THE country’s birthrate has risen for a second straight year in 2025, government data showed – further sign that a country facing a demographic crisis for nearly a decade may be starting to turn a corner.
South Korea’s total fertility rate, the average number of babies a woman is expected to have during her reproductive life, stood at 0.80 in 2025, up from 0.75 in 2024, according to preliminary data from the Ministry of Data and Statistics.
New births began rebounding in 2024 on a post-pandemic boost and government policies, after eight consecutive years of decline that saw South Korea register the world’s lowest birthrate at 0.72 in 2023, a period marked by sky-rocketing house prices and higher economic participation by women.
There were 5.0 new births per 1,000 people in 2025, up from 4.7 in 2024. That compared with 5.6 in China last year, 4.6 in Taiwan last year and 5.7 in Japan in 2024, where the trend remains downwards.
The pace of the rebound is faster than the government’s optimistic-case projection of 0.75 in 2025 and 0.80 in 2026, which forecasts the total fertility rate to break above 1.0 per woman in 2031.
Marriages, a leading indicator of new births with a lag of one to two years, rose 8.1% in 2025, after a record 14.8% jump in 2024.
“The biggest part is that marriages are increasing a lot, accumulatively,” Park Hyun-jung, a ministry official, told a briefing, noting a higher number of people in their 30s and shifts in social attitudes.
The sharpest rise in new births was in the capital, with Seoul’s fertility rate at 0.63, up 8.9% from 0.58 in 2024, though still the lowest across the country.
Shin Kyung-ah, a sociology professor at Hallym University, said the data needed more scrutiny because of statistical effects such as population composition changes.
“Still, it is meaningful as an indicator suggesting positive changes, which will, at least indirectly, also help make people become more positive about having a baby,” Shin said.
In a biennial government survey in 2024, 52.5% of South Koreans expressed positive views about marriage, up from 50.1% in 2022. The average number of children people ideally wanted to have stood at 1.89.
Last year, new births rose 6.8% to 254,457, the biggest percentage rise since 2007, while deaths rose 1.3% to 363,389, resulting in the population naturally shrinking for the sixth consecutive year.
President Lee Jae-myung’s administration plans a five-year policy roadmap this year to respond to demographic changes, amid concern about an economic shock from an ageing population.
It also plans to expand policy support rolled out in recent years for childbirth and introduce measures to attract skilled foreign workers to offset a shrinking workforce. — Reuters
