Park’s case exemplifies why so many South Korean women are put off marriage and childbirth, pushing the country’s birth rate — one of the world’s lowest — ever further down. After fighting for about six months, she finally relented and offered her resignation, giving birth to a daughter a month later. Now nearly three-quarters of South Korean women aged 20-40 see marriage as unnecessary, an opinion poll by a financial magazine and a recruitment website showed. ‘Harsh conditions’Against that backdrop, the South’s government has spent a whopping 136 trillion won ($121 billion) since 2005 to try to boost the birth rate, mostly through campaigns to encourage more young people to wed and reproduce, without success. “Unless these harsh conditions for women change, no amount of government subsidies will convince women having children is a happy choice.”

Source: Egypt Independent December 18, 2018 03:45 UTC