South Korea: Hyper-Competitive and Childless
There are enough people to go around: eight billion now, compared to two billion less than a hundred years ago. Fifty-one million in South Korea, compared to only twelve million a hundred years ago. So why are South 
Koreans obsessed about their low birth rate?
It is certainly very low now. The average number of children a South Korean woman will have in her lifetime is just 0.72, whereas the birth rate needs to be at least 2.1 children per woman to prevent the population from falling.
Lots of developed countries have low birth rates nowadays, especially in East Asia – Japan is 1.3 children per woman, China is 1.2 – but no other country is below 1.0. South Korea is not just leading the parade. It is so far out in front that it is almost out of sight.
The national anxiety about this is so great that South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol has finally said the unsayable. His country’s citizens are “excessively and unnecessarily competitive,” he admitted – and that is why it has the world’s lowest birth-rate.
God is usually on the side of the big battalions’, Voltaire allegedly said. Not always, but ‘usually’. So how much do you want to bet?