How to tackle demographic changes

Dear editor,

After reading a June 1 editorial, “Population is national power,” I came to think over the reasons for a population decline in Korea. The main solutions suggested in the original article are boosting the birthrate by providing institutional help for working mothers, establishing proactive immigration policy to use foreign workforce, and lastly unifying the two Koreas.

I was very surprised to see the solutions because they don’t seem realistic at all. Most of all, the suggested unifying of the two Koreas for labor force is somewhat ridiculous under the circumstance in which there is no consensus about a peace treaty. As we all know, there was North Korea’s attack on Yeonpyeong Island last November, killing South Korean civilians and soldiers. Since then, there has been high tension on the Korean Peninsula.

Unlike your solutions, I suppose we should approach this issue in a totally different perspective. The basic reason of the low birthrate in Korea resulted from low quality of life, excessive competitiveness, poor welfare system, and the widening gap between the rich and the poor.

And there is another serious social problem related to population. That is the highest suicide rate among OECD countries. Teenagers who feel pressure for high grades, young people in their 20s who failed to get a job and the elderly who suffer from extreme poverty. All of these people once consider committing suicide as an escape from this grim reality.

There must be a total change of definition on “happiness” in our society in a personal and national dimension. Only material prosperity has been valued under rapid economic development for the past decades. However, now we should redefine happiness and pursuit individual happiness, and the government should assist people to do this by forging a better welfare system. It’s time for all of us to do something to cope with the aging society.

Jang Sun-ha

Sinjeong-dong, Seoul