park Chung Hee, alarmed that population growth was undermining economic development, launched an aggressive nationwide family planning campaign in 1962.

The campaign worked—perhaps too well.

Public and private agencies distributed free birth control. They offered classes on family planning. They gave special subsidies and low-interest housing loans to parents who agreed to be sterilized. In 1984 alone, more than 500,000 South Koreans underwent sterilization procedures. Public service advertisements promoted a simple message: "Have a single child and raise it well."

The government went further. In 1973, it legalized abortion. A decade later, it began suspending medical insurance benefits for pregnant women who already had three or more children. It denied tax deductions for education expenses to parents with two or more children.

By 1984, the fertility rate had dropped to 2.4 children per woman. By the early 2000s, it was hovering around 1.2. And then it kept falling, year after year, into territory no country had ever entered before.

Why Are South Koreans Not Having Children?

The explanations offered by experts and researchers read like a catalog of modern economic anxieties. High economic inequality. A punishing cost of living. Wages that haven't kept pace with those in other wealthy countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD—a group of mostly wealthy, democratic nations. A shortage of stable job opportunities for young adults. Housing costs that have spiraled beyond what young couples can afford.

These pressures compound each other. A young South Korean might delay marriage because they can't afford an apartment. Without marriage—still the primary context for childbearing in Korean society—children don't follow. And even married couples often decide that the costs of raising a child in such a competitive society are simply too high.

South Korea is also the country with the highest suicide rate among all OECD member states. That grim statistic hints at the psychological toll of life in one of the world's most pressurized societies.

The Son Preference Problem

Traditional Confucian values added a particular wrinkle to South Korea's demographic history. In Korean culture, sons have historically been expected to care for aging parents and carry on the family name. This meant that parents who had daughters would often keep having children until they produced a son.

This preference created a challenge for family planning programs trying to promote smaller families. How do you convince a couple to stop at one child when their single child is a daughter?

The government's response was relentless messaging about the value of single-child families regardless of gender. Over time, these attitudes shifted—modern South Korean parents no longer show the same overwhelming preference for sons. But by then, the pendulum had swung so far toward small families that the country faced the opposite problem: people weren't having children at all.

A Country Built on Crowds

South Korea has always been densely packed. With about 70 percent of the country covered by mountains, the population concentrates in lowland areas, particularly around major cities. By 1989, the country had an estimated 425 people per square kilometer—more than sixteen times the average population density of the United States at that time.

Seoul, the capital, exemplifies this density. In 1988, the city had 17,030 people per square kilometer, up from 13,816 just eight years earlier. To visualize what this means: imagine every square kilometer containing a small town's worth of people, stacked into apartment towers and squeezed onto subway cars.

This crowding accelerated after 1960 as urbanization transformed the country. Rural villages that had dotted river valleys for centuries began to empty out. Young people migrated to the cities seeking economic opportunity, and the traditional rural lifestyle slowly faded. What had been a largely agricultural society became one of the most urbanized nations on Earth within a single generation.

The Fastest Aging Society in History

When birth rates collapse but people keep living longer, a country ages rapidly. South Korea is aging faster than any nation in recorded human history.

Consider this measure: how long does it take for the percentage of elderly people, defined as those 65 and older, to double from 7 percent to 14 percent of the population? In France, this transition took over a century. In the United States, it took about 70 years. In Japan, it took 24 years.

In South Korea, it took just 18 years.

The shape of South Korea's population pyramid—the graphic demographers use to show how many people exist at each age—tells the story visually. In the 1990s, it looked like an actual pyramid: wide at the base with lots of young people, tapering toward the top with fewer elderly. By 2010, it had transformed into a diamond shape: a bulging middle of working-age adults, with smaller populations both younger and older.

Soon it will become an inverted pyramid, top-heavy with elderly citizens and hollow at the base where children should be.

What Happens When a Country Runs Out of Children

The consequences of this demographic shift are already materializing in unexpected ways. Consider pediatrics—the medical specialty focused on caring for children.

South Korean doctors are abandoning the field. Between 2018 and 2022, the number of pediatric facilities in Seoul fell by 12.5 percent. Meanwhile, psychiatry clinics increased by 76.8 percent and anesthesiology centers grew by 41.2 percent. Young doctors look at the shrinking patient base and conclude that pediatrics simply has no future.

