Throughout history, South Korea has recorded the lowest fertility rate ever across all nations. By 2023, the country’s total fertility rate had dropped to 0.72, meaning that only 72 children can be born to 100 women in their lifetime, while it takes a total fertility rate of 2.1 for a population to remain stable. In essence, South Korea is nowhere near that number and is the only OECD country to record a birth rate lower than 1.0 since the year 2018. The year 2024 saw a small increase in the rate to 0.75, the first positive change over the past 8 years.
For quite some time now, the narrative has revolved around social and economic issues: an ageing society, a small workforce, numerous pension expenditures, and not enough taxpayers. While these are serious problems, 2026 has shown us that we cannot solve the population dilemma merely by means of social policy. South Korea has an extremely militarized border with North Korea, which means that it still lives in a state of war since the ceasefire agreement was signed back in 1953. The US contributes 28,500 troops to the country to maintain peace. Thus, the national army is shrinking as a result of the collapse of the birth rate, which is going to worsen in the future.
The Numbers: How Severe the Decline Actually Is
In the year 2020, South Korea saw the largest rise in its population to 51.8 million, and since then, things have started to go downhill. There were 360,757 deaths versus 242,334 births in 2024, marking the fifth year in a row of more deaths than births. As per the government estimates, the expectation is that the population is going to go down to below 36.2 million in the year 2072, meaning a decrease of around 30 percent over one lifetime.
The issue of aging is noticeable as well. The portion of South Koreans aged 65 and older exceeded 20 percent for the first time in 2024, making it the first time in the country’s history when it is designated as a “super-aged” society, according to the UN demographic indicator. By 2030, a quarter of all South Koreans will be aged 65 and older. The dependency ratio, which is defined as the portion of children and older people relative to the working-age population, continues to lose its appeal for the Bank of Korea, which has issued a warning about the possibility of enduring recession sometime after 2040 in case the fertility rates do not improve.
Numerous cultural and economic dynamics cause these numbers. Rising housing demands in Seoul, an incredibly fierce educational system that imposes enormous expenses on families, constant gender disparity in the workplace, including costs for mothers, and changing social tendencies of younger generations that move away from early marriages and births lead to a breakdown that continues to persist despite countless government incentives. Across Korea, the average age of women at their first marriage has gone up from 25.3 years in 1995 to 31.6 in 2024. In South Korea, marriages always occur before births, unlike many Western countries, with marriage rates increasing by 15% in 2024, but amounting to 44% below the 1995 levels.
The Economic Dimension
The economic implications of demographic trends in South Korea have multiplied on several fronts. A dwindling number of people in the working-age group leads to a shortage of labour in manufacturing and services, increases the financial burden of the working population and limits the pool of consumers who can contribute to domestic consumption. The prediction of the Bank of Korea, projecting the country to enter a prolonged negative growth cycle before the end of the century, reflects the consensus of South Korean economists arising from the low birth rate of about 0.75.
The pressure on public finances is already being felt in the pension and healthcare sectors. Longer life expectancy, one of the highest in Asia as measured in South Korea, along with a diminishing number of contributors to the national pension fund, has caused an actuarial gap that has been identified but not solved by all governments. Following the example of schools across the country that had to close, we have seen 49 schools closed in 2025 because there were not enough students to meet the minimum number required for their operation, compared to 22 schools in 2023 and 34 schools in 2024. The biggest victims are rural areas, speeding up the process of urbanization that promotes low birth rates due to the concentration of population in expensive urban regions.
The Security Dimension: An Army Running Out of Soldiers
The fact that South Korea’s population crisis translates into a national security threat is not a hypothetical assumption. Instead, it is a known, quantifiable phenomenon that is happening faster and faster. South Korea has compulsory military service for all men aged 18 to 35, who should serve 18 to 24 months. However, this system requires that a sufficient number of young men reach the age of military service each year, and that number is decreasing significantly.
South Korea’s armed forces reduced total active-duty troops from 560,000 in 2019 to 450,000 in 2025, which accounts for a 20 percent reduction in six years, a figure much lower than an earlier report of 500,000 troops identified as the minimum requirement for credible deterrence against North Korea. The number of conscriptable men aged 20 years was a little less than 1/3 of the figure reported in 2019. The estimation by the Ministry of Defense indicates that the armed forces of South Korea face a deficit of approximately 50,000 troops, among which there are 21,000 non-commissioned officers.
