This photo shows newborns at a hospital. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Dec. 24 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea recorded a 16th consecutive month of year-on-year growth in births in October, but the pace of increase slowed to its weakest level this year, underscoring how fragile the country’s demographic rebound remains.
A total of 21,958 babies were born in October, a 2.5 percent increase from a year earlier, according to government data released Wednesday. While the figure extended a modest recovery that began in mid-2024, it marked the slowest annual growth rate since January.
From January through October, cumulative births reached 212,998, up 6.5 percent from the same period a year earlier, the fastest pace of growth for the first 10 months of a year since 1991. Even so, the overall total remained the third lowest on record for that period, reflecting the depth of South Korea’s long-running fertility decline.
The country’s total fertility rate — the average number of children a woman is expected to have over her lifetime — edged up to 0.81, an increase of 0.02 from a year earlier. Births were most common among women in their early 30s, a pattern that has become more pronounced as marriage and childbearing are increasingly delayed.
Marriage figures offered a somewhat brighter signal. In October, 19,586 couples tied the knot, up 0.2 percent from a year earlier. Over the first 10 months of the year, marriages totaled 195,764, the highest level in seven years, raising expectations that annual marriages could rise for a third consecutive year if the trend continues.
Divorces, however, also increased, climbing 2.4 percent year on year in October to 7,478. Deaths totaled 29,739, down slightly from a year earlier.
Despite the rise in births, South Korea’s population continued to shrink. In October, the population fell by 7,781 people as deaths again outnumbered births. The country has been experiencing natural population decline since November 2019, a trend that policymakers have struggled to reverse despite expanded spending on childcare, housing and family support.
The latest figures suggest that while tentative improvements in marriage and fertility may be taking hold, they have yet to offset the structural forces driving South Korea’s demographic contraction.
Lina Jang (linajang@koreabizwire.com)
