JoongAng Daily
“Korea’s greatest threat”
January 26, 2015
Emanuel Pastreich
Koreans are scratching their heads, asking themselves why efforts to address Korea’s dwindling birthrate have been so ineffective.
Although the government has implemented over 100 different policies since 2006 and has allocated a budget of 10 trillion won ($9.3 billion) for the last two years, the number of annual births per 1,000 members of the population is stuck at 1.19. That ranks Korea at No. 220 among nations for its birthrate in 2014. No other major country is even close to that rate.
The reason for the complete failure is simple. Koreans have completely failed to recognize the seriousness of the crisis and have not responded with an appropriate level of commitment in terms of policy or, more importantly, a shift in habits.
A birth rate like this could mean Korea itself will disappear as a culture in 100 years. The Korean language could join Manchu as a dead language that people learn about in history books.
It strikes me as bizarre that Koreans talk about the highly unlikely possibility of North Korea shelling Seoul, but they avoid this far more serious danger completely. Such a low birthrate is certainly a far greater threat than a lack of competitiveness in semiconductors or smartphones.
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