The difficulty has changed; now companies have altered their approach. According to the Defence White Paper of South Korea, the number of young men reaching the age of 20 needed for starting their military service is expected to fall from 226,000 by 2025 to about 130,000 by 2040, or a 40% drop in just 15 years. It will soon be necessary to recruit about 200,000 new conscripts every year in the military.
The issue of female conscription, which has been a politically sensitive subject in South Korea, has come back to the fore in its political debate. According to the Foreign Policy report published in February 2026, in 2025, the Korea Military Academy produced a report with a call for female conscription, pointing to Sweden and Norway as examples. President Lee Jae-myung, who became President in June 2025, promises to increase the education of female officers as part of his national security policy. The Ministry of Defense indicated that it has no immediate process for drafting women, but it has structural rather than ideological motivation.
The importance of the North Korean situation increases the pressure. In contrast to South Korea, North Korea’s fertility rate is considerably lower than the latter, resulting in a higher total military personnel as well, estimated at approximately 1.2 million military personnel. The military balance on the Korean peninsula had originally been maintained owing to South Korea’s military superiority in terms of equipment, training, and support from the United States. A decrease in military personnel would change the balance of military forces on the peninsula, leading to significant implications that should be taken into account by South Korean security planners.
What Seoul Has Tried And Why It Has Not Worked
South Korea ranks at the top among its counterparts in expenditures related to pronatalist policies. Since 2006, various administrations have invested more than $200 billion in the implementation of such policies. These efforts include various subsidies for newborns, policies of childcare expansion, and improvement of parental leave rights. The outcome has been insignificant, as the report for 2024 shows that the present fertility rate is the same as in 2023, being the second lowest point in the history of the country.
The lack of success of financial incentives in this case is due to a structural and not a transactional problem. Young South Koreans do not stop giving birth to children because the financial support is not enough to cover expenses. Instead, they refrain from having kids as they feel that the cost of educating children in the competitive environment of South Korea, in terms of money, career, and society, is simply too high. On top of that, the change of mentality that drifted away from the traditional beliefs about early marriages and parenting has taken place, with the culture now evolving too much for monetary incentives to bring it back. According to the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, South Korea needs not only an increase in the size of payments but also a change in attitude and approach to parenting.
Immigration offers the most straightforward means for replenishing a declining workforce and recruits for conscription, even though it is an avenue that has met with considerable resistance in South Korea. As a largely homogenous nation, South Korea contends with little experience in immigration, and its citizens harbor a wary attitude towards immigration. The government has indeed created pathways and work visa programs for skilled foreigners, but returns from these efforts are a mere drop in the ocean in light of the magnitude of the problem at hand.
The main compensation strategy of South Korea on the military side has been technological. The defense budget for 2025 is more than 61 trillion won, which includes significant investments in autonomous systems, advanced weaponry, surveillance technologies, and AI-assisted command capabilities. The idea is to replace manpower with technology to ensure deterrence with a smaller but better-equipped and technologically superior number of soldiers. The most critical challenge for South Korean military planners is whether such a substitution can be accomplished fast enough and at a scale that would help offset the personnel deficit before the recruitment base shrinks even further.
Conclusion
The crisis in South Korea’s population isn’t looming on the horizon. Rather, it’s already here and is getting worse at a rapid pace. The size of the army is already 110 thousand men smaller than that of 20 years ago. The pool for conscription is already shrinking at a measurable pace. The financial system which props up the welfare state is also already under severe strain. Schools are already closing.
The most informative aspect of South Korea’s scenario in itself is not just a particular set of events but rather a combination of conditions it experiences at once: the unprecedented fall in its fertility rates, an unreconciled security challenge right next to its borders, a culturally embedded attitude against immigration, which demographers see as the most reliable solution to its crisis, coupled with a political framework that has been pouring money into the solution instead of addressing the problem.
Investments made in technology for military purposes and the strengthening of relations with the United States and Japan represent important but rational responses to a fundamental limitation that cannot be changed in the short run. Yet, they do not solve the fundamental problem. A country that is forecast to experience a significant drop in population in a century and whose military base is predicted to be reduced to less than 50% of the current number within twenty years has questions of national capacity and sustainability that cannot be answered with money alone. South Korea’s population issues have evolved into national security problems long ago. We have yet to see whether the realization of this fact will lead to necessary actions.
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The views and opinions expressed in this article/paper are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Paradigm Shift.
Kainat Farooq is a passionate International Relations student with a strong interest in diplomacy, policy, and global affairs. She is dedicated to contributing thoughtful analysis and research on international issues.
