South Koreans told to go home and make babies

[ccharles000]

South Korean government workers are being given an unusual instruction - go home and multiply.

At 1900 on Wednesday, officials at the Ministry of Health will turn off all the lights in the building.

They want to encourage staff to go home to their families and, well, make bigger ones. They plan to repeat the experiment every month.

The country has one of the world's lowest birth rates, lower even than neighbouring Japan.

Boosting the number of newborn children is a priority for the government, which is staring into the abyss of a rapidly ageing society, falling levels of manpower and spiralling health care costs.

The Ministry of Health, now sometimes jokingly referred to as the Ministry of Matchmaking, is in charge of spearheading this drive, and it clearly believes its staff should lead by example.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8469532.stm

[davidpdx]

1. Interesting article

I can comment on this a little because I've lived in Korea for six years and am married to one. The birthrate has been pretty flat while there is a very large segment of the population that is older (60+). They also have quite a problem with the male/female ratio in terms of marriage, especially for those who live in rural areas and are farmers. This has caused more Korean men to "buy" a wife from another country like Vietnam, The Philippines or China. Women are waiting longer to marry and getting their education first before settling down.

In my wife's family there were no foreigners before I married her. I am now one of two. Her uncle recently got remarried to an older Chinese woman (this wasn't one of the cases I mentioned above from my understanding of the siutation). I keep hoping my neice will marry a foreigner just see her parents pissed off. God, I'd love to see my Korean brother-in-law hit the roof if that happened.