A 39-year-old South Korean woman who is originally from Seoul decided to leave the company she had worked for many years to take a new job in Japan.

She had taken a leave of absence to study in Tokyo since last year, but chose to settle there and raise her two children in Japan.

The deciding factor in her decision to “escape South Korea” was “freedom from the cram school lifestyle,” she said. “If I go back to (South Korea), I will have to spend my days taking my children to cram schools all the time again.”

The mother found an "oasis" in Japan, although the nation is also hampered by a similar "super-low birthrate" issue. 

The woman's decision may be an extreme one, but many mothers in South Korea are similarly exhausted from the obsessively competitive society filled with an expensive cram school lifestyle and child-rearing pressure.

SOUTH KOREA FACING UNPRECEDENTED CHALLENGE

South Korea’s super-low birthrate is further accelerating its decline. 

According to official figures released on Feb. 28, South Korea’s total fertility rate (the number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime) in 2023 is now 0.72 (provisional figure).

This is even lower than the 0.78 of the previous year and the lowest level since 1970.

It is the eighth consecutive year that the birthrate has fallen below the previous year’s level.

The latest figure is even lower than Japan (1.26 in 2022), which is similarly facing a declining birthrate.

South Korea’s continuing super low birthrate is even unprecedented in the world. South Korea is the only one of the 38 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to have a birthrate below 1.

Various factors have been blamed as contributing to the declining birthrate.

The difficulty of balancing work and child rearing due to long working hours, and the disproportionate burden of child rearing on women are similar to challenges facing Japan.

The average age of first marriage is over 30 for both men and women, and the trend toward later marriage is also a factor.

In South Korea, almost half of the total population lives in the Seoul metropolitan area, and housing prices have skyrocketed due to the continued concentration of the population in this area.

South Korean society places an excessive emphasis on a person's educational background and many parents are education-obsessed. Such a culture is said to be greater than in Japan and is a major factor accelerating the declining birthrate.

The situation overlaps with that in Japan as well, where social “hardship” and uncertainty about the future make people, particularly the younger generation, hesitant to have children.

The South Korean government has taken measures to combat the declining birthrate, such as increasing the number of day care centers, expanding free child care and child care leave programs, but has been unable to halt the declining birthrate.

RAISING CHILDREN IN ULTRA-COMPETITIVE SOCIETY

The South Korean mother with two children who moved to Japan had a life that was no different from many others. 

When she lived in Seoul, her children’s typical day would go like this: After school, they would attend soccer and taekwondo classes. Then, they would take English, piano or art lessons.

In families with two working parents, many children went cram school-hopping and stay there until their parents return home. 

The woman's husband was reluctant at first, but then stopped saying anything because he did not want his children to be left behind in a competitive society.

Currently, her children attend an international school in Tokyo. Although international schools have an image of being expensive, she said, “It is not much different from the costs of lessons and cram schools in South Korea.”

In South Korea, each of her children cost 1 million won (about 110,000 yen, or $750) per month for these expenses, and the cost of hiring a nanny five times a week was 1.6 million won per month, she said.

“We are not special,” she said. “All the other two-income families around us were like that.”

She and her husband had an annual income of 150 million won, but the burden was heavy.

South Korea is an academic background-oriented and competitive society, even more so than Japan. A strong sense of value that success is the result of graduating from a famous university in Seoul and entering a large company runs deep in society.

Parents are also under pressure as few get admitted to the top universities. If they do not raise their children to “win out,” parents, particularly mothers, feel that they will be labeled as “a mother who cannot properly raise her child.”

The South Korean woman said that she does not feel an atmosphere of excessive competition living in Tokyo. She also feels that there are many places where children can run around and be children.

“I feel comfortable here," she said. "I plan to bring my husband and we as a family will settle in Tokyo. I want to raise my children in a different way than in South Korea.”

BEING A 'PATRIOT' IN SOUTH KOREA

Economic burdens such as education and housing costs cast long shadows over the futures of the younger generation in South Korea.

A 28-year-old woman who lives in the central part of South Korea works as a cashier at a supermarket. She is a non-regular employee.

“I want to find a good husband and work together with him to live our lives,” she said. “But when it comes to actually having a child, I hesitate.”

For a 34-year-old woman who lives in Seoul and works at a restaurant, marrying and having a child is not even an option.

“A child is a life,” she said. “When it’s hard enough for me to live on my own, I can’t take on the responsibility of (a child).”

The South Korean government has worked to strengthen measures to combat the declining birthrate by offering support for child rearing. But among the younger generation, there is a persistent chilly view toward the government’s “encouraging childbirth” policy.

A 32-year-old woman who is an office worker said she heard someone say on a TV news program, “If you have a child, you are a patriot.”

The remark angered her.

She feels that there are only a handful of stable jobs and if people are unable to get one, they will have to continue to live in economic instability.

Without eliminating such an “unequal society,” the declining birthrate will not change, she believes.

“If having children makes you a patriot, then I don’t want to be a patriot,” she said. 

(This article was compiled from stories written by Inju An, Kota Kawano and correspondent Kiyohide Inada.)