South Korea sees record birth rate growth for Jan-May

SEOUL

South Korea registered record birth rate growth during the first five months of the year, a statistics agency official told AFP on July 23.

The country has one of the world's longest life expectancies and lowest birth rates, a combination that presents a looming demographic challenge.

Seoul has poured billions of dollars into efforts to encourage women to have more children and maintain population stability.

"The number of newborns for the January-May period stood at 106,048, a 6.9 percent increase, the highest growth rate since such data collection began in 1981," said Kang Hyun-Young from Statistics Korea.

The surge follows South Korea's first annual increase in the number of births in more than a decade, driven by a rise in marriages. In 2024, the number of newborns rose by 8,300, or 3.6 percent, to 238,300 from the previous year.

April in particular saw a spike, with year-on-year growth reaching 8.7 percent and the number of births totaling 20,717 that month.

The latest figure marks a sharp turnaround from early 2024, when the number of births for the January-May period dropped by 2.7 percent from the previous year.

The fertility rate, or the average number of babies a woman is expected to have in her lifetime, for May stood at 0.75.

The country needs a fertility rate of 2.1 children in order to maintain the country's population of 51 million.

At current rates, the population will nearly halve to 26.8 million by 2100, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle.