South Korea has spent billions to reverse its low birth rate, but some say it isn't listening to young women’s needs.
On a rainy Tuesday afternoon, Yejin is cooking lunch for her friends at her apartment, where she lives alone on the outskirts of Seoul, happily single.
This bodes so badly for the country's economy, pension pot, and security that politicians have declared it "a national emergency".Couples who have children are showered with cash, from monthly handouts to subsidised housing and free taxis. Hospital bills and even IVF treatments are covered, though only for those who are married.
"I love my job, it brings me so much fulfilment," she says. "But working in Korea is hard, you're stuck in a perpetual cycle of work."Yejin says there is also pressure to study in her spare time, to get better at her job: "Koreans have this mindset that if you don't continuously work on self-improvement, you're going to get left behind, and become a failure. This fear makes us work twice as hard.
Both men and women are entitled to a year's leave during the first eight years of their child's life.Korean women are the most highly educated of those in OECD countries, and yet the country has the worst gender pay gap and a higher-than-average proportion of women out of work compared to men.they are being presented with a trade-off - have a career or have a family. Increasingly, they are choosing a career."Look at the children. They're so cute," she cooed.
Even if she wanted to give up work, or juggle a family and a career, she said she could not afford to because the cost of housing is too high.More than half the population live in or around the capital Seoul, which is where the vast majority of opportunities are, creating huge pressure on apartments and resources. Stella and her husband have been gradually pushed further and further away from the capital, into neighbouring provinces, and are still unable to buy their own place.
"Minji" wanted to share her experience, but not publicly. She is not ready for her parents to know she will not be having children. "They will be so shocked and disappointed," she said, from the coastal city of Busan, where she lives with her husband."I've spent my whole life studying," she said - first to get into a good university, then for her civil servant exams, and then to get her first job at 28.
But her biggest consideration is that she does not want to put a child through the same competitive misery she experienced. "I felt so angry," she said. "I had been well-educated and taught that women were equal, so I could not accept this.
But Minji says she is grateful she has agency. "We are the first generation who get to choose. Before it was a given, we had to have children. And so we choose not to because we can."Back at Yejin's apartment, after lunch, her friends are haggling over her books and other belongings.
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