The country has one of the longest life expectancies and lowest birth rates in the world – a combination that poses a serious demographic challenge.

Seoul has invested billions of dollars in efforts to encourage women to have more children and maintain population stability.

"The number of newborns for the January-May period was 106,048, an increase of 6.9% and the highest growth since such data collection began in 1981," Kang Hyun-yon of South Korea's Statistics Bureau told AFP.

The increase follows South Korea's first annual rise in fertility in more than a decade, due to an increase in marriages. In 2024, the number of newborns increased by 8,300, or 3.6%, to 238,300 compared to the previous year.

April saw a particularly sharp jump, with annual growth reaching 8.7% and the number of births for the month standing at 20,717.

The latest data marks a sharp reversal compared to the beginning of 2024, when the number of births for the January-May period fell by 2.7% compared to the previous year.

The fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime, was 0.75 in May.

The country needs a fertility rate of 2.1 children to maintain its population of 51 million.

At the current rate, the population will decline by almost half to 26.8 million by 2100, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle.

The increase is due to "the growth in the number of women in their early 30s, which is leading to an overall increase in marriages," Kang explained.

"In South Korea, there is a strong correlation between marriage and fertility, which led to an increase in births in the first five months," she added.

In 2024, the country saw a 14.8% annual increase in the number of marriages, with over 220,000 couples tying the knot.

Many of the government benefits designed to support child-rearing do not cover parents who are not legally married.

Analysts point to many reasons for the low birth rate, from the high cost of raising children and property prices to the perceived competition in society that makes it difficult to find well-paid jobs.

Another key factor is the double burden on working mothers, who have to cope with housework and childcare while pursuing their careers.

In an attempt to reverse the trend, the South Korean government is offering cash subsidies, childcare services, and support for infertility treatment.

Neighboring Japan is struggling with the same problem—it has the second oldest population in the world after Monaco, and relatively strict immigration rules mean that the country faces a growing labor shortage. | BGNES