I've been meaning to write about this for a while, but this does not surprise me in the least. The life in Korea is way too competitive and stressful. The hellscape begins in pre-school and primary school where parents make kids go to private school AFTER school, often till late evenings. This progressively gets worse and worse until university.
In my father's generation, people could relax after getting into university. They could party around, barely pass and still get decent jobs. Nowadays, that's definitely not the case. Getting a good job is insanely hard. You need to take care of your GPA. English certs like TOFLE/TOEIC are pretty much mandatory and you'd probably want other cert/ extra curricular experience.
Okay. So you've went through all that and you've got yourself a good job. Now that's all done, can you finally start to relax and enjoy life? Haha, no. 52-hour weekly working limit has only recently been introduced, and the current president wants to get rid of that. Even if you work your ass off, it is _very_ unlikely that you can ever afford an apartment in Seoul.
In the end, you have tired and jaded people without a fun childhood, who can't even buy their own house. I certainly would not choose to have children in these circumstances.
I've "escaped" and live a decent life outside of Korea now. But I have many friends in Korea who have "given up" (in various ways) in light of all this . There are some friends who are married and have kids, but they all have rich parents or studied/hustled really hard. In spite of all this, I miss Korea so much. But I don't think I'll be going back.
This is only one reason in declining fertility rate. There are many more (some mentioned in other comments) but this comment is already getting too ranty.
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EDIT: This comment got much more attention than I thought it would and I'd like to add some positive stuff too. There are certainly people who enjoy life in Korea by refusing to participate in the rat race and by prioitising building meaningful communities in their lives. Some things are getting better, albeit slowly, with each generation.
> you have tired and jaded people without a fun childhood
Man this hits really hard because I spent my first 20 years growing up in China... Good thing is that now I'm in a much less authoritarian place with a job that has decent work-life balance. Have been trying to cultivate some hobbies in the past few years, feels like I've been trying to reclaim the childhood I never had.
We're talking about 4 days work week for adults, but no one is talking about 40 hours work week for kids. 7 hours of school, 3 hours of homework, then karate, piano, swimming and football on weekends.
I've complained about that my whole life. Going from high school to college was wonderful because I had so much time time my first semester in college. (I ended up blowing that by overloading myself in subsequent semesters, but that's another story.)
I always hated the idea of homework in school (outside of college/university) because I have never understood being at "home" but still required to do "work" for a place I just spent 7-8 hours at and most days 2-3 more hours for sports or band.
I just never did homework, half-assed projects and did the bare minimum for tests. I had an unusually liberal school though. I probably would have dropped out if it wasn't illegal here.
If those karate, piano, swimming and football are intense enough to be counted as "work" rather than leisure, then something is wrong. Are hobbies not a thing anymore?
Oh. That’s batshit crazy (the college application thing). Why should non-academic achievements make any difference whatsoever when applying to college? Is that a thing anywhere except the US?
As for show and prestige, that’s usually what the parents want, so that’s squarely in the "something is wrong" category.
I thought it was a case of everyone apeing the Ivy Leagues when they kept on changing the rules to keep their hardworking minority numbers down to make their New England old money look superior. So the excuse was they are going for "well rounded with extracurriculars" students, back when there were too many Jews for their liking. Then repeat the same thing with Asians once exams and extracurriculars are optimized for.
Blind unthinking mimicry drives the educational system. I was in early elementary school when analogies were removed from the SATs. They went from "very important" to disappearing off the face of the earth, only occassionally showing up in two questions at most per standardized test.
colleges have decided they want balanced students who have some of everything (except free time, because lmao they dont need that). so its karate or swimming oe soccer or football or baseball for athleticism, usually 2 during childhood. its piano or violin. its starting extra language study early. boy scouts or national honor society for leadership. speech and debate, model un or working for a campaign to show political consciousness. 100+ nonprofit work (actually documented) or starting your own of you want to stand out.
all these can be fun but as a kid you are not doing them to have fun, there is constant pressure to win awards and be the best at these. and the list is picked more from appearance on a college application than enjoyment for a child.
this is most american kids now with any ambition of getting into a prestigious school. it will not get you scholarships though.
it is also not mentioning that "academic excellence" in high school has moved from straight As to 6-8 AP exams in a single year, i shit you not.
> it is also not mentioning that "academic excellence" in high school has moved from straight As to 6-8 AP exams in a single year, i shit you not.
That is because even when I attended high school 15 to 20 years ago, letter grades/points were extremely inflated. AP exam scores (and SAT/ACT) are the only objective academic measures.
As an example, I am pretty sure a C was the lowest grade possible to get (translated to a 2 on the point scale). Then a B was a 3, and A was 4. For a class, there was a final numerical score (arbitrarily determined), and an A was something like 93 to 100, B was 85 to 92, and so on.
