July 2024
01Jul

Korea to launch population ministry to address low birth rates, aging population

Korea will launch a new ministry of population strategy to address low birth rates and a rapidly aging population, which have emerged as some of the starkest challenges facing the country, officials said Monday. The government unveiled the plan following high-level meetings with the ruling party, saying that a revised government organization act will be proposed within July for the launch of the ministry. Once established, the new ministry will focus on strategy and planning for demographic issues, such as low...

July 1, 2024
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June 2024
20Jun

S. Korean president declares demographic national emergency

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on Wednesday declared a "demographic national emergency" amid growing concerns about the Asian country's record-low birth rate. Yoon issued the declaration at a meeting of the presidential committee on low birth and aging population, vowing to run a pan-government response system until the low birth issue is overcome, according to the presidential office. The country's total fertility rate, or an average number of children a woman is expected to bear in lifetime, reached a record low...

June 20, 2024
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10Jun

South Korea. Achieving optimum mental health for older adults

The population in Korea is aging at an alarming pace. According to Statistics Korea, by 2025 the country is forecast to become a super-aged society, with individuals aged 65 years and older comprising over 20 percent of its estimated total population of 52 million. By 2050, the number is expected to rise to 44 percent. This demographic change has important implications for the health sector and social systems. How the nation deals with these changes will determine its population's...

June 10, 2024
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May 2024
24May

How South Korea’s giant pension funds fell prey to $395m NDIS housing scam

James Charisiou was no novice at corporate finance. At KPMG, the Melburnian advised banks on big deals. On Friday, he was sentenced to 12 years in jail for the deal of his life – securing $395 million from South Korean investors to build specialist accommodation for use in the National Disability Insurance Scheme. If only any of it was real. The elaborate fraud rocked Australia’s property industry. Charisiou even used the names of some of the sector’s most prominent executives...

May 24, 2024
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16May

S. Korea’s retirement pension funds post double-digit growth in 2023

South Korea's retirement pension funds posted a double-digit growth last year amid the higher return on investment, government data showed Thursday. Corporate retirement pension funds under management grew 13.8 percent over the year to 382.4 trillion won (283.9 billion U.S. dollars) in 2023, according to joint data from the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) and the Ministry of Employment and Labor. For the past five years, the retirement pension funds doubled from 190 trillion won (141.1 billion dollars) in 2018. The funds' annual...

May 16, 2024
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April 2024
23Apr

Aging population to drive down Korea’s housing prices from 2040: experts

South Korea's housing prices are expected to see a long-term decline starting in 2040, hit by the nation’s falling birth rate and quickly aging society, according to experts who joined a Seoul seminar hosted by construction project management firm Hanmi Global on Tuesday. "In 2025, South Korea will become a superaging society with an over-65 population surpassing 10 million, which will account for more than 20 percent of the country's total population. Due to the aging population and overall decline...

April 23, 2024
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March 2024
14Mar

South Korea. Pension reform proposals criticized for lacking sustainability

The recent national pension reform proposal at the National Assembly is facing criticism for merely tweaking some key figures — such as the premium and income replacement rates — without tackling the essential reforms needed to bolster the system's long-term sustainability. Many say the suggested changes are provisional, especially given the uncertainty about when the national pension system might undergo revision again. A special pension reform committee associated with the National Assembly unveiled two proposals on Tuesday, following three days of...

March 14, 2024
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05Mar

Aging Korea needs foreign caregivers: report

South Korea should come up with various measures to attract foreign nationals to work here as care workers, as the country faces a shortage in the sector to care for its rapidly aging society, a report by the Bank of Korea argued, Tuesday. The cost of hiring a care worker at a nursing home or other facilities was estimated at 3.7 million won ($2,775) per month as of last year, according to the report titled “Measures to alleviate the care...

March 5, 2024
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February 2024
20Feb

How South Korea Is Tackling Its Demographic Crisis

Some 24.5% of South Koreans aged 70 and above were still working as of January, local media reported Monday, as officials increasingly look to keep more elderly in the workforce to address a demographic crisis. Elderly employment figures have seen a steady increase since the country’s statistics authority started to collect the data in 2005. Among these workers, half of whom are aged 75 and above, 42.1% are considered “simple laborers” by authorities, referring to workers with jobs that are not specialized and require...

February 20, 2024
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16Feb

South Korea has the world’s lowest fertility rate. Seoul’s mayor thinks he has a solution: a city-sponsored dating event

South Korea has the world’s lowest fertility rate, at just 0.78 births per woman as of 2022. It’s likely to get even worse, with Statistics Korea, the country’s official statistics bureau, forecasting a rate of just 0.72 for 2023. That would be three times lower than the often-accepted replacement rate of 2.1, the number of births needed to keep a population at a stable level. It’s even worse in Seoul, the nation’s capital, where the fertility rate is just 0.59....

February 16, 2024
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