Problems such as low population growth rate and low fertility willingness have often appeared in China's online arena in recent years, and have aroused public discussion because of their sensitivity. In fact, the country facing the most serious population problem is not China, but China's close neighbor, South Korea. According to the United Nations Population Report, South Korea's total fertility rate in 2021 was only 11. It is very likely that the country will be destroyed in the future due to insufficient population.
The problem of low fertility can be seen in many countries, but as one of the more developed economies in East Asia, why is it that only South Korea has a population problem that is so serious that it is in danger of national extinction?And South Korea has tried all kinds of methods, but it is difficult to increase even a little bit of fertilityAs for the root cause of the demographic crisis, the only thing that can be seen on the faces of South Koreans is helplessness.
Like Europe and the United States, South Korea's population problem began to manifest itself in the late 20th century after its economic boom. Prior to this, as an emerging nation-state, South Koreans had never imagined that their country would face a demographic crisis. After the end of the Korean War, South Korea's population ushered in a wave of rapid growth along with its economy, and in the 60s of the 20th century, South Korea, with a population of only 25 million, had an average annual birth population of more than 1 million.
But when time passed, in the 80s, South Korea's population problem ushered in the first critical node - it had reached 1The population growth rate of 5% has fallen sharply to less than 1%, and the nightmare of South Korea's population crisis has been entangled in the southern part of the Korean Peninsula for a long time, becoming a sharp blade hanging over South Korea that may fall at any time. This key turning point was closely related to the political and economic background of South Korea at that time.
The 80s of the 20th century was a time of excitement and danger for every Korean who experienced that time. Before the 80s, after the national independence, South Korea was mostly ruled by the military, and under the arbitrariness of Park Chung-hee and others, South Korea's economy developed rapidly, and even created the myth of the economic miracle of the Han River, and South Korea has successfully transformed from a backward agricultural country to an industrial country with a certain economic strength. But at the same time, contradictions such as uneven income distribution and excessive infringement of civil rights are hidden under the rapid development of the economy. In the 80s, with the development of heavy industry and the expansion of the city, the urban middle class and labor groups also began to rise, and in the harsh political environment and the economic background of the chaebol gradually forming in South Korea at that time, ordinary Koreans felt more and more difficult to survive and live. 
Life is so painful, ordinary South Korean people will naturally choose to make their voices heard by the military. Thus, in the 80s, from the Gwangju incident of the urban middle class to the labor movement with the broad participation of the Korean labor group, the unyielding wave of the people hit the rule of the military ** wave after wave. However, in front of the elite air transport troops, ordinary Koreans can only be reduced to helpless blood and tears, and can only bow their heads in the face of cruel reality.
In the context of such an era, the Korean people's thinking about fertility has naturally changed - their lives are so difficult, if they add a few more children, this day will be even more uncomfortable, even if they have children, the future is still a dark day without seeing the dawn. The shackles from ideology to the real economy have led to a decrease in the growth rate of South Korea's population, and since then it has stepped into the abyss of low population growth. When South Korea entered the 21st century, the population crisis was further forced in front of the Koreans, becoming the second node of the worsening of the population crisis - in 2005, South Korea's population growth rate fell to 021%, and then South Korea's population growth continued to decline instead of increasing, and finally became a staggering -0 in 202118%。After the 21st century, South Korea has long been freed from the shackles of the past military rule, and the cancer that can be spawned from the economic policy of military control - the chaebol is still accompanying the young people of modern South Korea, and gradually bending their backs. The Korean chaebol familiar to contemporary Chinese did not exist since the beginning of South Korea's independence, but originated from the need for Park Chung-hee to develop an export-oriented economy in the 60s of the 20th century. At the beginning, the Korean chaebol was not as powerful as the public imagined now, and the Korean chaebol at that time was just a pug led by a military leader. For those who have seized power, such as Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan, there is no need to use force, and only a decision of the first bank of Korea can easily determine the life and death of South Korean enterprises. 
