Nonetheless, the reality is that South Korea has been experiencing many of the same problems Japan did in the early 1990s, including high levels of household and corporate debt, labor- and financial-market inefficiencies, and low productivity in the service sector. Given a fertility rate of just 1.2 births per woman – among the lowest in the world – South Korea’s labor force is set to shrink by a quarter by 2050, with people aged 65 and over accounting for 35% of the total population, up from 13% today.