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With $ 14,000 you can cover holes, take a few sabbatical months to travel around the world or invest in that business that has been around your head for years. What you will not get is to match two South Koreans to marry, form a home and have children to help the country out of the deep crisis of birth in which it has been mired for years. We know it because in Korea there are administrations that already They have thrown out of a checkbook and reached those figures (more than 10,000 dollars) in their efforts to act as a casameros. All without success.
Moreover, that commitment to administrations to encourage matches is having a peculiar effect: it has made singleness A true business.
Question of love … and money. In his efforts to leave the demographic pothole in which he has been plunged for a long time, he has not hesitated to pull a check -up. Its reasoning is simple: if birth can be encouraged with money, the government is willing to put it on the table. In recent months the authorities of the country have proposed to deliver large ‘baby checks’ to its citizens, offer Fiscal incentives To families with children, expand parental permits or even guarantee that the new moms have access to select food.
Another of the country’s great bets has been to match its young people. And that has gone so much to create appointment programs Designed specifically for single to find love how to make it easy at the economic level, offering money so that the cost of a romantic dinner is not an obstacle. Perhaps it sounds exaggerated, but there is a fact that explains it: in South Pareja and Bulality they go hand in hand. So much, that less than 5% From babies they are born out of marriage.
How much money do we talk about? A lot A good part of the southern Korean pairing programs start from regional organizations, so that photography can vary from one area to another of the country; But it arrives with a quick turn by Google to see news from cities or districts that try to raise their birth rate with expensive pairing programs. Recently We talked to you of the Seoul case, where the Metropolitan Government studied to deliver 700 euros to the couples who marry there. It is a lot. Although not as much as in other cities.
In Busan, one from the main ones Metropolitan Areas of South Korea and that is suffering the effects of the demographic crisis in a form particularly hardthey have gone a step further blessing the new couples with hundreds of dollars.
What does that translate? In which money ceases to be an obstacle to throwing girlfriend (or boyfriend). In June The Korea Herald He informed That one of the districts of Busan, Saha-Gu, planned a pilot project with local singles born between 1981 and 2001 to which it offered 360 dollars (to spend on appointments) only for ‘doing Match ‘ With someone. That is, each couple who left the event grabbed by the hand and with plans to be added 700 dollars for their romance.
A figure: $ 14,000. Those 360 dollars per person to enjoy as a couple were only the first part of the SAHA-gu program. The idea was to increase support as the relationship progressed until you reach the great wedding gift: 20 million wones In advance for couples who give themselves the ‘yes I want’, about $ 13,600. The district was even willing to offer newly married a larger deposit if they decided to buy a house or help them with rent.
Such a bet is better understood in the light of the demographic tables of the Metropolitan City of Busan: if at the beginning of the 90s it passed from the 3.8 million inhabitantsin 2010 it was at 3.4 million. The trend does not clash with that of the country as a whole, which At the end of 2024 It became a “aging super society”, with 20% of its population above 65 years.
Do these aid work? That was the big question that was driving … and just answered The Wall Street Journal (TWSJ) with A report in which the title is almost a sentence: “Not even a governmental aid of $ 14,000 can make the single South Korea marry.” Despite the promise of receiving a wedding gift of $ 14,000, the Saha-Gu program was not very successful. TWSJ assures that no participant demanded that reward.
And that Saha-Gu is just one of the aid to which couples can opt. TWSJ remembers that not all support leaves administrations and that there are also religious companies or organizations that try to reverse the country’s demographic crisis. Two examples are the construction company Booyoung Group, which offered $ 75,000 to employees who have a child; and the Yoido full gospel churchwhich gives its members almost $ 1,400.
The big question. With such incentives the question is evident. Why don’t South Koreans marry? Why do your birth continue well below of that of years ago? Part of the answer are social and cultural changes.
TWSJ He quotes a survey recent that shows that three fifths of the South Koreans with employment do not see the slightest problem in not going through the altar, a factor to which others of an economic nature are added, such as the long working daysincreased cost of living or how will be The parenting of children in a society characterized by their demand level and competitiveness.
Another key are The difficulties with which women are to rejoin to the labor market after being mothers. In fact there are courtship programs that have ended up suspending precisely because they could not gather a sufficient number of interested women. Other young people rule out simply registering for the heavy bureaucracy that accompanies this kind of initiatives. “It’s more problematic than you imagine,” Recognize one to TWSJ.
Is the government good celestine? That is the other big question, especially if you take into account that programs such as Seoul or Saha-guy have gone winning weight In the country. A few months ago a politician from the Democratic Party of Korea He accounts And he concluded that in 2024 at least 30 local governments of the country had promoted some 34 pairing initiatives. Your balance? Very poor. Paupérrimo.
“In total 4,060 people participated in programs for the pairing of local governments during the last three years, but only 24 people ended up marrying,” concluded. The truth is that in 2024 Korea He managed to increase their number of births for the first time in nine years (+3.6%) and couples links They rose 14.9%but there are doubts to what extent those numbers mark a change of real tendency or are the result of circumstantial factors, such as postponed paternity and wedding plans during the pandemic years,
Images | Jordi Sánchez (Flickr)
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