South Korea is facing a demographic crisis – and is trying everything from playing cupid to stimulus money to try to reverse the course.
For years the country has had the lowest fertility rate in the world. By the early 2070s, South Korea’s population is expected to decline by nearly one-third. Almost half of the population will be 65 or older, while the working age population (15-64) will decrease by more than 20 million.
The country has spent more than 360 billion won – about 360 billion Cdn – on programs and demographic policies to improve the birth rate in the last 20 years. Yet for many years, birth rates continued to decline.
That may change now. The fertility rate, which measures the number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime, increased slightly in 2024 and 2025, as it has done so far this year. In 2023, South Korea’s birth rate was 0.72 per woman. As of January 2026, it is 0.99.
Now, researchers around the world — including here in Canada — are taking a closer look at what South Korea might be doing right.
The Mayor plays cupid
In some parts of the country, the government plays this game to try to increase the birth rate.
Jung Ye-Eun, 31, and Jin Hyun Gu, 38, said they wouldn’t have met if it wasn’t for a dating event set up by the local government, in Dalseo district of Daegu city.
“It would have been difficult for us to meet [without this event,]” said Jin.
Now, they are married and thinking about children.
It’s the kind of result that Lee Tae-Hoon – the district mayor-turned-simulator – was hoping for.
He launched a campaign in 2016 to encourage young people to get hitched and have children – to build a park where he hopes they will go on dates, and even brought out mascots for the project.
Lee compares the population decline to the climate crisis.
“We teach children about global warming so they know why it is happening and what to do about it,” he said.
“I want to teach young people that it is important to have children… If not, our future will be bleak.”
In some parts of Korea, local governments offer housing benefits. In the city of Incheon, the municipal government provides houses for newlyweds and new parents for $1 per day. The idea is that young people living in these apartments will be able to focus on raising children instead of renting.
That’s on top of the cash benefits from national governmentsuch as a lump sum payment of $2,000 for new parents (increasing to $3,000 for subsequent children), and a monthly allowance of about $100.
There is also medical aid.
In Seoul, a woman can try IVF 25 times for each child born – most of which are covered by the government. In comparison, only certain provinces cover the expensive procedure in Canada – and only one cycle is fully funded per lifetime.
The company gives its employees $100,000 per child
It is not just the government that encourages young people to have more children. Companies are also getting involved.
At Krafton, a Seoul-based video game company, employees earn about $100,000 per child — about $60,000 as a lump sum, with $40,000 spread over the child’s early years.
There are other benefits – a free company nursery, open from 8:30 am to 9:30 pm, up to two years of parental leave and an automatic recruitment process to fill those on leave, so that new parents feel guilty for taking time off or pressured to return early.
It’s a matter of survival, said Jaekeun Choi, Krafton’s chief operating officer.
“If the birth rate continues to sink the way it has for years, eventually the entire South Korean society, including our business, will find it difficult to survive,” he said.
The effort may be paying off, as the company says many employees have had children since the program began. Now Krafton is working with researchers at Seoul National University to determine if it is because of this system.
Are pronatalist policies effective?
Queen’s University Professor Maxwell Hartt is among the researchers who have looked closely at what is happening in South Korea.
Canada’s birth rate is also historically low: 1.25. Statistics Canada says that many women choose to remain childless, delay motherhood or face obstacles to having children.
In general, researchers have found pronatalist policies are not the most effective way to deal with population decline, said Hartt, a population decline researcher based in Kingston, Ont.
In Korea, for example, it’s hard to say whether policies have moved the needle in the past two years considering they haven’t been in place for decades before. There could be other possible factors, said an official of the Department of Data and Statistics, such as the large number of people in their early 30s or changing attitudes towards marriage.
South Korea had a very low birth rate in recent years. After billions of investments from the government – including financial incentives and integration programs, the situation seems to be changing. Nationally, CBC’s Jennifer Yoon breaks down South Korea’s unconventional methods and whether similar methods could work in Canada.
And while there are negative reasons for declining birth rates in other countries – economic instability or uncertainty – Hartt says there are positive reasons as well.
“Educational success for women,” he said. “Liberty, contraceptives or sanitation – these are not things we want to turn away from.”
What policies like those implemented in South Korea can undoubtedly do, Hartt says, is make a tangible difference in people’s well-being, social cohesion and economic development, everything from affordable housing to extended benefits to building loving public spaces.
Hartt thinks those goals are just as important as trying to increase the population — especially since the world’s population will decline before the end of the century.
“This is the truth, [so] what is the best we can do about this? What good things are happening, and what resources are not being used?”
