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South Korea’s birth rate is so low, one company offers staff a $75,000 incentive to have children

Seoul — South Korea’s overall birth rate hit a record low of 0.72 in 2023, and with that figure projected to fall even further in 2024, some Korean businesses have started offering remarkably generous incentives to convince their workers to become parents.

“The declining fertility rate leads to a decline in the workforce and purchasing power and slowing economic growth, which in turn directly affects the sustainability of corporate management, meaning companies need to actively address the issue,” Korea Economic Research Institute (KERI) president Chul Chung said recently at a Korean-Japanese business seminar dedicated to the topic.

Jin Sung Yoo, a senior research fellow at KERI, said the main reason for South Korea’s worryingly low birth rate was the “effect on career progression” associated with having children.

Many solutions were discussed at the seminar, and some eye-opening incentives have been announced in recent weeks.

The Lotte Group, a massive cross-industry conglomerate, said it had found success through “various in-house family-friendly policies.” The company said the existing program had helped push the internal birth rate among employees up to 2.05 during 2022, no small feat when the national average was 0.81.

Ok-keun Cho, head of corporate culture at the Lotte Group, said starting this year, the company would also be offering employees with three or more children a 7-9 seat family vehicle, free of charge.

The most generous parenthood incentive, however, is likely the one for workers at the construction and housing group Booyoung, which has been offering employees a $75,000 bonus for each new child they parent.

So far, the company says 66 employees have taken advantage — at a cost to Booyoung of about $5 million.

Company chairman Lee Joong Keun said he sees it as an investment in the nation’s future, warning that if the birth rate continues to fall, “Korea will face a crisis of national existence 20 years from now, including a decline in the economically productive population and a shortage of defense personnel to ensure national security and maintain order.”

Why U.S. births are decreasing

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Under South Korea’s rules, $75,000 is the largest handout a parent can receive without having to pay additional tax on the month. But Booyoung’s boss said he wanted to go even further, announcing that he would work to help provide employees who become the parent of a third child with “housing with no tax burden on tenants and no maintenance responsibilities.”

The construction company chief said he was hoping to get the South Korean government to agree to provide the land necessary for his plans.

Meanwhile, city officials have said that Seoul’s local government plans to invest more than $1.3 billion during 2024 in the Birth Encouragement Project, an upgrade to an existing incentive policy.

The project has been largely focused on helping South Korean’s maintain their careers around family planning, but it’s been expanded to make more people eligible for the benefits, and those benefits now include infertility treatment and more childcare services.

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South Korea evacuating World Scout Jamboree site as Typhoon Khanun bears down

Seoul, South Korea — South Korea will evacuate tens of thousands of scouts by bus from a coastal jamboree site as Tropical Storm Khanun looms, officials said Monday. Beginning Tuesday morning, vehicles will move 36,000 scouts — mostly teenagers — from the World Scout Jamboree in the southwestern county of Buan, according to Kim Sung-ho, a vice minister at South Korea’s Ministry of the Interior and Safety.

He said most of the scouts, who come from 158 countries, will be accommodated at venues in the capital city, Seoul, and the nearby metropolitan area. Officials were trying to secure spaces at government training centers and education facilities as well as hotels. Kim said it would take six hours or more to evacuate the scouts from the campsite, which organizers said will no longer be used for any event after they leave.

Hot temperatures have already forced thousands of British and American scouts to leave the site, which is made on land reclaimed from sea. The British scouts were transferred to hotels in Seoul while the American scouts were moved to Camp Humphreys, a U.S. military base about 45 miles south of Seoul.

SKOREA-WEATHER-HEAT — Flags are displayed at a viewing deck overlooking the campsite of the World Scout Jamboree in Buan, North Jeolla province, South Korea, August 5, 2023.

ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP/Getty

The announcement came after The World Organization of the Scout Movement said it had urgently called on South Korea to move the scouts from the storm’s path and “provide all necessary resources and support for participants during their stay and until they return to their home countries.”

South Korea categorizes Khanun as a typhoon, defined as a tropical storm with winds stronger than 38 miles per hour. South Korea’s weather agency expects Khanun to weaken to a storm within the next five days.

South Korea’s government did not immediately specify any venues where the scouts will be staying. David Venn, global director of communications for the World Organization of the Scout Movement, said it was still waiting for government officials to provide detailed plans.

Typhoon Khanun forecast

Khanun has taken an unusual, meandering path around Japan’s southwestern islands for more than a week, dumping heavy rain, knocking out power to thousands of homes and disrupting flights and train services. On Monday afternoon, it had sustained winds of 67 miles per hour, with higher gusts, and was forecast to maintain that strength as it brushes Japan’s main island of Kyushu this week, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

South Korea’s weather agency reported that Khanun was expected to make landfall in South Korea on Thursday morning, potentially packing winds as strong as 95 miles per hour. Large swaths of the country’s south, including Buan, could be affected by the storm as early as Wednesday, the agency said.

The plans to evacuate the scouts were announced hours after President Yoon Suk Yeol’s office said he had called for “contingency” plans, including relocating them to hotels and other facilities in the greater capital area.

The agency said the storm was at about 99 miles east of Amami city on Japan’s southern main island of Kyushu and moving gradually toward the north as of Monday afternoon. It warned residents in affected regions to watch out for mudslides, high winds and rough seas.

The storm has caused one death and 70 injuries on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, according to the country’s Fire and Disaster Management Agency. Due to the forecast of harsh weather in the region, West Japan Railway Co. said there was a possibility of suspending “Shinkansen” bullet train services from Wednesday night to Thursday morning.

Scouts “not taking any chances”

Hundreds of participants had been treated for heat-related ailments since the jamboree started on Wednesday. Long before the event’s start, critics raised concerns about bringing such large numbers of young people to a vast, treeless area lacking protection from the summer heat.

Kirvil Kaasa of the Norwegian Guide and Scout Association told Norway’s news agency NTB that “the evacuation is taking place well before the (storm).”

“We are not taking any chances, and the health and safety of our Norwegian participants is the most important thing,” she told NTB. Some 700 scouts from the Scandinavian country took part in the event and they were to be relocated to a U.S. military base, NTB said.

Kim Hyun-sook, South Korea’s minister of gender equality and family, said officials are trying to arrange new cultural events and activities for the scouts before they leave, including a possible K-pop concert at a Seoul soccer stadium on Friday to go with the closing ceremony.

“We don’t see it that way,” Kim said when asked whether the scouts’ departure from Buan should be seen as an early end for the jamboree. “We are creating new programs with regional governments away from the campsite, so it could be said jamboree is widening.”

Organizers earlier on Monday were scurrying to come up with plans to evacuate the scouts ahead of the storm’s arrival. Choi Chang-haeng, secretary-general of the jamboree’s organizing committee, said organizers have secured more than 340 evacuation venues, including community centers and gyms, in regions near Buan.

About 40,000 scouts came to the jamboree, built on land reclaimed from the sea. About 4,500 were from the U.K., representing the largest national contingent, while about 1,000 were from the United States.

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Travis King’s sister says US soldier who crossed into North Korea is ‘not the type to just disappear’

CNN
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Family members of US Army Pvt. Travis King said Wednesday night that they had no reason to believe the soldier, who last month crossed the border between North and South Korea in the demilitarized zone separating the two nations, would defect from the US military.

Jaqueda Gates, King’s sister, told Laura Coates on “CNN Primetime” that the family has not received more information about her brother’s whereabouts, but said that he is “not the type to just disappear.”

“So, that’s why I feel like the story is deeper than that,” she said, adding: “I don’t I don’t believe that you just do vanished and ran away.”

King – who the US military said “willfully and without authorization” crossed into North Korea while taking a civilian tour of the Joint Security Area, a small collection of buildings inside the DMZ that has separated North and South Korea since the end of the Korean War in 1953 – is believed to be the first US soldier to cross into North Korea since 1982.

As CNN previously reported, he had a history of assault, was facing disciplinary action over his conduct and was meant to go back to the US the day before the incident.

Myron Gates, King’s uncle, told Coates that while the family has reached out to a variety of elected officials’ offices, the family has not heard from the Biden administration and wishes the White House would do more.

“We wish they would come to our house to talk to us, and let us know something,” he said.

The family, he said, has been contacted by family members of Otto Warmbier, who urged them to act. Warmbier, a US college student, had been detained in North Korea for 17 months after visiting in 2016 and died less than a week after returning to the United States in 2017.

Jaqueda Gates detailed the toll her brother’s situation has taken on the family, saying it’s been hard to sleep as they wait for updates and that King’s absence has devastated their mother.

“This is really, really hard on my mom, you know, that’s her baby boy,” Gates said.

State Department spokesperson Matt Miller confirmed to CNN earlier Wednesday that the North Koreans had reached out to the United Nations Command in the last 48 hours about King, but said “it was not a substantive call” and there not seen “as progress in any way.”

“The outreach that we have made to North Korea through diplomatic channels has still not been answered,” Miller said at a State Department briefing.

Last week the deputy commander the United Nations Command, the force which runs the southern side of the Joint Security Area, said last week that a “conversation has commenced” with North Korea over King.

In a statement sent to CNN on Thursday, UNC Director of Public Affairs Col. Isaac Taylor said: “The KPA [North Korean Army] has responded to the United Nations Command with regards to Private King. In order not to interfere with our efforts to get him home, we will not go into details at this time.”

King’s family vowed Wednesday night to push for his return.

“We’re gonna continue to fight for you and we ain’t gonna stop until you come home,” Myron Gates said.

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North Korea responds to UN Command on US soldier

North Korea has acknowledged a United Nations Command request for information on US soldier Travis King who bolted across the country’s border last month, the Pentagon has said.

But Pyongyang stopped short of giving any details about the 23-year-old’s whereabouts.

“I can confirm that the DPRK has responded to United Nations Command, but I don’t have any substantial progress to read out,” spokesperson Brigadier General Patrick Ryder told a press conference on Tuesday, using the acronym for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

When pressed, Mr Ryder said that North Korea’s message back to the UN Command was just “an acknowledgement” of the inquiry.

Last week the UN said “delicate” talks had begun over the fate of Private King, who had joined a civilian tour of the Joint Security Area (JSA) between the South and North, before “wilfully” crossing into the latter on July 18.

In a briefing last week Lieutenant General Andrew Harrison, the force’s deputy commander, said a “conversation” had begun between the UNC and the North’s Korean People’s Army.

“The primary concern for us is Private King’s welfare,” he said.

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