The Suicides in South Korea, and the Suicide of South Korea
I would attribute the low birth rate to the fact that economic growth has slowed down.<p>The 20s of this generation are literally the ones that are getting the shorter end of the stick. Imagine yourself being 18 year-old male in South Korea, 80% of highschool graduates go to college, so given the status of the job market you are pretty much forced to go to college unless you are willing to work in a poor environment (as in jobs that don&#x27;t provide career progression, or pose high risk on personal health).<p>To add salt to this wound, the college tuition has been hiking. The parental generation of Korea who are in their 50s lived through a time of high economic growth, and education was affordable due to cheaper tuition that could be paid off in short term. Let&#x27;s say that you take college somewhat seriously, and spend extra year or two after highschool to get into a solid college. You are now 20. After a year you have to serve the military. You are now 23-24, second year in college. After finishing college, you are 26, but there are good amount of people who take year or two off so you will get plenty of 27-28 year old males that have lot of debt, and not much job experience.<p>Ok, time to get a job. But hey, the job market sucks right now. Older people aren&#x27;t retiring. Some companies give you contract or internship work but these barely pay for cost of living, and rarely convert to satisfying full-time positions. There were times when college degree meant a guaranteed full-time employment but not anymore. If you managed to land a full-time job after gaining job experience, you&#x27;re probably 30. To make things better, real estate is spinning out of control so you wouldn&#x27;t be able to afford a house any time soon. If you asked a person like this about getting married and having children within a year or two... You can&#x27;t blame them for saying no.<p>Population kept scaling with the assumption that economic growth will match it, but things have slowed down. It&#x27;s not like Koreans will go extinct or kill themselves as a whole. But it&#x27;s the matter of how much is the population going to drop by and whether they can find breakthroughs in the meantime to grow its economic capacities.<p>As a side note, although people are mainly concerned about teens or young adults when discussing suicide issues, I would like to point out that suicide rate in Korea is exceptionally higher for older people (60+).