South Korea planning to create ministry to tackle low birth rates
SEOUL: South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said on Thursday that he wants to create a new ministry to address the country’s low birthrate — the world’s lowest, with the country facing a looming demographic crisis.
“I ask the parliament’s cooperation to revise government organisation to set up the Ministry of Low Birth Rate Counter Planning,” he said in a live address to the nation.
South Korea’s birth rate fell to a record low last year, official data shows, despite having poured billions of dollars into efforts to encourage women to have more children and maintain population stability.
The country has one of the world’s longest life expectancies and lowest birth rates, a combination that presents a looming demographic challenge.
South Korea’s fertility rate — the number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime — dropped to 0.72 in 2023, down nearly eight percent from 2022, according to
Yoon Suk-yeol
preliminary data from Statistics Korea in February.
This is far below the 2.1 children needed to maintain the current population of 51 million, which at these rates will nearly halve by the year 2100, experts estimate.
South Korea’s 0.72 birth rate is the lowest among OECD nations, while the average age to give birth is 33.6, the highest in the OECD. It comes despite the government having spent vast amounts to encourage more babies, including cash subsidies, babysitting services and support for infertility treatment.
BUCHAREST: At Romania’s new crowd-funded children’s cancer hospital, one-year-old Eric Ivan eagerly walked up and down the corridor, his mother holding his hands to steady him.
The bright, attractive building is a far cry from the drab facilities next door — and stands out as the first hospital in Romania financed exclusively through donations.
No less than 350,000 people and almost 8,000 companies contributed to it with the drive led by a civil group, frustrated by the inadequate facilities in the EU country with the lowest public spending on health.
“Romanians just need things to believe in,” said Oana Gheorghiu, who co-founded the Give Life Association that collected the money.
For Carmen Uscatu, the group’s other co-founder, the new hospital is proof that “anything is possible”.
Out of the total raised, some €20 million came from twoand four-euro text messages, according to Give Life.
The new facility is a “slap in the face of politicians who didn’t want and couldn’t do anything for healthcare in this country”, actor and musician
Tudor Chirila, one of its donors, wrote on Facebook.
Founded in 2012, Give Life helps build health infrastructure throughout the country.
The Bucharest project was born in 2015 when the two women saw children with cancer and their families queueing outside a single toilet in the Marie Curie state hospital.
With a capacity of 140 beds, the new building includes oncology, haemato-oncology, surgery, intensive care and neurosurgery units. It also has playrooms, a cinema, a radio studio and even an observatory on the roof.