SOUTH KOREA IS OVER

South Korea is over.

This sounds brutal, but South Korea will soon start melting on all fronts – demographically,

economically, socially, culturally and militarily.

Because for decades the country has been experiencing a fertility crisis unprecedented in human

history.

And we’ve probably reached a point of no return.

By 2060, the South Korea we know and love today will no longer exist.

What will the collapse look like

and why is it now almost impossible to stop?

The (Real) Population Bomb To have a stable population you need a fertility rate

of about 2.1 children per woman.

In the 1950s South Koreans used to have 6 children on average.

In the 1980s the rate fell below 2.

And in 2023 it was 0.72 kids per woman,

the lowest ever recorded in history.

In Seoul fertility is even lower, around 0.55.

On average, about half of the women here won’t have any kids

and the other half just one.

What do these numbers actually mean in the real world?

If fertility stays as it is, then 100 South Koreans will have 36 kids.

When they grow up, they will have 13 kids, who will then have 5.

Within 4 generations 100 South Koreans will turn into 5.

If we look at today's South Korean population pyramid we see this is pretty

real:

There's only one 1-year-old for four 50-year-olds.

After 4 decades below the replacement level, the consequences were still largely invisible.

Today South Korea's population is at an all-time high,

as are its workforce and its GDP, which is still growing.

But demographics hits you like a freight train,

you hear it vaguely in the distance and then it runs you over.

South Korea is about to be hit.

Let’s time-travel 35 years into the future, to 2060,

and see what the country will look like then.

When it comes to demographics,

the most commonly used projections are those put together by the UN.

They envisage 3 scenarios: low fertility, medium and high.

But in the past,

all medium UN projections for South Korea have consistently been too positive.

Between 2022 and 2023 alone, fertility in South Korea dropped by another 8%.

So we are going to use the latest low fertility scenario,

which has been the most accurate in the last few years.

Keep in mind that we are still talking about projections

and the future is a far away land.

Ok!

Let’s do it.

In 2060 South Korea’s population pyramid will look like this:

The population will have shrunk by 30%,

16 million South Koreans will have disappeared in just 35 years.

And it will be the oldest country in human history.

One in two South Koreans will be over the age of 65.

Less than 1 in 10 will be under 25.

And only 1 in 100 will be small children.

Imagine waking up in a country where the streets are strangely quiet with no

children playing on them.

Entire cities have been abandoned.

Half of the population is elderly

and living either alone

or in overcrowded retirement homes.

With a minority of people desperately trying to keep society running.

There will be a few major consequences:

Economic Collapse In 2023 a breathtaking 40% of South Koreans over 65 lived below

the poverty line,

but in 2060 this number may seem lovely in comparison.

Today South Korea has one of the largest pension funds in the world,

worth about $730 billion.

But it is projected to stop growing in the 2040s

and be completely depleted by the 2050s.

So in 2060 pensions will have to be paid by the working population.

Estimates vary, but for a pension system to work,

the minimum a society needs is between 2 to 3 workers per retiree paying

for them with their taxes.

But even if we assume

that all South Koreans over 15 will be working in 2060,

the country will have less than one worker per senior.

Workers will be unable to stem the incredible costs.

So not only will poverty among the elderly be common,

but a big chunk will be forced to work.

Except, they may not be able to find jobs because by 2060,

the South Korean economy may have collapsed.

Broadly speaking, the size of an economy is linked to the size of its

workforce – to have a big economy you need a lot of workers to

produce a lot of things,

and a lot more people to buy them.

Today, South Korea has about 37 million people of working age,

generating a GDP of about $1.7 trillion.

But by 2060 its workforce will have shrunk to less than half,

to about 17 million.

Of course technological progress means

that productivity will be higher

and each individual will probably produce more than today.

But even if productivity keeps growing at the same rate

or more than we’ve seen in the last decades,

South Korea’s GDP could peak in the 2040s.

In other words South Korea will enter a permanent economic recession.

There are more optimistic projections that see the recession begin as late as 2050,

but they are based on the medium UN demographic scenario –

and there are no signs

that we are heading there.

Another factor in the economy is science, technology and innovation,

areas in which big leaps are typically made by young adults

and the middle aged.

Young people have fresh ideas that contribute to the wealth of society.

Significantly fewer people working also means way less tax for the government,

which will be trapped between a rock and a hard place.

On the one hand having to provide for half the population that are seniors,

on the other seeing its income diminished.

It will be forced to shut down

or cut essential services like hospitals

or social benefits.

Since infrastructure only works at scale,

smaller communities may be abandoned as the country contracts into its metropolitan areas.

And of course there won’t be enough money to invest in the future.

This is bad.

But what will happen to South Korean society and culture may be worse.

Societal and Cultural Collapse Speculating on how societies will develop is extra hard,

but there are a few pretty unavoidable trends.

Today already about 20% of Koreans live alone.

Also 20% report having no close friends or relatives.

By 2060, 50% of South Koreans aged 70 will have no siblings

and 30% will have no children.

Young adults between 25

and 35 will only make up 5% of the population

and typically have no siblings at all.

This leaves the elderly with almost no close family,

and young adults with little family and few potential friends,

especially outside of big cities.

A loneliness epidemic of epic proportions is all but guaranteed.

On top of that, South Korean culture will probably experience a huge decline.

