hankyoreh

By Choi Hyun-june
Park Won-hee, a 40-year-old mother in Cheongju, North Chungcheong province, gave birth to her third child a few weeks ago. The newcomer was a late arrival, coming seven years after Park's second child.
"I'm a bit worried about care," Park said, "but everyone I know has been congratulating me, and they all love the baby, so I'm happy." Park will receive childbirth subsidies of 200 thousand won ($176) a month from the province for the next year, and an additional 150 thousand won a month for the next five years from the city.

According to figures on 2011 births and deaths released by Statistics Korea on Monday, the number of newborn children with two or more siblings stood at 51,600 last year, rising above the 50 thousand mark for the first time since 2011, when 55,600 such children were born.

The number hit a low of 41,500 in 2005 before rising again to 49,900 in 2010. 
Children with two or more siblings accounted for 11% of all births, the highest level since the 12.8% recorded over 27 years before in 1984.
 The number of newborns with one sibling was calculated at 239,200, a 1.7% rise.

Seo Un-ju, head of Statistics Korea's population trend division, said, "It seems to reflect a trend of people either having very few children or a lot of them."

The sex ratio at birth, which indicates the number of males born for every hundred female babies, stood at 105.7, the lowest level since statistics were first tallied in 1983. The previous low was 106.2 in 2007. The sex ratio at birth for children with two or more siblings was down to 109.5 from as high as 140. 
A sex ratio at birth of 103 to 107 is generally viewed as normal. Experts said the trend appears to reflect a decrease in the traditional preference for male children and institutional difficulties with sex ratio selection.

The total number of children born in 2011 stood at 471,400, the second consecutive annual increase. An average of 1,292 children were born each day, up four from the year before, and the crude birth rate, which indicates the number of child born for every one thousand people in the population, stood at 9.4, a similar number to 2010.
 Increases in childbirth were found in Daejeon and North Gyeongsang, while births dropped in Seoul, Gangwon, and Gwangju.
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