South Korea has the lowest birth rate in the world, and some experts even predict that the number of young people in South Korea will be halved by 2050. This is not a trivial matter, the number of young adults is decreasing, and there are more and more elderly people, and there will be many problems. This means that the labor force has been reduced by more than half, what should the elderly do? Who will do the work? Who will provide the pension for the elderly?
However, South Korea has to face the fact that there are fewer and fewer newborns. So much so that South Korea is not creating more jobs for young people, but thinking about how to provide more services for the elderly. South Korea has transformed from a sunrise industry to a sunset industry.
Many industries in South Korea have begun to quietly change, and many wedding halls in South Korea have been transformed into funeral homes. The number of these halls in South Korea has decreased from 1,030 in January 2018 to 754 in January 2023, a decrease of 26.8% in five years.
Many Koreans say that this was once the place where they got married, but now it is a funeral home, because their parents' funerals are here again, which is really mixed feelings.
The head of the funeral home said that five years ago, the demand for funerals per month was about 100 people, but now it has tripled, and it looks like it will continue to increase.
Except, of course, the transformation of the wedding hall into a funeral parlor. Many kindergartens in South Korea have also been transformed into nursing homes. In the past five years, 7,000 kindergartens have closed in South Korea, and nursing homes have surged by 20% to more than 4,000. A number of kindergartens, maternity hospitals and children's hospitals have been converted into nursing homes.
There are many shops selling pet clothes in Korea, but it is difficult to find a store that sells clothes for children. On the streets, you can see young Koreans pushing strollers out of the house, but the strollers are not filled with babies, but with all kinds of pets.
Young people in South Korea don't like children very much, and there are many places in Korea where children are not allowed to enter. If they are not allowed, these people who don't like children even want to expand the area where children are forbidden to other places such as parks. Even if young people in South Korea get married, they rarely have children. It is very interesting that there are fewer and fewer love films in South Korea now, and it can also be seen from this that Korean films and television no longer invest in love in order to cater to young people.
Will there be a situation in South Korea on the mainland, as far as the mainland is concerned? Although young people on the mainland are living more and more transparently, and there are many people who marry later and have children later, it is inevitable that a large number of people also look forward to a life of many children and grandchildren. Moreover, the mainland also has a characteristic, that is, the population base is large, and this situation in South Korea will not be staged in China in a short period of time. Although the number of births on the mainland is also decreasing year by year, in general, it is difficult for the mainland to appear in a situation like South Korea.
The situation in South Korea is simply inexplicable. Even though the South Korean government has increased subsidies for having children, young South Koreans just don't listen. After all, they couldn't understand better that the subsidies given by the South Korean government can only support them for a few months after they have children, and the rest of the time they need to rely entirely on them. Now that their lives are so stressful, they don't want to have a few more children to add to the pressure, and they don't have any traditional ideas about inheritance.