As a child, Hyobin Lee longed to be a mother. However, once she started working, she was forced to make a choice between starting a family and continuing her career.
She eventually postponed marriage and became a successful scholar in Daejeon. Lee, now 44, is one of millions of South Korean women who have chosen not to have children, causing the country’s birth rate to fall to a record low.
The country’s fertility rate (the average number of births per woman) fell to 0.72 last year, according to preliminary government figures released earlier this year. That’s well below the 2.1 rate needed to keep the population stable. Last year, 23,000 babies were born, and the country’s total population is on track to fall to an estimated 26 million by 2100 – half the current population.
“When I was young, I dreamed of having a son like me. I wanted to play with him, read books together and show him many things about the world. But I realized that reality is not that simple,” Lee said, adding that having a child would affect her career, and that she was afraid that over time she would blame the child. “As a result, both me and my son were unhappy,” she said.
Lee says economics play a big role. Officials have a number of policies in place to encourage women to have children, but they have had little effect. For example, parental leave is legally available to both men and women, but only women can take it. Only 1.3 percent of men in South Korea take parental leave, compared to the OECD average of 43.4 percent.
Korean companies are reluctant to hire young women because they fear the effort it would take to train women who will take maternity leave and then focus on full-time motherhood instead of returning to the workforce. “In Korean culture, many people believe that childbirth and all aspects of childcare are women’s responsibility. It’s such a difficult process that many people decide not to have children. That’s true for me,” Lee said.
Kim Yu-Mi, an IT engineer, 38, and her two children at their home in Seongnam, south of Seoul, on February 13, 2017. Photo: AFP
Jungmin Kwon, an associate professor at Portland State University in Oregon who specializes in East Asian popular culture, agrees that Korean social pressures can sometimes feel suffocating to many.
“South Korea is famous for its large private education market, where parents spend a lot of money on their children’s extra classes from a young age to compete with other children. It is very difficult for new parents to go against this trend,” said Professor Kwon.
More importantly, in Korea’s patriarchal culture, women need to expend a lot of mental and physical energy to raise children, according to Professor Kwon. Statistics show that women do five times more housework and childcare than men.
“In a context where respect and care for women have yet to take root in society, balancing family and career is a stressful and challenging responsibility for mothers,” Kwon said.
Thus, when women’s educational level is much better than the previous generation, and their economic resources are more stable, they tend to put their career first. Many women not only do not have children, they choose not to marry.
According to Lee, South Korea’s efforts to increase the birth rate, such as supplementing welfare for multiple-child families and supporting single-parent families, have failed to turn the situation around. It has even caused resentment among the male community.
“They feel resentful about having to complete their military service without benefiting from as many support policies as women,” Lee said.
Both Lee Kwon and Lee believe that Korea will have a hard time overcoming its population crisis. Young women seem less interested in meeting national needs, and they have different views on family, marriage, children, community and the country than previous generations.
“They are less bound by the obligations of being a woman imposed by states, societies and households,” Lee said.