The South Korean conundrum: an ageing society desperate for babies

South Korea is the global birth dearth poster child. A demographic basket case. Every year it claims the record for the world’s lowest fertility rate, now 0.78. Statistics Korea projects a rate of 0.65 by 2025. The capital Seoul, home to one in five South Koreans, rings in at 0.59.

When South Korea was founded in 1948, the population was just over 20 million. It peaked in 2020 at over 51 million, declining since. Projections have South Korea shrinking more than 50 percent by century’s end.

But numbers cannot describe…