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Korea has one of the lowest birth rates in the world now, with an average of 1.08 children per woman. This is well below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman for developed nations.
As of July 2009, Korea's population growth rate had plunged to a mere 0.266/1,000 population...
As with the preference for sons, a significant number of men must pursue marriage with foreign women, which has caused many difficulties due to cultural differences. These difficulties have also led to more contraception, abortions, and divorce. [HLI Mission Report, June 2010]
Demographic Implosion Spurs Panicked South Korea to Enforce Abortion Ban
Possibly three out of four pregnancies in Korea end in abortion
The Republic of Korea has signaled its willingness to work to reverse a heavily pro-abortion culture through various measures, including beginning to enforce an abortion ban that has technically existed in the country for decades, in order to address the severe demographic implosion that threatens the country's economic stability, Korean sources report.
The pro-birth effort was announced on Wednesday by the Presidential Council for Future and Vision, and includes proposals to expand benefits for single mothers and provide greater benefits to families with more than two children.
"We have been a society that promoted abortion," Kwak Seung-jun, leader of the Presidential Council, told reporters. "There are few people who realize abortion is illegal. We must work to create a mood where abortion is discouraged."
According to the Korean journal JoongAng Ilbo, the abortion ban - rarely enforced for decades, and even flagrantly violated in the 1960s and 1970s as part of official policy to combat what the government had deemed a "population explosion" - will now be more strictly enforced as part of an overall plan to increase the birth rate and incentivize more women to carry their pregnancies to term.
The Korean Herald reports that proposals outlined in the "Increase Koreans" project outline aggressive steps to give increased support for families with at least three children.
The Presidential Council
proposed that the third-born child of a family be given an advantage in
university entrance examinations, employment, and financial support for
high school and university tuition. Families with three or more
children will be given special interest rates on their mortgages.
As a sign of further desperation, the Council recommended that the
government finance artificial insemination procedures up to three times
to the tune of 1.5 million won ($1300 US).
Kwak announced that the panel was proposing aggressive measures that
had to be taken immediately, and could not wait even ten years from now.
Official data from the Ministry of Health indicates that doctors
perform 350,000 abortions per year, while they deliver on average just
450,000 babies, meaning 43.7 percent of pregnancies end in abortion.
However, the actual number of abortions may be at least five times the
official estimate. According to the Korea Times, Rep. Chang Yoon-seok
of the ruling Grand National Party said that a National Assembly
inspection in October found that the number of illegal abortions in
Korea exceeds 1.5 million a year or roughly 4,000 babies aborted per
day.
If the National Assembly's estimate is correct, the nation of 48
million commits approximately the same number of abortions as the
United States, which has 300 million residents. Presuming the numbers
of births recorded by the Health Ministry remains the same, that would
mean approximately three out of four pregnancies in South Korea end in
abortion.
In most cases, the law provides that abortion can only be performed in
limited circumstances during the first 24 weeks of pregnancy: incest,
rape, critical threats to the life of the mother and highly fatal
genetic illnesses.
But South Korea's government has routinely left the law unenforced as
only 4 percent of all abortions meet the legal criteria. Between
September 2005 and September 2009, only 17 indictments for illegal
abortion appeared in South Korea's criminal justice system.
Technically, there are penalties: women who seek elective abortions
face a sentence of one year in jail or a fine of 2 million won ($1736
US). Abortionists can be sentenced to two years in prison. However all
abortion providers operate in the open without any fear of punishment.
That may change now that the Korean government is grappling with the
fact that their official efforts to discourage the fertility-rate 40-50
years ago through contraception and abortion has proved enormously
successful. Thanks to these measures South Korea has turned into a
rapidly aging country, with little remaining cultural incentive to have
more children, despite the looming demographic catastrophe.
South Korea's total fertility rate is now estimated at 1.21
children/woman, which is far below the 2.1 replacement rate which
demographers say is the threshold for population stability. The
nation's fertility rate is comparable to Japan, which also has a rate
of 1.21, and with a median age of 43 has descended into irreversible
population decline.
South Korea is looking to avoid the same fate, but the birth-promotion
program unveiled by the government in 2006 has not done much to stem
the decline, so the government has decided to increase the incentives
package.
But economic incentives may not be enough to overcome the national
reluctance to have children. JoongAng Ilbo reports that middle class
households on average earn 3.3 million won ($2,860 US) a month, but
have about 1.58 children per household. Lower income families, which
receive government subsidies, have 1.68 children, and the rich have
1.71 children per household.
The experience of Shanghai may shed light on why government's power to
reverse an anti-childbearing culture is far more difficult than
imposing it on a population.
Earlier in July, Shanghai's government - concerned about its own coming
demographic crisis - announced new plans to relax even further the
one-child policy and provide more economic incentives to encourage
couples to have more children. However, 7300 couples from one-child
households that were already eligible to have two children declined,
opting instead to have either one child or none at all.
Chinese message boards discussing the new policy revealed that many
Chinese in affluent Shanghai were hesitant to have more than one child,
because they had not experienced successful family models with more
than one child.
Instead,
individuals from single-child families were even hesitant to have one
child - also seen as an inevitable obstacle to having an active social
life - since their own experience ingrained in them how difficult it
was for their own parents to raise them.
Seven hundred of Korea's obstetricians, nevertheless, have decided to
address the situation by encouraging the government down the path of
strictly enforcing the abortion law as well as creating medical
peer-pressure among physicians against performing abortion, except when
the mother's life is in explicit danger.
According to the Korea Times, the Korean Gynecological Physicians'
Association (GYNOB) sent out flyers to 3400 physicians asking for their
participation in a national campaign to abolish illegal abortion, held
a rally on Sunday, and said that the names of clinics participating in
their campaign would be available online at http://www.antidc.org/.
Measures proposed by the Presidential Council will be discussed further
by government agencies and a special committee for the Prime Minister
before its expected finalization in early 2010.
[25November2009, Peter J. Smith, SEOUL, http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/nov/09112512.html ]
Shanghai Starts Backpedaling One-Child Policy in Face of Demographic Implosion
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jul/09072411.html
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