SEOUL: South Korea’s fertility rate is extending a tentative recovery from its record low, raising hopes that the annual figure could top 0.9 for the first time in seven years.
The rebound, however, is unlikely to alter the country’s demographic trajectory on its own.
Even as births rise, Korea’s child population continues to shrink while the number of older people grows rapidly, prompting calls for fiscal reform and a broader immigration strategy.
The total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman is expected to have over her lifetime, stood at 0.95 in the first quarter, according to the Ministry of Data and Statistics. It was 0.93 in April and 0.85 in May.
The figures have fuelled expectations among officials and researchers that the annual rate could exceed 0.9 for the first time since 2019, when it stood at 0.92.
Korea’s fertility rate fell to a record low of 0.72 in 2023 before rising to 0.75 in 2024 and 0.80 in 2025. Births began to increase in 2024, helped by a rise in marriages and a larger population of people in their 30s, many of them children of the country’s baby boom generation.
The number of babies born between January and May rose 15.2% from a year earlier.
The improvement has also lifted Korea from the bottom of some international fertility rankings. BirthGauge projected that Taiwan’s fertility rate fell below Korea’s last year, ending Korea’s run as the lowest among the 93 economies covered by the research.
Still, the recent gains are small relative to the scale of Korea’s demographic imbalance.
The population aged 14 and younger fell to 5.22 million last year, roughly one-quarter below its level a decade earlier. The population aged 65 and older, meanwhile, rose by 62% over the same period to more than 10 million.
Children aged 14 and younger accounted for 10.1% of the population in April, down from 10.5% a year earlier despite the recent rise in births.
Experts say the rebound should not be mistaken for a solution to Korea’s population crisis. Higher fertility would take decades to translate into a larger workforce, while spending on pensions, health care and other age-related programmes is already set to rise.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said in its July economic survey that Korea should strengthen its fiscal framework and pursue further pension and tax reforms to manage mounting pressures from population ageing.
Some researchers say immigration policy must also become part of a broader demographic strategy rather than remain focused mainly on filling short-term labour shortages.
"Korea’s immigration policy should move away from focusing primarily on deciding who to admit and how many to accept," Lee Kyu-yong, a researcher at the Korea Labor Institute, said at a forum in July.
The government should invest in helping immigrants develop skills, establish careers and settle in Korea, much as it supports young Korean nationals, he said. – Korea Herald/ANN
