Can South Korea Be Saved?

By the year60, South Korea as you know it will cease to exist because it's about to collapse. Well, what can you do about it? Let's talk about it. Thank you everybody for tuning in to the Hot Pop Boys. I'm going to cover this. Uh hopefully that was not Rage, Babe, because that is actually like the title of a lot of stuff. But anyways, there's this video on YouTube that has over 10 million views and it breaks down in detail why South Korea is heading to a collapse stage due to mostly the low birth rate. Now, we're going to talk about other reasons on why there's such a super low birth rate, what's happening in other countries, what are they doing to fight it. I'm going to talk about all of that. But first, let me play some clips from this video from Kir's Gazette. South Korea is over. This sounds brutal, but South Korea will soon start melting on all fronts, demographically, economically, socially, culturally, and militarily. Because for decades, the country has been experiencing a fertility crisis unprecedented in human history. And we've probably reached a point of no return. By60, the South Korea we know and love today will no longer exist. Okay, so I'm like, all right, these facts are nothing new. We've been known the birth rate is bad, but you know, really, what does that mean? Like, how are you going to alert me or alarm me or make me feel worried about this? In60, South Korea's population pyramid will look like this. The population will have shrunk by 30%. 16 million South Koreans will have disappeared in just 35 years and it will be the oldest country in human history. 1 in two South Koreans will be over the age of 65. Less than 1 in 10 will be under 25 and only 1 in 100 will be small children. Imagine waking up in a country where the streets are strangely quiet with no children playing on them. Entire cities have been abandoned. Half of the population is elderly and living either alone or in overcrowded retirement homes with a minority of people desperately trying to keep society running. There will be a few major consequences. Economic collapse. Okay. So yeah, basically not producing enough humans for your country where the structures were built to operate with a certain number of people. Obviously, you know, the cities are built to to expand and house a lot of people. If there's less people, then there's going to be like, you know, buildings go abandoned, almost like a Detroit type system. Like there's going to be a it's almost going to look like people are fleeing certain parts of the city, especially if they can't afford it, you know, because there's not going to be any other people left. But, you know, I don't know. Maybe part of the infrastructure is ran by AI in the future and things like that. Uh, but anyways, last clip. How could it get that bad? In general, as societies get richer, more educated, and child mortality plummets, people decide to have fewer kids. What makes South Korea special is that it's somehow supercharging all of these trends. South Korea lifted itself out of poverty in record time, but in doing so, it developed a unique kind of workahololism and extreme competitiveness. Although the work week is 40 hours and the legal maximum is 52 per week, unpaid overtime is normal for many. And the government even proposed to raise legal work time to 69 hours per week. Despite this, South Korea has relatively low wages and a high cost of living. Real estate in big cities is out of reach for most people. The cost of education is extremely high since families have to pay for private lessons if they want to send their kids to a high tier college. All of this while South Korea spends less on family benefits than most other rich countries. So really, the video is trying to say that there's no solutions, but I actually have some actual solutions, possible solutions. I don't know if they're going to work, but I think there are things that could help. And I know South Korea is already doing a lot. But first of all, I want to note that this whole dynamic of low birth rate, no people, pension plans, not enough support, not enough infrastructure, not enough military power in the near future. All of that is happening in many other countries. It's still a trend. It's just that South Korea is suffering from the worst case. They have the lowest birth rate, especially for an advanced society, especially for one that can produce, you know, all the things that America can essentially produce. Like yes, it is uh I guess the numbers are dwindling, but other countries in Europe that are also going through pretty low birth rates are Spain, Lithuania, Italy, Greece. you know, I mean, really no birth rate across the world is actually increasing as far as I know, uh, if not in a few countries, but even in places that historically had an incredible birth rate, like I believe Nigeria, Nigeria had like at one point like a seven or eight birth rate, but it's still going down to like five. So, as Nigeria may develop, I'm sure their birth rate's going to keep going down, too, until eventually in some time it may be pretty low like everybody else. But anyways, let's talk about what the East Asian countries are doing because uh East Asian countries, they they they have the lowest birth rate. So, let's talk about it. So, in South Korea, what they're doing is they got cash incentives. Parents get about $750 a month US uh for a birth uh for a year after birth plus a lump sum of $1,500. So, they get decent amount of cash. Child care support, maternity leave extended with encouragement for men to take it, although very few men do take it. fertility