this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2025
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More than 4,000 elementary, middle and high schools across Korea have shut their doors as the country’s student population shrinks, new data shows.

According to the Ministry of Education’s latest figures, revealed on Sunday by Rep. Jin Sun-mee of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, since 1980, 4,008 schools under 17 regional education offices nationwide have closed as of March this year. During the period, the number of enrolled students decreased from 9.9 million to 5.07 million.

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[–] expatriado@lemmy.world 38 points 10 hours ago (11 children)

They have the lowest birth rates in the world, beating Japan by some margin. Since most of the world is heading that direction, is important to watch how these countries handle the issue, so we can prepare better

[–] riskable@programming.dev 31 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (9 children)

SK is not going to be a good example because, in addition to the usual reasons for a declining birth rate, they also have some pretty extreme racism, sexism, and a work culture that even worse than Japan in many ways. Why would you want to have kids in South Korea‽

Let's say you do have a wife and kids... Good luck getting home to see them on time on the regular!

What's incredible is that the government's stance on this situation is that it is preserving their culture. What they really mean is that they're keeping out foreigners and not cross-breeding with the riffraff (which is... The rest of the world).

They will "preserve" themselves right into extinction.

[–] TheBat@lemmy.world 4 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

Don't forget who's their neighbour. North Korea might win without shooting a single bullet.

[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 6 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

It would be pretty wild if the Korean reunification was accomplished due to the complete demographic collapse of South Korea.

Though, NK isn’t doing that much better, coming in with a fertility rate somewhere between 1.3 and 1.4, which is somewhat unusual when compared to other countries with extreme poverty.

[–] riskable@programming.dev 4 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

The population of North Korea is approximately 26.5 million while South Korea is around 51.7 million. North Korea has already overtaken the South in total number of births per year (~340,000 VS ~250,000 in the South).

If the current trend continues (which I doubt it will), that means North Korea's population will overtake South Korea some time around 2090-2100.

Instead, what's going to happen is South Korea will have a regime collapse and then they're going to have a "come to Korea" moment (like a "come to Jesus" moment, but Korean-themed and much more literal). There's all sorts of things they can do to improve their situation practically overnight (from a geopolitical perspective) but they've so far refused to do so (for racist reasons).

Either they're going to fortify their population with foreign stock or they're going to demonstrate "the superiority of the Korean race" by going extinct.

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