The Sharp Decline Of Young Students In South Korea Has Netizens Worried For The Future

In the past many years, there has been a steady decrease in the annual rate of growth of the global population. In fact, this number peaked back in 1963 when the growth rate was at 2.3%, and currently in 2023, it’s at 0.9%. This means that wild the global population is still growing (we reached 8 billion people worldwide this year), if this trend continues, we may soon have more people dying than being born, leading to a decrease in global population.

In some ways, this would be a good thing. More people in the world mean more resources required to sustain the growing population, many of which are non-renewable. Global climate change is negatively impacted by the carbon footprint that each person produces, becoming increasingly worse as the world’s population has grown. Pandemics such as the COVID-19 crisis could become more common as overpopulation leads to increased population density, mobility, and globalization.

However, there are problems associated with the decline in the population of young people in recent years, too. You might be familiar with population pyramids, which show how different types of population growth impact the age demographics within a group of people.

Types of population pyramids | Wikipedia

The “negative growth” pyramid is the one we could be heading towards, and that means there will be a higher population of elderly people than younger people. This then leads to a higher ratio of dependent, non-working people compared to those that are working, and can end up causing stress to the population’s economy and resources.

All this to be said, South Korea seems to already be heading quickly towards this type of negative growth, according to recent data collected about the country’s youth.

The data, collected by the Demographics of the Ministry of Public Administration and Security, shows that there has been a steady decrease in the number of children beginning around those that are about 10 years old in 2023. In fact, there are less than half as many newborns than there are 15 year olds.

Demographics of the Ministry of Public Administration and Security’s resident registration

• 3rd grade (18 years old): 449,800
• 2nd grade (17 years old): 441,514
• 1st grade (16 years old): 463,696

• 3rd grade (15 years old): 492,473
• 2nd grade (14 years old): 458,413
• 1st grade (13 years old): 452,202

• 6th grade (12 years old): 487,829
• 5th grade (11 years old): 478,168
• 4th grade (10 years old): 468,707
• 3rd grade (9 years old): 439,953
• 2nd grade (8 years old): 446,578
• 1st grade (7 years old): 432,065

• 6 years old: 386,547
• 5 years old: 348,224
• 4 years old: 319,882
• 3 years old: 292,357
• 2 years old: 272,467
• 1 year old: 257,293
• 0 years old: 236,544

Here’s a look at the data by percentages.

This data was recently shared on an Korean forum post, which was titled “The severe state of number of students in 2023”. It has led to a heated and intense debate about what could be causing such a rapid decline in births in South Korea, ranging from a lack of proper support for raising children to women just not having any incentive to have children unless they just love kids.

South Korea isn’t alone in this population decline — in fact, several Asian countries such as Japan, China, Thailand, and Singapore also show similar trends — but it will be interesting to see if this trend continues going forward, or if societal changes are made that encourage the country’s population to grow once again.