clinics, government funding IVF treatments, right? So, you know, just trying to make any way that you anywhere that you want to have a baby, like we just want to make it easier for you, you know, make it cheaper. So, has it helped? It actually has a little bit. So there's this statistic that says that from 2023 to 2024 there is a.3% rise or.3 rise in the birth rate in the fertility. So uh it's it's actually gone up a little bit is what they reported. Um now is that enough to solve the issue or stop the inevitable from happening? I don't think so. But I think it is hopeful. So I think there's hope in South Korea if you look at it. So maybe all those things have helped. But um I do want to point at some quick cultural reasons uh that maybe we don't think so much about, you know, aside from listen like a lot of people don't want to bear children or people are career-minded. It's latestage capitalism, all this stuff, right? Um one thing in Korea that's a little different than other countries is that I I guess in Korea there's a prevalent culture that childbearing and child care is pretty much mostly the women's job. Like that's still a belief. So obviously the more career-minded women are and even like the more focused they are on aesthetics, the less they want to have a baby. You know what I mean? And also I'm here's a here's another factor that a lot of people are not thinking about and I don't know if it's a significant factor. You guys let me know in the comments down below. This is just my brain. Okay. I do think that a sizable first of all South Korea has produced so much great content artist amazing artists the biggest some of the biggest stars in the world are South Korean right now or trained in South Korea as we know it and obviously it's done a lot for the Asian image globally so shout out to Korea really it's done a lot they've worked very hard they deserve all the praise for it however I do think that that career choice of so many people which is only a country of, you know, a roughly 48 million people in that country, so many of them want to do entertainment and try to be actors or K-pop stars. I mean, listen, there's this stat from 2022 that in just 2022 alone, there was 800 Korean trainees waiting to debut, K-pop trainee. 800. And a lot of them did not debut as we know, right? Because not that many debuted. But 800 trainees means that's 800 people that were picked out of how many thousand who tried out. So it's like people who want to uh I guess go into these career paths of entertainment. And I can vouch for it because I'm kind of in entertainment, you know, having been on YouTube for 13 years or whatever. But I'm like saying that the more you want to be a full-time actor or musician, it's usually not the most family uh it's not very conducive for starting a family or building a big family, at least having more than one kid, you know what I mean? So, I think some of that desire also uh is playing into it where it's like, you know, if you want to be a K-pop star, like you're just not thinking about having kids anytime soon, you know? Um but yeah, so shout out to Korea. Listen, they they got, you know, a spike in weddings, spike in marriages. They got a little spike in birth rate. So, I think that's good. Taiwan Taiwan, what is Taiwan doing to fight this low birth rate because they're at 87 cash for babies? Okay, giving up $1,000 per child, subsidized IVF. You know, they got work life balance, pushing shorter order hours. You know, you got parental leave, child care subsidies, you know, monthly child care support and school cost assistance, so to help pay for school. Um, has this worked in Taiwan? According to the Taipei Times in 2025, Taiwan's birth rate likely continued to drop from last year. So, Taiwan has not really seen any uptick. Korea maybe seen a small uptick. So, shout out to Korea, but Taiwan, yeah, it's still going out. China, the birth rate is pretty much hovering at barely one, probably lower 0.9 and falling fast. what they're trying to do. And again, China is a very big country, so it's hard for them to implement all of this in every single city, right? Because every city kind of has its own budget, but uh they are definitely ending the one child policy, right? But that didn't make everybody all of a sudden have more kids. Uh cash payments, uh 1,500 to 3,000 per child in some cities. Um housing and education subsidies, cheaper kindergarten and housing discounts, tax breaks for family and kids. Um, overall, is it working in China? Well, 2025 Rooters article, China's population falls for a third consecutive year. Woo! All right. Well, China is still, oddly enough, population-wise four times the size of America right now. But that doesn't mean, even though it seems like there's unlimited people in China, there's actually not, obviously. So, Japan birth rate, okay, 1.26, right? They're offering huge cash incentives. Some cities up to 500 thou 5,000 per child. Free child birth and education. National push for zerocost education right to make it free. Uh big investment in child care infrastructure. Parental leave up to 12 months for both parents. That's a long time to take a whole year off to raise your kid. You know, that's what's up. That's that's great. Uh work reform attempts, you know, premium Friday. Uh is it working for Japan? Pan's population falls by half a million as birth rate stays low. That's from 2025. So, um, anyways, real quick, I asked a Korean-American friend about Korea's I guess if you want to call it dire situation, you tell me. But I asked some Korean-American friends. I said, "Hey, how do you feel when you hear about this video that