Wishing to hear babies crying

By Park Moo-jong

In his 1967 amazing song, “What a Wonderful World,” Louis Armstrong (1901-1971) sang, “......I hear babies crying, I watch them grow. They will learn much more than I will never know.....”

The legendary African American jazz and blues singer-trumpeter was describing the bright future half a century ago as he saw babies crying and friends shaking hands and really saying “I love you” in his wonderful world.

But today is seriously different from such a “wonderful world.”

Babies crying are increasingly disappearing in South Korea due to the ever-dropping birthrate, which was only behind Singapore in 2014, according to the U.S. CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) Factbook.

The National Assembly Research Service released a dreadful report last week that South Korea will be “empty” by 2750 without any effective efforts to halt its falling birthrate.

Though the worst scenario predicts the situation after 735 years, it must have given the people creeps: “Koreans will be extinct by 2750.”

To be more precise, only 20,000 men and 30,000 women will be surviving on the Korean Peninsula in 2305, the report warns.

This is well supported by an earlier warning from Prof. David Coleman, a population expert and demographer at Oxford University, back in 2006 that South Korea could become the first country to lose its entire population because of its low birthrate.

This national problem dates back to the era of President Park Chung-hee (1917-1979) government (1961-1979) that launched a pan-national and virtually compulsory campaign for family planning or birth control. It continued into the mid-1980s during the Chun Doo-hwan administration.

The catchphrase of that time seems to be farsighted enough to match the trend of today: “Have only one, either a son or daughter (without distinction between the two), and raise him or her well."

The then government had introduced various ways for birth control such as the use of condoms, the pill and vasectomies. Still vivid in the memory of the men who were Homeland Reserve Forces members was the “temptation” of one day off training in return for tying their seminal ducts.

Vasectomies in the Homeland Forces members numbered 9,544 in 1974, but soared to more than 80,000 in less than 10 years, according to government statistics.

The “legendary” family planning campaign was led by the then deputy prime minister-economic planning minister Nam Duck-woo, the late leader of the Sogang Group of economics professors from Sogang University, who became economic bureaucrats.

Disgracing the aggressive birth control policy ironically, the late President had three children ― two daughters and a son, one of whom is President Park Geun-hye who has not married.

After less than 50 years, President Park is facing a tough situation to push ahead with a policy totally against her father's.

South Korea's birthrate registered 1.3 per woman on average during 2000 to 2014, lower than Japan's 1.4 and half the level of the world's average of 2.54.

In order to maintain the current level of population, the nation requires a birthrate of 2.51 at least.

So then, what is the main culprit for the falling birthrate?

Almost everybody knows it: The average marriage age is ever getting later and the number of people living single is increasing. The term “marriageable age” does not work now. A woman who gets married at the age of 35 or older has little chance to have a second baby, doctors say.

Adding salt to the injury, though perhaps trifling, might be the rise of homosexuals in the wake of the global trend to allow the same-sex marriage.

Like a huge crevasse in the iceberg, many cracks can appear in the course of marriage such as astronomical wedding costs, difficulty in finding jobs, the increase in women's economic activities and the financial burdens for delivery and childcare.

This phenomenon naturally spurs the low birthrate, aging of society and lower economic growth.

A public poll gives of 1,500 married women gives a clear answer to this question. Eight in ten complained that they felt heavy financial burden over expenses for childcare and education. Nearly half of them expressed that they would have more babies, if childcare costs were cut in half.

The low birthrate and aging is a more serious problem than the nuclear threat from North Korea, as it is directly related to the survival of the nation.

Unfortunately, however, lawmakers who have the absolute duty to devise legislation to help raise the birthrate are only wasting time seeking their own and their parties' political gains.

How about the government?

Almost a decade has passed since the government, shocked at the world's lowest birthrate of 1.08 in 2006, hurriedly set up the “Low Birthrate, Aging Society Committee” under the direct control of the President.

The government spent as much as 150 trillion won ($130 billion) over the past 10 years only to raise the rate to 1.21 last year.

Where has all the money gone?

Raising the birthrate is much more difficult than lowering it. The government should be all about implementing much stronger plans than birth control programs of the past in order to encourage young people to get married and to have two or more children

In an agricultural society, children were “assets,” namely a workforce, while in this industrial society of indefinite competition, they are “expenses.”

Human resources are almost the sole assets of South Korea that does not produce a single drop of oil and has no particular natural resources.

The Low birthrate and aging only brings about the vicious cycle of a shortage in the workforce and a reduction in consumption that will naturally lead to the slough of stagnation.

The government should offer various privileges to newlywed couples and those who give birth to two or more children such as tax reductions, support for school expenses and establishment of free state-run nursing facilities.

All Koreans of today, not to speak of myself, will love to hear babies crying here, there and everywhere, and think they live in such a wonderful world.

Park Moo-jong is The Korea Times advisor. He had served as the president-publisher of the paper from 2004 to 2014 after he had worked as a reporter of the daily since 1974. Contact him at moojong@ktimes.co.kr.