London Korean Links

Covering things Korean in London and beyond since 2006

Busan will be extinct before Seoul, apparently

Seollal tteokguk
Photo: Yonhap / Korea.net

The report doesn’t seem to have been translated into English yet, and I can’t find it in Korean on the website of the National Assembly Research Service, but it has certainly provided some eye-catching headlines, the general gist being that “South Koreans will be ‘extinct’ by 2750 if nothing is done to halt the nation’s falling fertility rate” (Telegraph).

According to the report, “Busan is most at risk, largely because of a sharp decline in the number of young and middle-aged residents. … the last person will be born in the city in 2413.”

According to the FT, the very last South Korean will be born in Gyeonggi-do in 2621.

Depending on which newspaper you read, the current birthrate is around 1.2 or 1.3, up from 1.08 in 2005, but still well below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *