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/420/ Fertility Freefall & Gender Strife in South Korea ft. Hyeyoung Woo (Patreon)

Published:
2024-06-25 06:00:05
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

On baby bust, feminism and male resentment.

[Patreon Exclusive]

Alex and regular contributor Leigh Phillips call up Korean sociologist Hyeyoung Woo, director of the Institute for Asian Studies at Portland State University, to talk about demography, family and gender in the Republic of Korea.

How urgent is the national debate on fertility?

What policy measures have been introduced to reverse the decline?

How is work organised and how do long hours contribute to the lack of family formation?

What has been the impact of feminist movements in Korea?

Is there a male backlash against feminism underway?

Why is there such a huge gender gap in voting behaviour among the young?

Links:

/394/ Girls, Left / Boys, Right ft. Nina Power

The Real Reason South Koreans Aren’t Having Babies, Anna Louie Sussman, The Atlantic

Foreign maids and no military service: South Korea criticised over ideas to boost birthrate, The Guardian

South Korea's incel election, S. Nathan Park, UnHerd

Why South Korean women aren't having babies, BBC News

This demographic catastrophe will hit us all, Peter Franklin, UnHerd

Korean Families Yesterday and Today, eds. Hyunjoon Park & Hyeyoung Woo

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Comments

Richard R

I wonder if it isn't more parsimonious to say that increased productivity leads to declining fertility along with gender strife. A bit of lag time between these. It's happening more intensely in SK just because productivity modernization happened so rapidly, without yet having a corresponding shift in attitudes towards work and working hours.

Lauri Franzon

I have one minor gripe with your interview questions: Around the 40 minute mark Hyeyoung Woo mentiones that the feminist movement in South Korea does not enjoy broad support because they are too radical, especially for the educated upper middle class. I would have loved to hear her specify what "especially radical feminism" means in the Korean context, and who these radical feminists are if they apparently aren't educated upper middle class people. On another note, regarding the connection between modernism and plummeting birthrates: I personally subscribe to Malcom Kyeyune's thoughts on this (unfortunatelly mostly communicated in Swedish language podcasts rather than his writings over at Compact), which is that the birthrate is inversely proportional to the energy a mother must spend to raise the child, which is higher in a modern society due to a) children not being able to help with easy tasks at home to the same extent as in pre-industrial societies and b) School choices, after-school acitivities, etc, all of which require incresing amounts of effort from the parents (or the mother in South Korea, as we've learned) if they want the kid to reproduce their class position instead of falling down on the social ladder. More recently he has said on the same topic that "Homo sapiens probably resembles all other animals in the sense that population size adjusts to the available resources." A bit cynical, perhaps, but certainly plausible. Keeping the above rules in mind while also consideting that South Korea has an extremely competitive job market gives us a rather plausible explanation why they have the lowest birthrate in the world, as well as why birthrates generally start plummeting not too long after counties industrialize.

Lars Ekman

Considering the episode number I was disappointed that the most obvious policy suggestion to jump-start fertility rates (legalizing a well known aphrodisiac) was not mentioned.

Vanessa Pupavac

Lauri Franzon's points above on more intensive parenting norms of today are important to understanding falling birth rates. Sociological studies of the last two decades have highlighted how working mothers as well as home mothers spend more time on child care activities than previous generations of home mothers with the shift from marriage to the child being the foundation of the family alongside the atomisation of broader family and community bonds and mutual responsibilities. Added dimension to intensive parenting with concern for education & career success as starting from birth - important dimension in South Korea. Ideas of parental determinism and infant determinism promoted both culturally and politically and being globalised are supporting intensive parenting becoming norms - see e.g. UNICEF thinking.

Christoph Iselin

Discussing the low fertility rate and overall ageing population in East Asian countries compared to Western countries without considering migration, or the lack thereof, seems like missing an important piece of the puzzle. However, perhaps this was intentional to avoid opening up that discussion. I was somewhat disappointed at the end when the only solution suggested was the kind of labour market and welfare state reforms that have already been implemented in various ways in Europe and even in South Korea itself. Without the desired outcome of significantly boosting fertility. Looking at the global fertility map by the Population Reference Bureau, one has to wonder if the solution to low fertility is not a combination of abject poverty, religious fundamentalism and patriarchy. The same seems to be true on a subnational level, if one is inclined to belive movement conservatives: "https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-conservative-fertility-advantage".