Research

South Korea at 0.7: A Nation Disappearing?

South Korea's TFR of 0.72 — the world's lowest — reflects not a policy failure but a rational rejection of a social contract that demands women bear disproportionate costs of childrearing while facing a 31% gender wage gap, unaffordable housing, and near-total career penalties for motherhood; $270 billion in pro-natalist spending over 20 years has failed to reverse the trend. The central tension is whether this constitutes a demographic emergency requiring urgent intervention or, as non-Western scholars and the 4B movement argue, an active refusal by women and young people to reproduce under conditions of structural precarity — a distinction that fundamentally changes what solutions, if any, are appropriate. Projections of population halving within 50 years are stark, but the deeper unresolved question is whether the crisis is one of disappearing people or of a growth-dependent economic model that cannot survive without them.