With $14,000 you can plug holes, take a few months off to travel the world or invest in that business that has been on your mind for years. What you won’t be able to do is pair two South Koreans to get married, start a home, and have children with whom to help the country get out of the crisis. deep crisis birth rate in which it has been immersed for years. We know this because in Korea there are administrations that already they have pulled the checkbook and reached those figures (more than 10,000 dollars) in their efforts to act as matchmakers. All without success.
What’s more, this effort by administrations to encourage couples is having a peculiar effect: it has made singleness a real business.
A matter of love… and money. In its efforts to get out of the demographic slump in which South Korea has been mired for some time, it has not hesitated to draw on its checkbook. Their reasoning is simple: if the birth rate can be encouraged with money, the Government is willing to put it on the table. In recent months, the country’s authorities have proposed handing over large ‘baby checks’ to its citizens, offer tax incentives to families with children, expand the parental leave or even guarantee that new mothers have access to select food.
Another of the country’s great bets has been to match its young people. And that has been so much to create dating programs specifically designed for singles to find love and make it easy for them financially, offering them money so that the cost of a romantic dinner is not an obstacle. It may sound exaggerated, but there is one fact that explains it: in South Korea couples and birth rates go hand in hand. So much so that less than 5% of babies are born out of wedlock.
How much money are we talking about? Very much. Many of South Korea’s matchmaking programs come from regional organizations, so photography can vary from one area of the country to another; But it comes with taking a quick look at Google to see news about cities or districts that are trying to raise their birth rate with very expensive matchmaking programs. Recently we were talking to you of the case of Seoul, where the Metropolitan Government was studying giving 700 euros to couples who get married there. It’s a lot. Although not as much as in other cities.
In Busan, one of the main metropolitan areas of South Korea and which is suffering the effects of the demographic crisis in a way particularly hardhave gone a step further by blessing new couples with hundreds of dollars.
What does that translate into? In which money stops being an obstacle to finding a girlfriend (or boyfriend). In June Korea Herald informed that one of Busan’s districts, Saha-gu, was planning a pilot project with local singles born between 1981 and 2001, offering them $360 (to spend on dates) just to ‘make match’ with someone That is, each couple that left the event holding hands and with plans to see each other again would add $700 to their romance.
One figure: $14,000. Those $360 per person to enjoy as a couple were just the first part of Saha-gu’s program. The idea was to increase support as the relationship progressed until reaching the big wedding gift: 20 million won in advance for couples who say ‘I do’, about $13,600. The district was even willing to offer newlyweds a larger deposit if they decided to buy a house or help them with rent.
Such a bet is better understood in light of the demographic tables of the metropolitan city of Busan: if at the beginning of the 90s it exceeded 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 became a “super-aged society”, with 20% of its population over 65 years of age.
Do these aids work? That was the big question that was left hanging… and it just answered The Wall Street Journal (TWSJ) with a report in which the title is almost a sentence: “Not even a $14,000 government aid can get South Korean singles to get married.” Despite the promise of a $14,000 wedding gift, Saha-gu’s program was not very successful. TWSJ assures that no participant demanded that reward.
And Saha-gu is just one of the aids that couples can qualify for. TWSJ recalls that not all support comes from the administrations and that there are also companies or religious organizations that are trying 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 grants its members almost $1,400.
The big question. With such incentives the question is obvious. Why don’t South Koreans get married? Why does your birth rate continue? far below from years ago? Part of the answer is social and cultural changes.
TWSJ cite a survey recent study that shows that three-fifths of employed South Koreans do not see the slightest problem in not going through the altar, a factor to which are added other economic factors, such as long working hoursthe increase of cost of living or how burdensome it is the upbringing of children in a society characterized by its level of demand and competitiveness.
Another key is the difficulties that women encounter when re-entering the labor market after becoming mothers. In fact, there are dating programs that have ended up being suspended precisely because they could not bring together a sufficient number of interested women. Other young people rule out registering simply because of the heavy bureaucracy that accompanies this type of initiative. “It’s more problematic than you imagine,” recognize one to TWSJ.
Is the Government a good matchmaker? That is the other big question, especially if you take into account that programs like Seoul or Saha-gu have gone gaining weight in the country. A few months ago a politician from the Democratic Party of Korea did the math and concluded that in 2024 at least 30 local governments in the country had promoted some 34 matchmaking initiatives. Your balance? Very poor. Very poor.
“In total 4,060 people participated in local government matchmaking programs over the past three years, but only 24 people ended up getting married,” concluded. The truth is that in 2024 Korea managed to increase their number of births for the first time in nine years (+3.6%), and in 2025 they rose by 6.8% more, the highest figure since 2010. But doubts remain as to the extent to which these numbers mark a real change in trend or are the result of circumstantial factors, such as paternity and wedding plans postponed during the years of the pandemic.
Images | Jordi Sánchez (Flickr)
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