But that was for the “regular classes”. If you were in an honors class, you got +5 added to your final number grade for the course. And AP class added +10. So if you ended up with 93, you actually got 103 in the class. And so you had an A, but the grade point average was calculated from 103/100*4 = 4.12. And then this grade point average was used to rank you relative to others in the grade for purposes of determining valedictorian.
In any case, as you can see, the whole thing was a joke and anyone who attended class got a C, and anyone who put in half an ounce of effort got an A, and the higher achievers had GPAs higher than 4 on a 4 point scale.
Obviously, colleges are not dumb, so they know the whole grade inflation ruse, and it also continues in many classes. After all, at many colleges, their customers are paying them $30k to $70k per year for that grade.
> it is also not mentioning that "academic excellence" in high school has moved from straight As to 6-8 AP exams in a single year, i shit you not.
Same in India.
There is 0.1 to 0.6% chance of getting into any prestigious university depending on the demographic factors of student. This is after extensive filtering in high school.
99% of students spend 6-8 hours in coaching daily for years to get rejected since we follow stack ranking with limited seats.
What's sobering is government tried to increase elite universities but people don't perceive them as such even if they have better infrastructure, faculty, and education without the same low acceptance rate.
Those are not hobbies in this case though. I've been attending music school (violin) for 7 years (7-14 y.o.) and only by the time I hit 30 I reasised the problem with the whole system.
Teachers (and to some point parents) expect you to invest as much in this music school as you invest (at least expected to) in your regular school.
And I never though about it this way. For me this was always a place to escape most of my classmates and have fun if possible. Or just relax. "Why are all those people are shoutin at me? Can't we all just have a good time?"
This is one of those problems that goes away when you're an adult.
I studied piano as a boy and there was always some friction with my Polish teacher for whom piano was her life's work, and try as she might she couldn't quite get her head around a student who didn't want much more than play Bohemian Rhapsody at parties. Tried to get me to love Chopin as much as she genuinely loved him, but it never caught up and I took university as an excuse to quit.
After Covid I picked up the violin, I made it clear to both the school and to my teacher that it's strictly a hobby for me, and we got along wonderfully. On our first meeting she remarked that I never asked the one question that new students always ask, i.e. "how long will it take me to be able to play <insert piece of music>" - I had had that thought, but intentionally withheld it because I didn't want anything like expectations or timetables in my brain-clearing hobby.
I can tell that you will play your violin with life gusto while your Polish teacher do it with life burden. Music should be like that. So many students I saw for the past decades having achive diploma level in piano or violin or sometime both before they attend University ended up throwing away their musical gift. So sad.
>This is one of those problems that goes away when you're an adult.
True, I'm still grateful to my teachers and mother who persueded me to finish the school. I bought a violin at 24 and a guitar around 30 and now can practice both at my own pace whenever I have time.
Just finished "Stolen Focus" and it has a whole chapter on how lack of free play and helicopter parenting completely destroys a child's ability to thrive and focus. What we are doing to kids is criminal, and it's getting worse. Solution? Just give them some pills. We are destroying a whole generation, and their brains are already mush from social media.
I have friends who spent a couple of years in Korea and they get quite sad when they talk about the kids they saw. They just seemed to have no life outside of an endless stream of classes and tutors.
I'm trying to strike a balance with my kids. We encourage them to do things like learn music, take up sports etc, but not let that just consume all their free time. I want them to have time to just play freely, read comics, or just be a bit bored sometimes.
As other people have mentioned, its about not being able to afford to buy a house to raise kids in.
I do want to also mention though, a unique Korean system called "Jeonse", which is a large deposit that is 50-80% of the property value. After putting in the deposit, you can live there on yearly basis without paying rent. This system has been and is being used as property ladder for young families (as they don't have to "lose" money on rent) but as "Jeonse" is pegged to property value, they've been rapidly rising as well AND frauds around Jeonse has been on rise, in which case you can lose the whole deposit or be tied up in court battle for years.
Barely anyone I know was raised in a house, or has a house today (but rather apartments). It's very weird seeing this as some kind of condition for having a family.
>As other people have mentioned, its about not being able to afford to buy a house to raise kids in.
Why do you need a house to raise kids?
In many advanced countries there are some systems which will keep your kids feed and clothed even if you have no money at all.
This is one of the reasons you often see economically unsuccessful people have way more children and thus a larger influence on humanity's future.
I think OP is talking about _buying_ an apartment.
The property may simply be owned by who bought it a while ago and are now sucking up the majority of wages of the younger generation.
Speculation but: apartments might have less supply than there is demand from those people. And to "us" 52 workweek and perfect GPA might sound like being upper of the uppest but in Korea, as GP frames it, it sounds median.
This is very accurate. I’m Irish, and when my Korean wife and I were leaving the US with our two young kids, Korea wasn’t even considered as a place to raise them. She had such a needlessly tough time as a kid, and her siblings are having to put their young kids through exactly the same exhausting upbringing.