But after the democratization of South Korea in the late 80s, although South Korea has died out, the elite class represented by the Korean chaebol still monopolizes the economic lifeline of South Korea. With the turn of time, South Korea's chaebol clubs, although old and new, still firmly occupy most of the wealth distribution, and it is difficult for the economic situation of ordinary Koreans to be decisively changed.
On the contrary, with the slowdown of technological progress and economic growth, young people in South Korea are facing more and more pressure to survive, and the employment pressure of high involution has almost evolved into a daily 996 work schedule, strict rules and feudal workplace qualification rules, all of which are piled up in the hearts of every Korean, and finally presented on the surface is South Korea's extremely high suicide rate and extremely low population growth rate. South Korea's current negative population growth situation is not a temporary disaster, but has been predestined since the 80s. From these two key nodes of South Korea's population growth, it can be clearly seen that South Korea's low population growth has been going on for many years, and those in power in South Korea, they really don't care about this, they haven't made the slightest effort, and watched South Korea go to the country and extinction step by step?After entering the 21st century, in the face of the increasingly serious, even impending population crisis, South Korea has adopted a variety of encouraging policies in an attempt to increase the fertility rate of its own nation. Since 2006, South Korea** has continuously issued birth subsidies to low-income Korean couples, trying to reduce the economic pressure of Koreans in this way, so as to reduce the fertility pressure faced by ordinary people. In addition, South Korea** has also launched special welfare policies such as paternity leave, in an attempt to increase the willingness of Koreans to have children. However, all these measures can only be regarded as a symptom, not a cure. Even for some South Koreans, the economic situation they face is even worse after the introduction of certain welfare policies, which further reduces their willingness to have children. 
Among these counterproductive policies, maternity and paternity leave are the first to bear the brunt. From the perspective of **, the implementation of these types of holidays was originally intended to increase the welfare of Korean childbearing couples, but when the policy is implemented at the practical level, this kind of welfare has become a problem for such people. For Korean companies, the implementation of maternity leave will increase their costs, so although there is not much opposition to maternity leave on the surface, it is secretly full of rejection of young Koreans who want to have children. And South Koreans, who are in such a bad environment, can only reluctantly give up the idea of having children and choose to compromise with reality. There is nothing wrong with these types of policies in South Korea, but they are only a palliative strategy. For every ordinary Korean, the wealth distribution system with huge disparities, the highly rigid class circulation channels, the working environment with high pressure but only living and enough to eat, and the Korean capitalist system that they want to change but have no strength to resist are the "roots" of them who do not want to have children. If we turn the perspective to ordinary Koreans, then this willingness to resist childbirth is also a resistance that ordinary Koreans can make when they cannot change the current bad situation. As South Korean netizens said - the country is already so bad, so what does the future of negative population growth have to do with me?It doesn't matter how many children those rich people have, but even if we give birth to 10 children, we are just slaves who will give birth to 10 more future slaves in this world. Under this national mentality, it is obviously more difficult to get the Korean public to have children. The only way to increase fertility is to change South Korea's current extremely unfair distribution of wealth and highly rigid class conditions. Obviously, it is easy to see that all this is naturally unacceptable and unenforceable for those in power in South Korea. 
It is precisely for this reason that South Korea has previously launched the cancellation of junior high school entrance exams, the cancellation of key high school schools and key classes, and even a complete ban on make-up classes. But in the face of the cruel reality, all this has not stopped the accelerated involution of Koreans at the level of education, let alone the increasing cost of education for Koreans, let alone the rising cost of childbirth for Koreans, and the consequent willingness to have children.
South Korea's current population problem comes from South Korea's wealth distribution system and economic system, and the South Korean policymakers who have the power to change these two systems are naturally absolutely unwilling, and the refusal and delay of the decision-makers have further worsened the living conditions of ordinary Koreans and made the demographic crisis even worse. For young Koreans, for the demographic crisis of the Korean nation, this is an unsolvable cycle. For South Korea, none of this can be changed, but for China, which has entered an aging population, is it too late to change all this?