South Korea birth rate rises for first time in 9 years

SEOUL — The number of births in South Korea rose last year for the first time in nine years, supported by an increase in marriages, preliminary data showed on Wednesday, indicating that the country's demographic crisis might have turned a corner.

The country's fertility rate — the average number of babies a woman is expected to have during her reproductive life — stood at 0.75 in 2024, according to Statistics Korea.

In 2023, the birth rate fell for the eighth consecutive year to 0.72, the lowest in the world, from 1.24 in 2015, raising concerns over the economic shock to society from such a rapid pace.

Since 2018, South Korea has been the only member of the OECD with a rate below 1.

Seoul has rolled out various measures to encourage young people to get married and have children after the now-impeached President Yoon Suk-yeol declared a "national demographic crisis" and a plan to create a new ministry devoted to tackling low birth rates.

"There was a change in social values, with more positive views about marriage and childbirth," Park Hyun-jung, an official at Statistics Korea, told a briefing, also citing the effect of a rise in the number of people in their early 30s and pandemic delays.

"It is difficult to measure how much each factor contributed to the rise in new births, but they themselves had an impact on each other too," Park said.

Marriages, a leading indicator of births, jumped 14.9 percent last year, the biggest spike since the data started being released in 1970. Marriages turned up for the first time in 11 years in 2023, with a 1.0 percent increase powered by a post-pandemic boost. Across the country, the birth rate last year was the lowest in the capital, Seoul, at 0.58.

The latest data showed there were 120,000 more people who died last year than those who were born, marking the fifth consecutive year of the population naturally shrinking.

The administrative city of Sejong was the only major center where the population grew.

South Korea's population, which hit a peak of 51.83 million in 2020, is expected to shrink to 36.22 million by 2072, according to the latest projection by the statistics agency.

Experts say there are multiple reasons for the low birth rate, from high child-rearing costs and property prices to a notoriously competitive society that makes well-paid jobs difficult to secure.

Neighboring Japan is grappling with the same issue — it has the world's second-oldest population after Monaco and the country's relatively strict immigration rules mean it faces growing labor shortages.

Its Health Ministry said on Thursday that the number of babies born in Japan fell to a record low of 720,988 last year for the ninth consecutive year of decline, as young people delay marriage while the elderly population rises.

Births were down 5 percent on the year, despite measures in 2023 by former prime minister Fumio Kishida's government to boost child-bearing, while a record number of 1.62 million deaths meant that more than two people died for every new baby born.

Agencies Via Xinhua