South Korea’s World-Lowest Fertility Rate Set to Fall Further
time.com
Low fertility threatens to undermine South Korea’s economic future by shrinking its workforce and slowing consumption.

The latest forecast by Statistics Korea puts the population in 2072 at 36.2 million, a 30% decline from the current 51.7 million, even though the fertility rate may recover a bit to 0.68 in 2026. The population is expected to fall every year starting in 2025.

    • IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social
      143·
      1 year ago

      Same in Japan. And it’s not just pop singers. Just saw a YouTube video about how a Japanese weather channel uses cute women to gain popularity and it’s basically the same strategy as what they do with idols. These women have to keep their dating life secret. Because they have to seem eligible to their fans. People on the internet found out that one of these weather girls was dating a tennis player. And lots of fans got really mad. Then in the video they showed an event where fans can see the weather girls live on stage and the audience was 99% men in their 30’s and 40’s. It’s no surprise that Japan is infertile when a significant portion of their men rather wants to be in parasocial relationship with a woman who’s miles out of their league then be in a real relationship.

      Also many Japanese men are otaku, it’s men who are super obsessed with their hobbies. But Japan being Japan these men take it to their extreme. They spend so much time on their hobbies that they don’t have time for other things like dating. They for example rather take pictures of trains than try to find a partner.

      And prostitution is way more normalized and socially accepted in Japan and Korea. Many Japanese women don’t even think it’s cheating if their husband visits a prostitute.

      Combine all of that with extremely long working hours, cost of living and expensive housing it’s not a surprise that these two countries have much lower birth rates than other developed nations. Why would their men go trough all the trouble of finding a spouse, getting kids and spend a shit ton of money on them when they can just fantasize of being in a relationship with a beautiful woman, play with their toys and then visit a prostitute to get off when society doesn’t shame these men for their infantile behavior but rather exploits it.

      • deus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        72·
        1 year ago

        Having North Korea as their only neighbour doesn’t help though

    • Rolder@reddthat.comEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      Seems to me that areas with crazy work life balance issues also have thriving idol industries. Makes me think they are related, guys don’t have time for real relationships so they have pretend parasocial ones instead