SOUTH KOREA: Low Birth Rate Blamed on Women

By Jiyoung LeeAn Reprint | | Print |

SEOUL, Dec 19 2009 (IPS) - On Dec. 9, Sungshin Women’s University in Seoul organised an event titled, ‘Happy Childbirth – Rich and Strong Future’, aimed at trying to raise awareness about the country’s very low birth rate.

At the Dec. 3 public forum Eunsang Lee (extreme left) said there is no link between the country's low birth rate and high abortion rate. Credit: Office of parliamentarian Il-pyo Hong

It sparked controversy when the organisers requested women students in the audience to submit a sworn statement that they would have children.

A fourth year student who prefers to remain anonymous, told IPS “the organisers almost forced female participants to write a sworn statement for childbirth despite many participants asserting that the low birth issue is a social problem rather than mere individual choice.”

South Korea’s birth rate – 1.19 in 2008, according to the Korean Statistical Information Service, is the lowest among OECD countries – has been in the news recently.

In November, the government’s Presidential Council for Future & Vision announced “comprehensive plans for low birth rate.”

The plans include a crackdown on abortion.

Women’s groups have expressed strong reservations. “This plan illustrates the anti-human rights stance of the government which portrays women as an instrument for child birth rather than human beings with reproductive rights,” groups said in a joint statement issued on Nov.26.

The government’s position echoes a recently launched anti-abortion campaign by a group of obstetricians and gynecologists.

Abortion is illegal in South Korea except in cases specified under the Mother-Child Protection Law. However, the reality according to a 2005 survey conducted by the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Family Affairs is that there are some 340,000 abortions annually across the country. The actual numbers are likely to be much higher.

At an open forum on Dec. 3, ‘Should we let abortion be – an inconvenient truth as it is’ organised by parliamentarian Il-pyo Hong, Eunsang Lee, director of the Korea Sexual Violence Relief Centre, observed that there is no link between the country’s low birth rate and high abortion rate.

Describing the former as a “social problem”, she said: “The government’s approach of linking low birth rate to abortion is highly problematic since it plans to solve a social problem through state intervention and control over women’s bodies.”

It is not the first time that women’s reproductive rights have been considered marginal in political discussions on South Korea’s birth rate.

Even the current President Myung-bak Lee had remarked during his presidential election campaign in 2007, “If women do not abort, we (Korea) can solve the problem of low birth rate.”

But if you were to ask women, specially married working women, for a solution to the serious birth rate problem they would advocate that the workplace should be transformed into a more women friendly domain.

Hayeon Cheon, who said she has been married for two years and is currently looking for work, was angered by the government’s simplistic solution to the birth rate problem. Based on her personal experience, she told IPS that the “low birth rate is fundamentally caused by the hostile working environment for married woman. In Korea, it is not easy for a woman to work once she delivers a child.”

She added: “Nowadays 90 percent of female high school students go to university and many with access to good education want to pursue a career, but it is very difficult for married women to take maternity leave and continue to work as the labour market and workplace conditions are not favourable.”

Unless the problem of married women in the labour market is solved, she said, “the phenomenon of low birth rate will continue unhindered.”