South Koreans Told to Go Home and Make Babies
January 20, 2010
Births in the Republic of Korea (South Korea) peaked in 1959 at around 1 million, and have fallen sharply over the years to a current level of about 450,000. We find it amazing that the South Korean government has only taken 50 years to wake up to the reality and economic problem of declining births (see chart below).
A quick solution would be for the South to solve its differences with the North and become "Korea" again. They would be falling in the footsteps of East and West Germany.
BBC: South Korean government workers are being given an unusual instruction - go home and multiply. At 1900 on Wednesday, officials at the Ministry of Health will turn off all the lights in the building. They want to encourage staff to go home to their families and, well, make bigger ones. They plan to repeat the experiment every month. The country has one of the world's lowest birth rates, lower even than neighbouring Japan.
Source: United Nations