In 2000 there were 17.5 million South Koreans between 25-45,

and they made up 37% of the population.

This was the generation that brought us K–pop, K-drama, K-food,

and many other trends that spread around the world.

In 2060 there will be just 5.6 million people in that age group,

and they will only be 16% of the population.

Many cultural traditions are already struggling

because the older generations are having trouble finding young people to pass them on

to.

As young people disappear, many traditions will die out.

Without young people, the soul of South Korean culture will shrink and wither away.

And on a personal level,

what kind of experience will it be growing up in 2060?

What will youth culture be like in a country of seniors?

Where many universities, schools

and Kindergartens are abandoned

as there are no longer children to fill them with life?

What kind of job prospects will they face and what will politics look like?

If young people don’t want to remain alone,

they will concentrate in Seoul

or a few other big cities –

or worse for South Korea,

emigrate to other countries.

Rural areas will decline

and most smaller cities will turn into ghost towns – we're already seeing this

in Japan,

which has almost 10 million abandoned houses in rural areas.

Large parts of South Korea will simply vanish and be reclaimed by nature.

Last but not least, South and North Korea are technically at war.

And they could very well still be in 2060.

Will South Korea still be able to afford to have its young men do

18 months of mandatory military service?

Today 5% of men of combat age are enrolled in the military – in

2060 it would have to be 15% just to match today's numbers.

Ok, wait – this is all a bit much.

Is there no way back?

Why There Really Is No Way Back The problem with the demographic freight train

is that once it hits,

things become irreversible.

Let’s say fertility in South Korea magically triples to the replacement rate of 2.1

children per woman and stays there.

In 2060 it will be an inverted pyramid on top of a barrel.

And there would still only be 1.5 people of working age per senior over

65.

Even in the best made up scenario,

South Korea has to pass through an unavoidable bottleneck before it will recover.

But there is also a kernel of hope here.

Yes, the situation is grim.

But at least in the long term,

recovery is possible if South Korea enacts rapid

and societal changes that make its population want to have kids again.

In 2024 births rose for the first time in 9 years – 3% more

than in 2023.

But for that to continue,

South Korea needs to face the music

and ask how they got to this point.

How Could it get that bad?

In general, as societies get richer, more educated, and child mortality plummets,

people decide to have fewer kids.

What makes South Korea special is that it's somehow supercharging all of these trends.

South Korea lifted itself out of poverty in record time,

but in doing so it developed a unique kind of workaholism and extreme competitiveness.

Although the work week is 40 hours

and the legal maximum is 52 per week,

unpaid overtime is normal for many

and the government even proposed to raise legal work time to 69 hours per

week.

Despite this, South Korea has relatively low wages and a high cost of living.

Real estate in big cities is out of reach for most people.

The cost of education is extremely high,

since families have to pay for private lessons

if they want to send their kids to a high tier college.

All of this while South Korea spends less on family benefits than most other

rich countries.

Old fashioned cultural norms make matters even worse.

Marriage is all but mandatory

if a couple wants to start a family – in 2023 only 4.7% of

babies were born to unmarried women.

Out of all developed countries,

South Korean men do just about the least share of housework

and childcare within their families.

This leaves women with a disproportionate amount of work

if they want to keep their jobs after a pregnancy.

While many men are overwhelmed by the societal expectation to be the main breadwinner

and have successful careers.

Starting a family or not is a personal decision.

And most South Koreans are deciding against it.

The bottom line is

that South Korea has created a culture

that leads to very few kids.

Conclusion Demographic collapse is not an abstract thing in the future,

it is happening right now.

And it is not just South Korea.

In 2023 China had a fertility rate of 1, Italy and Spain 1.2,

Germany 1.4, the UK 1.6

and the US 1.6 –

which sounds so much better,

doesn’t it?

Well, after four generations,

a fertility rate of 1.6 means 60% fewer new people.

A fertility rate of 1.2 means 87% fewer people.

And fertility rates are still falling, with no sign of stabilization or recovery.

The weirdest thing about all of this is

that almost nobody involved in the public discourse has truly grasped the gravity of

the situation.

The last century was utterly dominated by overpopulation narratives

and people who say

that we need more kids seem weird.

And if you do the maths,

the future just seems to be too insane to be true,

like it's hard to believe.

None of this has ever happened before.

So low birthrates are mostly discussed in the context of worker shortages – not

the existential threat to our societies,

cultures, wealth and our way of life that they are.

If we don’t take it seriously very soon

and change the DNA of our modern societies in a way

that encourages young people to start having children again,

then the rest of the century will be pretty grim – for those of

us who will live through it.

The demographic freight train stops for nobody – we finally need to realize

that it’s hurtling down the tracks right at us.

Multilayered issues like demographic change are hard to break through in our current media

landscape and easy to miss out on.

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see the bigger picture and make informed decisions.

Using Ground News you can see that earlier this year,

South Korea was officially classified as a superaged society,

a term that basically summarizes the effects we described in this video.

But less than 100 sources covered this development.

Interestingly, less than 20% of them are left-leaning media.

Ground News has a special feature, the Blindspot feed,

that draws attention to stories like

that which get lost amidst your personal publication preferences.

Most importantly, you can clearly compare how the issue was covered:

a government-funded source out of Slovenia for example mentioned Europe is considering immigration

as part of a solution

while Korea,

Japan and China are avoiding that aspect.

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