This creates a cruel paradox. The few children who are born face overcrowded waiting rooms and a shortage of hospital beds because there aren't enough pediatricians left to care for them. At least one child has died due to these conditions. And when prospective parents see how difficult it is to get medical care for children, some decide not to have babies at all—further accelerating the decline.

The Economic Reckoning

A country with few young people and many retirees faces severe economic challenges. Someone needs to work, pay taxes, and fund the pensions of the elderly. When the ratio of workers to retirees shrinks, the math becomes punishing.

Since 2016, South Korea has had more elderly people (65 and older) than children (14 and younger). The country officially became an "aged society" with more than 14 percent of its population over 65. That percentage will only grow.

Investors have noticed. Some predict that foreign investment will shift to countries like Vietnam, where labor is cheaper and younger. Companies that remain in South Korea will face higher costs for retraining middle-aged workers and providing healthcare benefits to an aging workforce.

Some demographers warn that South Korea could enter what they call a "Russian Cross" pattern—a term describing the morbid chart that emerges when a country's death line crosses above its birth line and stays there for decades. Russia experienced this after the collapse of the Soviet Union. South Korea's version could be even more severe and longer-lasting.

A Pattern of Population Shifts

Looking at South Korea's demographic history reveals distinct eras, each with its own character.

The first official census in 1949, just after the republic's founding, counted 20,188,641 people. Growth was initially slow—about 1.1 percent annually through 1955, when the country was still recovering from the Korean War. Then came a baby boom: between 1955 and 1966, the population grew by an annual average of 2.8 percent, reaching 29.2 million.

The family planning campaigns kicked in during the following decades. Annual growth dropped to 1.7 percent between 1966 and 1985, and then below 1 percent thereafter—similar to rates in other industrialized countries.

The proportion of children in the population traces a mirror image of this pattern. In 1955, about 41 percent of South Koreans were under fifteen years old. That proportion rose to nearly 44 percent in 1966 before beginning its long decline: 38 percent in 1975, 34 percent in 1980, 30 percent in 1985.

Today, young people are an increasingly rare presence in a society dominated by the middle-aged and elderly.

The Homogeneity Question

South Korea remains one of the most ethnically homogeneous nations on Earth. While various Asian peoples migrated to the Korean Peninsula over past centuries, few stayed permanently. The population has historically been overwhelmingly ethnic Korean, sharing a common language and culture that most South Koreans consider more important to their identity than formal citizenship.

This is beginning to change, slowly. Foreign residents now make up about 4.37 percent of South Korea's population—a significant shift for such a traditionally homogeneous society. But even this number is complicated: many of these foreign residents are actually ethnic Koreans with foreign citizenship.

For example, migrants from China make up over half of all foreign nationals in South Korea. But about 70 percent of these Chinese citizens are Joseonjok—a Korean term for ethnic Koreans who hold Chinese citizenship. Many are descendants of Koreans who moved to Manchuria during the Japanese colonial period. Similarly, foreign residents from the United States, Japan, and former Soviet states often include significant numbers of ethnic Koreans who may qualify for expedited South Korean citizenship.

North Korea, for comparison, has not experienced any similar trend toward foreign residents. The two Koreas, divided since 1945, have diverged in this as in so many other ways.

Where This Leads

Projections suggested that South Korea's population would stabilize around 2023 at roughly 52.6 million people. That prediction has already proven optimistic—the population began declining before stabilization could occur.

Recent South Korean governments have recognized the severity of the crisis. They've promised social reforms to encourage women to have children. They've implemented various incentive programs. Yet the fertility rate keeps dropping.

The problem may be that the forces driving low fertility are deeply structural. Young South Koreans aren't avoiding children because they haven't seen the right government advertisement or been offered the right tax incentive. They're making rational calculations about what they can afford in a society where housing is expensive, jobs are precarious, competition is relentless, and the costs of raising a child feel prohibitive.

The irony is bitter. Sixty years ago, South Korea's government convinced its people that smaller families would lead to prosperity. The people listened. They had fewer children. The economy boomed. South Korea transformed from one of the world's poorest countries into a technological and cultural powerhouse.

Now that same government is desperately trying to convince its people to have more children. But the conditions that made large families seem impossible haven't changed. If anything, they've intensified.

And so South Korea continues its unprecedented demographic experiment: a wealthy, advanced nation slowly, quietly, disappearing.