South Korea is cooked? South Korea is over." Well, he said, "Listen, it's our mom's culture. It is my culture, part of my culture that I care about and I feel bad, but I also understand kind of why it's happening and I don't know if I can do anything about it. And even if I could do something about it, would I go through the trouble to do it? Now, I mean, possibly if South Korea is an appealing enough place, it could bring some South Koreans back from the diaspora, from, you know, America and bring them back home and then start families there if they want. But it doesn't seem like that's happening because, you know, there's very nice Korean suburbs out in America, New Jersey, California, whatever you want, right? Um, so yeah, I I feel like from my Korean friends, you know, to hear this, it's kind of like, damn, you know, but uh I think it's crazy that in my lifetime, in my short lifetime, and actually just in the past 20 years, I've literally felt the Korean rise in media, the crazy rise where of relevance in media, of Korean faces, Korean actors, Korean names, Korean food, everything just rose. Korean culture exploded in the past really 15 years and now we're already concerned about the demise of the country and I think that's crazy. So I mean it's just like kind of how crazy how things work I guess that fast you know like I don't know. Anyways there's some comments on the internet. Somebody said it is crazy to me how the Korean peninsula managed to somehow fit both a Stalinist dictatorship and a cyberpunk dystopia. Hey, South Korea is not a dystopia yet. Uh, real talk. Someone says, "Listen, as a person in South Korea in the 30s, I wake up at 5 a.m. I go to sleep at 9:00 p.m. I don't have money for a house uh because I have to take care of my old parents. Can I make a baby? Hell no. It's not even something on my mind. As a Korean, another comment says, "As a Korean, I did military service and graduated from university. Now I'm working 75 hours a week at a company and I only make 2,200 a month and I don't own a house or a car. Um, I'm going to have to save for 10 years while spending the bare minimum just to own the home that I want. So, the idea of getting married is not even on my mind. Uh, someone said, uh, fastest growing country, fastest declining country. Again, South Korea is declining. It's like a freight train where you see it coming from the distance, coming from a distance, and then by the time you really see it, it comes fast all at once. So, um I feel bad that all Koreans in the comments of the videos are like, "Yeah, we already know, but we can't fix it. Society and politicians are in are not into it." So, why wouldn't the politicians care about this right now? Is it too far to think, you know, like is it does it require too much long-term thinking? You know, it is a hard problem. I'm not going to lie. Like, everybody's going through it. So, here's my opinion. Uh I don't think South Korea is going to fully collapse. I don't think it's going to become dystopian. I do think parts of the city in 30 years are going to look pretty different again. It's going to maybe like look like certain parts of Detroit or, you know, like some of those motor towns where a bunch of people had left, you know. Um, I think can South Korea use its media to promote families, like make more movies about families, promote the stars and the actors who have families, or try to like give them so much support to have kids so that they can show it off to their regular citizens. Like, if media is so important to South Koreans, maybe you can start making media about having kids. I don't know if that's a real that's like a that's like a cultural change and that's going to take a really long time, but they do need to normalize having families for maybe some of the K-pop stars and the actors, right? You know, maybe in the future there's something called like baby farms, you know, where there's like bunch of babies being born and that's just like it's like a baby factory. I know that sounds very dystopian as well, but maybe there's a way to normalize it and not make it seem so weird, you know? Um maybe they can I don't know. How do you wipe out people's debts? Obviously, there's a lot of like debt in Korea, you know, and uh that's what all like Squid Games is about and a lot of these, you know, kind of dramatic Korean movies are about a lot of Koreans having debt. So, you know, and then also there's immigrants and um that you can bring in. But also like if the neighboring countries like Japan and China are having trouble with their populations, like do they even have people to give to South Korea? And would South Korea even want them? So anyways guys, um let me know in the comments down below what you think. Uh are you Korean? Are you into Korean culture? How do you feel about this? I'd like to know because uh it's kind of weird for me to be talking about it. Like it just feels weird to say, "Oh, South Korea won't exist or South Korea's cooked." I'm like, it's like they're they're killing it so hard, but they're also they're also going away. But then going away, do you really feel it? Is it really a everyday thing? Because the everyday thing is you consume Korean content and Korean food. So every day it seems like, oh, South Korea is growing. The culture is blowing up. I love it. I love it. I love it. But then obviously maybe if you go there on the back end, people are like, uh, projection-wise, it's going to look rough in 20 years. We'll see. Anyways guys, uh, let me know if there's any practical solutions for this and let me know what you think. But, uh, until next time, I'm out. Peace.