In Südkorea steigen die Geburtenzahlen 22 Monate in Folge um 18 %, während die Zahl der Eheschließungen den höchsten Stand eines Jahrzehnts erreicht

Positive signs:

– The number of second child births FINALLY grew! 0.3% (which is a lot).

– Marriage rate for women aged 25-29 increased 4.7% in Q1. The marriage rate went from 40.7 –> 47.8 per 1000 women aged 25-29 between 2024-2026, skewing the bell curve younger. If this trend continues, 2026 will see the average age of first marriage amongst women go down.

– TFR in Apr: 0.93 (0.8 in May 2025)

– Average TFR Jan – Apr: 0.945. January saw 0.99, and we’re holding 0.93 every month after. A positive sign that we may hold 0.9 in 2026. The months to watch ar May and June where the number of newborns typically come in lower.

– Interestingly, most municipalities and provinces in Korea now have a regional TFR above 1.0 (in a pattern that is not too dissimilar to Japanese prefectures). Busan and Seoul are pulling it down below 1.0.

– I thought the marriage boom was losing steam back in February where we saw the first year on year decline in the past 2 years. However, the number of marriages have come in positive every other month and it’s trending up again. The annual marriages so far have risen 6.8%

– The natural change in the population in April was only -3884 (compared to 2024 which reached almost -10,000), which goes to show the recovery of newborns. However, the long term trend will see the natural change continue to see wider margins of decline due to the older generations in the demographic pyramid.

I feel a noticeable change in attitude towards marriage here. In 2017~19 refusing marriage(비혼) was huge among my peers, a lot of uni grads were posting on how marriage is such a bad thing and disadvantageous for women. Now, that sentiment shifted a lot and see people frequently talking about wanting to get married cuz their friends got married. It’s almost like 비혼 was another trend just like 두쫀쿠 was.

Looks like they all made life more affordable by holding sk hynix and Samsung stocks.

The irony about all the Korea hate and fear-mongering about their low birth rate is that, unlike most countries, Korea have spent several years trying to address the issue by making life more affordable, improving work-life balance, etc. etc.

Incentives haven’t been perfect, but South Korea’s birth rate is increasing whilst most developed countries are seeing a decline. SK also don’t have enough immigration to help make their numbers look better than they are, as is true for some other countries.

Point being, Korea is in a pretty good place and if this progress is sustained, will be in a much stronger position than a lot of countries. There are already a few countries who have gone below Korea’s fertility rate (based on numbers from this year).

Singapore government probably not looking forward to the same proposal even if it works. From my understanding their approach would be to claim they’ve tried but it couldn’t work when they’ve yet to provide meaningful assistance.

Give Koreans an assignment and they’ll ace it. 😀