It’s not worth it. We’re luckily to have the choice of moving home to Europe and raising our kids in a way that they get to play a lot (I’m writing this while on a bench in a playground with them bouncing around in the sunshine) and also have school, art and sports.
Korea is actively discouraging Koreans from raising their kids there, especially if they have any other option
> by refusing to participate in the rat race
That does indeed sounds like a rat race! I have just came across this art which visually resembles what you described https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9dZQelULDk&t=7s
This whole experience sounds very labour camp like. Minus the electric fence. The way out is no longer that easy.
Of course the decorations are nicer and there are some who are kept around to work as "worser off" examples. But all in all, i guess most would cheer for the fall of this.
Well if competitiveness is the reason for low birth rates, this should fix itself once the older generations age out of their posts and the companies need to look for replacements among a much smaller workforce.
Ah but the younger generations will need to support the older non longer working people who also happens to have more votes. Korean national pension is going to run out in 10 years or so, and there is already talk of raising the mandatory contribution from 9% to 18%.
Well that's a bit complicated. Traditionally, yes. Korea has been a Confucian society, which meant that the eldest son gets the parent's house, lives with them and takes care of them. Incidentally, being a wife of the eldest son is also very hard, because you are supposed to take care of your in-laws (boy do I have some horror stories).
With modernisation, this has changed.
1. Most women no longer wants to be servants for the in-laws (rightfully so) and wants to live separately
2. With less children, you won't necessarily have a son.
So now, parents live separately, until they are unable to do so anymore. When this happens, the children might take them into their house and care for them or admit them into hospice or retirement home.
You might ask, what happens if your children don't take care of you and you don't have money? Well you are kinda f-ed, as seen with the high elderly poverty rate.
> [Korea has] the highest elderly poverty rate among OECD countries
Oh, Korean national pension is also set to run out within 10 years or so, which will make the issue worse and/or make the future generation pay disproportionate amount of tax :)))
Probably they used to be able to keep the poor, poor via something brutally effective and simple, like only a tiny minority even getting the chance to go to decent schools or universities. Now they need a lot of wasted effort to convince people that the people at the top are working really hard and deserve it to maintain the same elite dynamic.
evidence: 7% got to tertiary education in 1975, and recently peaked at above 100% (not sure how that works to be honest, but the trend is clear)
Might a contributing factor be the older generation saw in their lifetime the change from extreme poverty to relative wealth brought about by the industriousness of the population?
the difference also is that your father generation (if he is 50 or more) did not really have a lot of good job. most of the jobs were blue collar. now it changed a lot as most of the jobs are really for the highly educated and its very competitive
Is nobody really doing anything irresponsible anymore, en masse? where is the party, hookup, pregnancy and carry-to-term scene? is that not happening, or is the party, hookup scene all just that risk-free right now - even when pregnancy occurs
because the latter suggests that people really just don't want kids, and possibly never really did
its hard for me to think that all of society uniformly is successfully planning for children now, instead of many children being a bunch of accidents that the parents just go along with
"Failure to plan is planning to fail": given the potentially life ruining costs of pregnancy and raising a child, there's a lot of incentive to not make that mistake.
> where is the party, hookup, pregnancy and carry-to-term scene? is that not happening
Did that ever really happen in Korea? Even in the West having a "hookup scene" in the first place was a product of having effective contraception available, and a whole set of controversial cultural changes.
This kind of planning implicitly happens when women are expected to have a career instead of finding their identity in successful motherhood. I don't know much anything at all about Korean women's professional labor, but I'd be very surprised if it did not play a role. Country fertility rates correlate extremely well with female full time non domestic labor participation.
In my father's generation, people could relax after getting into university. They could party around, barely pass and still get decent jobs. Nowadays, that's definitely not the case. Getting a good job is insanely hard. You need to take care of your GPA. English certs like TOFLE/TOEIC are pretty much mandatory and you'd probably want other cert/ extra curricular experience.
Okay. So you've went through all that and you've got yourself a good job. Now that's all done, can you finally start to relax and enjoy life? Haha, no. 52-hour weekly working limit has only recently been introduced, and the current president wants to get rid of that. Even if you work your ass off, it is _very_ unlikely that you can ever afford an apartment in Seoul.
In the end, you have tired and jaded people without a fun childhood, who can't even buy their own house. I certainly would not choose to have children in these circumstances.
I've "escaped" and live a decent life outside of Korea now. But I have many friends in Korea who have "given up" (in various ways) in light of all this . There are some friends who are married and have kids, but they all have rich parents or studied/hustled really hard. In spite of all this, I miss Korea so much. But I don't think I'll be going back.
This is only one reason in declining fertility rate. There are many more (some mentioned in other comments) but this comment is already getting too ranty.
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EDIT: This comment got much more attention than I thought it would and I'd like to add some positive stuff too. There are certainly people who enjoy life in Korea by refusing to participate in the rat race and by prioitising building meaningful communities in their lives. Some things are getting better, albeit slowly, with each generation.