The subject of our session on May 16^th was proposed by business members of the group at the last session, as these demographic changes are beginning to impinge on their long range plans.

Korea’s birthrate continues to fall, forcing demographers to recalculate the decline in the future population and its age composition, economists to reduce future GDP growth potential and vexing NPS calculations with prospects for unfundable social security provisions by the 2060s.  It also has impending implications for land prices and the type of building appropriate for the future.

In one sense the apocalypse is still a decade away as Koreans over 65 continue to work.   In another sense it is already here with schools and universities without enough children and students, rural areas with shrinking populations, the armed forces with falling numbers of conscripts and big companies without enough entry level employees. At the same time current elderly poverty levels continue to point towards the majority of elderly people without adequate income in the future.

Over the last  16 years the government has spent US$200 billion on increasing fertility without results, and in 2024 will spend $30 billion more. So while there still might be ways to increase the birth rate up towards replacement levels solutions to date are not evident.  It would take 25 years of replacement level births to put the economy and society back on a normal growth path.

Alternatives include increasing immigration, automation, robots, changing society and other ideas.

We will include an interview with the OECD team which has just completed but not yet published a report on the issue and have invited as guests Jasmine Lee, the foreign born national assembly member to talk about immigration policy and Professor Cho Young-tae of SNU who write a book in 2016 titled Fixed Future and has since researched policies coping with falling populations.  We will also give the usual economic update based round Q1 GDP results and other indicators.

Please register for this exciting session.

Warning there is no parking at the Embassy itself. 
Paypark at the Anglican cathedral or Koreana hotel car park or other convenient public parking.

Yours sincerely