East Asiatics are a talented people but given to collective hystery. South Korea is so intensely focused on its GNP that has forgotten to reproduce. Korea's total fertility rate stood at 1.15 last year. It reached a low of 1.08 in 2005 but rose to 1.25 in 2007 due to the Year of the Pig, thought to be auspicious. Since 2008 it has been falling again.
445,200 children were born last year, down 21,000 from a year earlier and falling for the second consecutive year. The average age of first-time mothers was 31 last year, up from 30.79 from 2008. The age has been rising, crossing 30 for the first time in 2005.
21 comments:
The Koreans are of course not alone - almost all developed countries now have subreplacement fertility. Historically such low fertility levels were only seen briefly in times of war or extreme crisis. It's hard to say for sure what the consequence of this will be because this literally has never before happened in history. Pension schemes, etc. depend on a growing workforce. I suspect the ultimate result will be a repopulation of the world by Africans and Muslims (the main groups whose fertility has not yet dropped). In a story in today's paper, the % of births to whites in the US is just about to go below 50%, so soon we will be the "minority" and the other races collectively (the so called "minorities" such as black and hispanic) will in fact be the majority.
Jews of course are well adapted toward living as minorities, most of the time.
K
The Koreans will, when their government decides to get serious about this problem, respond to directives to reproduce, since it will be coupled to "incentives".
Furthermore, there is an inexhaustible supply of warm bodies from just a few miles to the north, and which will re-join the greater Korean community in a few short years.
Anon.
Koreans will do what their leadership says, so when they decide that they are rich enough, they will switch to reproducing.
In the mean time, you should pursue J's Dear Leader North Korea Opportunities Fund (Fund Manager Koko the Gorilla, except feeding time), so we can all get a piece of the action.
Anon.
Good Idea, Anon. Koko the Gorilla has already made a shortlist of the companies that the Dear Leader North Korea Opportunities Fund will be targeting when the privatization policy is initiated:
1 Korea Ferrous Metals Export & Import Corporation (steel, mining)
2 Korea General Zinc Industry Group (non-ferrous metals, mining)
3 Korea General Chemicals Trading Corporation (chemicals)
4 Korea General Machinery Trading Corporation (hydroelectrics)
5 Korea Kwangmyong Trading Group (shipping)
6 Korea General Petroleum United Corporation (petroleum refining, downstream products).
Koko has decided to distribute 30% of the fund shares among D.L.'s sons and mistresses (gratis, of course) to grease the acquisition of one or more of the above targets. Koko told me that she would welcome sugestions of names worthy of her generosity.
Tell Koko that the Korea-Iran Dear Leader Transportation Company (UnLtd) is a very hot item.
Anon.
I would let pass that item. Ships retrofitted to carry large rockets and ammunitions will be in low demand following privatization.
BTW, I have heard rumors that the mapping and preliminary division of Iran's oil fields has started and is under way. It may be premature, but the early bird catches the worm or something like that. Iran also needs a lot of infrastructure, Bechtel must be already updating old drawings.
So-do you think Ahmadinejad is secretly on our side?
Anon.
Definitely! Paraphrasing Voltaire, "On dit que Ahmedinejad est toujours pour les gros bataillons." He is on his way to our side and we are on our way to his side, soon we shall meet and hang him.
I think Pres. A. would prefer that you quote Bin Laden - When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse."
I think Voltaire meant something else, along the lines of "the harder I work the luckier I get" - in other words luck and God really have nothing to do with success - we make our own success by working the hardest and having the heaviest battalions.
K
J, according to you, "Koreans will do what their leadership says, so when they decide that they are rich enough, they will switch to reproducing." J, I talked to a Korean graduate student and I certainly don't believe that's the way he thinks. Isn't your opinion mere stereotyping? (Or is it a joke?) ... in bad taste
Una golondrina no hace verano - in Spanish, one swallow doesnt make it summer. Your Korean friend is no statistics. I believe Koreans follow leadership and if the leadership wants them to have babies, they will. Mao (a Chinese) wanted to increase China population in the fifties, and China's population tripled. Then came the order to stop, they all stopped.
Despite the fact that it is a Maoist dictatorship, N. Korean population has been falling - you can order people to have children but if you don't provided food for them, they will starve and die - those are the limits of the command economy.
S. Korea is a modern prosperous democracy and has about as much in common with Mao's China as chalk does to cheese. S. Korean birth rate is in line w. other advanced countries and while government policy could provide incentives and subsidies, a mere pronouncement by the leadership would produce little to no effect - no more than it would in Spain or Italy.
"One swallow does not a summer make" is an idiom in English as well as Spanish - it originates from Aristotle.
K
The S Koreans are very proud of their country and I have little doubt that if push came to shove they would do the right thing in their own interests.
This is because they do not have, and would not tolerate, a parasitic 'progressive' elite that undermined them existentially, as we do in the West.
Anon.
Anon. - How do you explain then the fact that the S. Korean birth rate is already far below the replacement level, same as (worse than) in the "progressive" West? At 1.2 children per woman, the lowest in the world (though many other Euro. countries and Japan are not far behind at 1.3 or 1.4). Historically, no country has EVER experienced such low birth rates outside of war or other disaster - we are in uncharted territory.
K
I for one explain it by Koreans excessive concentration on GNP that is wealth. Korea never had much of a religion, and Christianity is has been accepted more as a sign of Western modernity than a faith.
and Christianity is has been accepted more as a sign of Western modernity than a faith.
So in a sense the Koreans are completely westernized. Essentially Korea is already post-Christian without having gone through the stage of being completely Christian like Europe did. Would this not lead to the conclusion that the Koreans are also becoming individualistic like the West too? If you look at the picture of the Korean girls that you posted above you will note that they are arranged by degree of westernization, with the most obviously asiatic one on the left to the most westernized girl on the right. The girl on the far right even has her hair dyed brown in order to look more western.
If the Koreans have gone to the effort to import so many of the ideas that underpinned the West in the recent past and are even trying to look like classic westerners, then it will follow that individualism will take over Korea too. This is reinforced by Koreans decision to adopt the individualistic Protestant version of Christianity. If there is an uptick in births in South Korea, in all likelihood it will not happen because of an order from the country's capital, but because of changing economic and cultural conditions in the country.
Therefore the Koreans are westerners, and are fifty years behind us, except in birthrates.
I think that people have different ideas of what constitutes wealth, and futhermore that these ideas change over time.
Previously (and still in Africa), children are considered a form of wealth, indeed the only form of wealth accessible to most adults.
Nowadays, wealth is often construed in terms of material things, and this in turn drives the economy in a self-fulfilling cycle.
Over the last few decades, South Korea has shifted from the former model to the latter. Africa is trying to, but won't succeed.
Nor will Haiti. But they could succeed in another way.
The central issue, that tends to get forgotten, or is actively suppressed, is how wealth relates to security. Having a lot of kids at least makes sense as a form of security; not just financial but also physical security. Many of today's consumer toys are useless in terms of offering physical security. So switching your efforts from making babies as fast as you can to buying ipods and designer clothes only makes sense as long as you think that no-one will ever attack you or desire your land. And much of the politics of the world, especially in the West, is structured so as to allow this delusion to flourish.
But we learned this in Southern Africa: wealth cannot be divorced from security and having 'stuff'instead of kids is dumb, dumb, dumb.
All that N Korea has to do is wait for the S Korean population to implode.
That's what the blacks did in SA and Zim, it's what the immigrants will do in Europe, it's being tried in the USA and I only hope there are enough people with common sense in Israel that you do not fall into the same trap.
Anon.
having 'stuff'instead of kids is dumb, dumb, dumb.
Agreed. Now, how can I convince my daughters?
J, you ask an important question.
But the first child should teach them what real wealth consists of.
Anon.
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