<story><title>Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-24/fastest-aging-wealthy-economy-breaks-own-fertility-record-again</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>creakingstairs</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been meaning to write about this for a while, but this does not surprise me in the least. The life in Korea is way too competitive and stressful. The hellscape begins in pre-school and primary school where parents make kids go to private school AFTER school, often till late evenings. This progressively gets worse and worse until university.&lt;p&gt;In my father&amp;#x27;s generation, people could relax after getting into university. They could party around, barely pass and still get decent jobs. Nowadays, that&amp;#x27;s definitely not the case. Getting a good job is insanely hard. You need to take care of your GPA. English certs like TOFLE&amp;#x2F;TOEIC are pretty much mandatory and you&amp;#x27;d probably want other cert&amp;#x2F; extra curricular experience.&lt;p&gt;Okay. So you&amp;#x27;ve went through all that and you&amp;#x27;ve got yourself a good job. Now that&amp;#x27;s all done, can you finally start to relax and enjoy life? Haha, no. 52-hour weekly working limit has only recently been introduced, and the current president wants to get rid of that. Even if you work your ass off, it is _very_ unlikely that you can ever afford an apartment in Seoul.&lt;p&gt;In the end, you have tired and jaded people without a fun childhood, who can&amp;#x27;t even buy their own house. I certainly would not choose to have children in these circumstances.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve &amp;quot;escaped&amp;quot; and live a decent life outside of Korea now. But I have many friends in Korea who have &amp;quot;given up&amp;quot; (in various ways) in light of all this . There are some friends who are married and have kids, but they all have rich parents or studied&amp;#x2F;hustled really hard. In spite of all this, I miss Korea so much. But I don&amp;#x27;t think I&amp;#x27;ll be going back.&lt;p&gt;This is only one reason in declining fertility rate. There are many more (some mentioned in other comments) but this comment is already getting too ranty.&lt;p&gt;---&lt;p&gt;EDIT: This comment got much more attention than I thought it would and I&amp;#x27;d like to add some positive stuff too. There are certainly people who enjoy life in Korea by refusing to participate in the rat race and by prioitising building meaningful communities in their lives. Some things are getting better, albeit slowly, with each generation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TwoFerMaggie</author><text>&amp;gt; you have tired and jaded people without a fun childhood&lt;p&gt;Man this hits really hard because I spent my first 20 years growing up in China... Good thing is that now I&amp;#x27;m in a much less authoritarian place with a job that has decent work-life balance. Have been trying to cultivate some hobbies in the past few years, feels like I&amp;#x27;ve been trying to reclaim the childhood I never had.</text></comment>
<story><title>Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-24/fastest-aging-wealthy-economy-breaks-own-fertility-record-again</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>creakingstairs</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been meaning to write about this for a while, but this does not surprise me in the least. The life in Korea is way too competitive and stressful. The hellscape begins in pre-school and primary school where parents make kids go to private school AFTER school, often till late evenings. This progressively gets worse and worse until university.&lt;p&gt;In my father&amp;#x27;s generation, people could relax after getting into university. They could party around, barely pass and still get decent jobs. Nowadays, that&amp;#x27;s definitely not the case. Getting a good job is insanely hard. You need to take care of your GPA. English certs like TOFLE&amp;#x2F;TOEIC are pretty much mandatory and you&amp;#x27;d probably want other cert&amp;#x2F; extra curricular experience.&lt;p&gt;Okay. So you&amp;#x27;ve went through all that and you&amp;#x27;ve got yourself a good job. Now that&amp;#x27;s all done, can you finally start to relax and enjoy life? Haha, no. 52-hour weekly working limit has only recently been introduced, and the current president wants to get rid of that. Even if you work your ass off, it is _very_ unlikely that you can ever afford an apartment in Seoul.&lt;p&gt;In the end, you have tired and jaded people without a fun childhood, who can&amp;#x27;t even buy their own house. I certainly would not choose to have children in these circumstances.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve &amp;quot;escaped&amp;quot; and live a decent life outside of Korea now. But I have many friends in Korea who have &amp;quot;given up&amp;quot; (in various ways) in light of all this . There are some friends who are married and have kids, but they all have rich parents or studied&amp;#x2F;hustled really hard. In spite of all this, I miss Korea so much. But I don&amp;#x27;t think I&amp;#x27;ll be going back.&lt;p&gt;This is only one reason in declining fertility rate. There are many more (some mentioned in other comments) but this comment is already getting too ranty.&lt;p&gt;---&lt;p&gt;EDIT: This comment got much more attention than I thought it would and I&amp;#x27;d like to add some positive stuff too. There are certainly people who enjoy life in Korea by refusing to participate in the rat race and by prioitising building meaningful communities in their lives. Some things are getting better, albeit slowly, with each generation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>noneeeed</author><text>I have friends who spent a couple of years in Korea and they get quite sad when they talk about the kids they saw. They just seemed to have no life outside of an endless stream of classes and tutors.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m trying to strike a balance with my kids. We encourage them to do things like learn music, take up sports etc, but not let that just consume all their free time. I want them to have time to just play freely, read comics, or just be a bit bored sometimes.</text></comment>