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In a photo taken on May 26, 2016, a mobility scooter is parked before the Gunwi rice fields, about 200 kilometers south of Seoul. By 2030, a quarter of all South Koreans will be over 65, and the total population is expected to reach about 52 million that year before entering a stable decline. This so -called “silver tsunami” is a big challenge for the fourth largest economy in Asia, as the young working age population decreases and the cost of adult care escalates. And in remote rural communities like Gunwi, which are located about 200 kilometers southeast of Seoul, the trend is sharpened by a youth exit to the cities for work.
Ed Jones | AFP | Ghetto images
South Korea stares at a demographic freight train. The country, known as one of the “four Asian tigers” because of its meteoric economic rise from post -war poverty, is confronted with a demographic rock that can stop growth within two decades, studies warn.
The Korea Bank in 2024 Designed that the birth rate of the nation’s rock-born will be one of the factors that will push it in a prolonged decline by the 2040s.
A a separate study The Korean Institute of Development in May said that demographic shifts would continue to drain to potential growth, which could fall to zero by 2040. In its forecasts, the economy of South Korea can shrink until 2047 in a neutral scenario – or as early as 2041 in pessimistic.
South Korea The birth rate is currently 0.748 in 2024.A slight rise from a record level of 0.721 in 2023, compared to an organization for economic cooperation and average value of the development of 1.43 in 2023S The often cited “replacement rate” for countries to prevent a decreasing population is 2.1.
What is a 0.72 percent of fertility for South Korea is that every 100 Koreans would have about 36 children at current levels, shrinking the workforce over the generations. This would go into productivity and slow growth, experts say.
Miracle for “Han River Wonder”?
If technological innovations fail to compensate for this decline, Korea will see a “sustainable economic delay,” told CNBC Lee in-Sil, Director of the Institute for Population of the Korean Peninsula for the future.
And this is not because of lack of experience. The country has unleashed a package after a package of support measures for the newlyweds to have children, including baby bonuses and cash prizes. Seoul has spent over $ 270 billion over the past 16 years for incentives to encourage birth, according to a 2024 Document in Medical Ethics MagazineS
In 2023, Seoul even dumped an idea to liberated men from his compulsory military service If they had three or more children before the age of 30.
But such efforts have had a little influence in a country welcomed as the “miracle on the Han River” for its rapid post -war raising. “I do not think that there is any way that the policy of the population can effectively raise fertility levels in South Korea in some significant way,” said Nicholas Ebers, a political economist at the American Institute of Enterprises, to CNBC.
People are moving along the road of the runway, which is located in Singapore’s city silhouette on June 27, 2025.
Roslan Rahman | AFP | Ghetto images
While the total fertility rate in South Korea has increased slightly in 2024, “we should not pop out the champagne plugs,” said Eberstet as it is still far below the replacement rate 2.1. He noted that the desired size of the family in South Korea is still below the speed of replacement 2.1, which means that while TFR can rise higher, it will not reach the figure 2.1.
Retirement
The shrinking workforce will also squeeze the pension system. In March South Korea passed its first Reformation of Pension Funds In 18 years the expansion of the exhaustion of the State Pension Fund by 15 years to 2071.
Among the four major retirement systems in South Korea – military, private school employees, civil servants and national pensions – military pension pension and civil servants have already been exhausted, Lee said.
Current reforms will see a structure in which the younger generations pay higher premiums as they receive higher benefits, which will inevitably lead to criticism for the transfer of the weight to future generations, she added.
The smaller pool project has defensive consequences. South Korea’s active troops have fallen by 20% to about 450,000, which is less than 690,000 in 2019. South Korean armed forces increased from 28,500 US troops, and Seoul has a mutual defense contract with Washington.
South Korea is still officially at war with North Korea, as the Korean War in 1953 ended with the termination of fire, not a peace treaty. North Korea boasts one of the largest permanent military forces in the world, with about 1.23 million staff.
There is no reason to be pessimistic
Despite the gloomy prospects for the fourth largest economy in Asia, some analysts have warned against despair.
Lee, who was also the former CEO of the National Statistics Agency, said economies could find ways to adapt.
“When an economy faces a recession, it usually responds with various efforts to increase productivity through technological innovation, immigration policies and other measures to prevent a more drop -down,” she said.
AEI’s eBersstadt also noted that South Korea can maintain and even increase its prosperity, despite aging and shrinking. He pointed out the 70s of the last century, when fears of resource shortage increased with the growth of the world in the world, and there were doubts about how to feed it.
In 1968, the book The Population of the Population, co -authored by former Stanford University Professor Paul Erlich and researcher Anne Erlich, predicted global hunger and increasing mortality with the increase in the population.
However, 50 years later, the world is “a better, better educated, better fed, better accommodated, more prosperous, much less absolute poverty than when the world was smaller,” said Ebers.
Lee of KPPif said that given the rapid changes in the Korean government’s policy and the development of public awareness in recent years, she is convinced that breakthrough decisions will emerge.
Very few people would bet South Korea could achieve what it has today when the Korean War stopped in 1953, said EbersetS
“Human beings are uniquely adaptive,” he added. “This is a very different kind of challenge, but I do not think the recording of the immediate past suggests that it is smart to bet against the population of South Korea.”
