SOUTH KOREA IS OVER
2410만명의 구독자를 가지고 있는 youtube channel "Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell"은 약 두 달 전 (2025. 4. 2.) SOUTH KOREA IS OVER 이라는 동영상을 공개하였고, 이 동영상은 현재 (2025년 5월 말 기준) 1230만회를 넘는 조회수를 기록하고 있다.
동영상에 달린 댓글 중 8만회 이상의 지지를 받은 댓글을 가져왔다.
동영상이 한국의 현 상황의 심각성과 그 원인을 데이터에 근거하여 보여주고, 이러한 추세가 계속될 경우 경제, 사회, 문화 전반에 걸쳐서 펼쳐질 문제점을 체계적으로 분석한다면,
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South Korea is over. This sounds brutal, but South Korea will soon start melting on all fronts - demographically, economically, socially, culturally and militarily because for decdes the country has been experiencing a fertility crisis unprecedented in human history and we've probably reached a point of no return.
By 2060, the South Korea we know and love today will no longer exist.
What will the collapse look like and why is it now almost impossible to stop?
The real population bomb
To have a stable population, you need a fertility rate of about 2.1 children per woman.
In the 1950s, South Koreans used to have six children on average, in the 1980s, the rate fell below two and in 2023, it was 0.72 kids per woman - the lowest ever recorded in history.
In Seoul, fertility is even lower - around 0.55 on average. About half of the women here won't have any kids and the other half just one.
What do these numbers actually mean in the real world? If fertility stays as it is, then 100 South Koreans will have 36 kids. When they grow up, they will have 13 kids who will then have 5. Within 4 generations, 100 South Koreans will turn into 5.
If we look at today's South Korean population pyramid, we see this is pretty real. there's only one one-year-old for four 50-year-olds. After four decades below the replacement level, the consequences were still largely invisible. Today South Korea's population is at an all-time high as are it's workforce and it's GDP which is still growing.
But demographics hits you like a freight train you hear it vaguely in the distance and then it runs you over. South Korea is about to be hit.
Let's time travel 35 years into the future to 2060 and see what the country will look like then.
When it comes to demographics, the most commonly used projections are those put together by the UN. They envisage three scenarios: low fertility, medium and high.
But in the past, all medium UN projections for South Korea have consistently been too positive.
Between 2022 and 2023 alone, fertility in South Korea dropped by another 8%, so we're going to use the latest low fertility scenario which has been the most accurate in the last few years.
In 2060, South Korea's population pyramid will look like this. The population will have shrunk by 30%. 16 million South Koreans will have disappeared in just 35 years and it will be the oldest country in human history.
One in two South Koreans will be over the age of 65, less than 1 in 10 will be under 25 and only 1 in 100 will be small children.
Imagine waking up in a country where the streets are strangely quiet with no children playing on them. Entire cities have been abandoned. Half of the population is elderly and living either alone or in overcrowded retirement homes with a minority of people desperately trying to keep society running.
There will be a few major consequences.
Economic collapse
In 2023, a breathtaking 40% of South Koreans over 65 live below the poverty line. But in 2060, this number may seem lovely in comparison.
Today, South Korea has one of the largest pension funds in the worlds, worth about 730 billion US dollars. But it's projected to stop growing in the 2040s and be completely depleted by the 2050s. So in 2060, pensions will have to be paid by the working population.
Estimates vary, but for a pension system to work, the minimum a society needs is, between two to three workers per retiree paying for them with their taxes. But even if we assume that all South Koreans over 15 will be working in 2060, the country will have less than one worker per senior. Workers will be unable to stem the incredible costs.
So not only will poverty among the elderly be common but a big chunk will be forced to work except they may not be able to find jobs because by 2060, the South Korean economy may have collapsed.
Broadly speaking, the size of an economy is linked to the size of its workforce. To have a big economy, you need a lot of workers to produce a lot of things and a lot more people to buy them.
Today, South Korea has about 37 million people of working age generating a GDP of about 1.7 trillion US dollars. But by 2060, its workforce will have shrunk to less than half to about 17 million.
Of course, technological progress means that productivity will be higher and each individual will probably produce more than today. But even if productivity keeps growing at the same rate or more than we've seen in the last decades, South Korea's GDP could peak in the 2040s. In other words, South Korea will enter a permanent economic recession. There are more optimistic projections that see the recession begin as late as 2050, but they're based on the medium UN demographic scenario and there are no signs that we're heading there.
Another factor in the economy is science technology and innovation. Areas in which big leaps are typically made by young adults and the middle-aged. Young people have fresh ideas that contribute to the wealth of society.
Significantly fewer people working also means way less tax for the government which will be trapped between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, having to provide for half the population that are seniors, on the other seeing its income diminished.
It will be forced to shut down or cut essential services like hospitals or social benefits.
Since infrastructure only works at scale, smaller communities may be abandoned as the country contracts into its metropolitan areas. And of course there won't be enough money to invest in the future. This is bad.
Why there really is no way back.
The problem with the demographic freight train is that, once it hits, things become irreversible.
Let's say fertility in South Korea magically triples to the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman and stays there. In 2060, it will be an inverted pyramid on top of a barrel and there would still be only 1.5 people of working age per senior over 65.
Even in the best madeup scenario, South Korea has to pass through an unavoidable bottleneck before it will recover.
But there is also a kernel of hope here. Yes, the situation is grim, but at least in the long term, recovery is possible if South Korea enacts rapid and societal changes that make its population want to have kids.
Again in 2024, births rose for the first time in 9 yeas. 3% more than in 2023, but for that to continue, South Korea needs to face the music and ask how they got to this point.
how could it get that bad?
In general, as societies get richer, more educated and child mortality plummets, people decide to have fewer kids. What makes South Korea special is that, it's somehow supercharging all of these trends. South Korea lifted itself out of poverty in record time but in doing so, it developed a unique kind of workaholism and extreme competitiveness.
Although the work week is 40 hours and legal maximum is 52 per week, unpaid overtime is normal for many, and the government even proposed to raise legal work time to 69 hours per week.
Despite this, South Korea has relatively low wages and a high cost of living. Real estate in big cities is out of reach for most people. The cost of education is extremely high, since families have to pay for private lessons if they want to send their kids to a high tier college.
All of this, while South Korea spends less on family benefits than most other rich countries.
Old-fashioned cultural norms make matters even worse. Out of all developed countries, South Korean men do just about the least share of house work and child care within their familes. This leaves women with a disproportionate amount of work if they want to keep their jobs after a pregnancy while many men are overwhelmed by the societal expectation to be the main bread winner and have successful careers.
Starting a family or not is a personal decision and most South Koreans are deciding against it. The bottom line is that, South Korea has created a culture that leads to verey few kids.
Conclusion
Demographic collapse is not an abstract thing in the future, it's happening right now.
The weirdest thing about all of this is that, almost nobody involved in the public discourse has truly grasped the gravity of the situation.
If you do the math, the future just seems to be too insane to be true like it's hard to believe. None of this has ever happened before. So low birth rates are mostly discussed in the context of worker shortages not as the existential threat to our societies, cultures, wealth and our way of life that they are.
If we don't take it seriously very soon and change the DNA of our modern societies in a way that encourages young people to start having children again, then the rest of the century will be pretty grim for those of us who will live through it.