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This documentary still of Joan Williams, a professor emeritus at UC Law San Francisco, clutching her head in disbelief and saying, “Korea is so screwed. Wow!” after hearing the country’s total fertility rate has made the rounds on social media in Korea. (still from @EBSstory on X)

“Korea is so screwed. Wow!”

This is what Joan Williams, a professor emeritus at UC Law San Francisco, said after being informed of South Korea’s total fertility rate — 0.78. Clutching her head in disbelief, she added, “I have never heard of that low of a fertility rate.” Williams is an expert in the fields of race, gender and class.

This still from a teaser for the 10th episode of the Educational Broadcasting System documentary “Population Planning in the Age of Ultra-low Birth” was shared on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday, reaching 470,000 hits in the span of two days by Thursday morning.

Netizens generally expressed their sympathy for Williams’ reaction, commenting, “What’s scarier is that in our current social situation, the drop in birth rates makes sense,” as well as pointing out that inadequate parental leave policies and layoffs, housing prices, and the unemployment rate led people to remain single instead of getting married, causing birth rates to decline.

The total fertility rate indicates the number of children a fertile woman is estimated to have in her lifetime. According to the preliminary results of birth and death statistics for 2022 published by Statistics Korea in February, last year’s total fertility rate recorded an all-time low of 0.78, not even half of the OECD average for 2020 (1.59).

This documentary still of Joan Williams, a professor emeritus at UC Law San Francisco, clutching her head in disbelief and saying, “Korea is so screwed. Wow!” after hearing the country’s total fertility rate has made the rounds on social media in Korea. (still from @EBSstory on X)

Among OECD members, South Korea is the only country where the total fertility rate is less than 1. The total fertility rate for January through March of this year was 0.81, almost hitting a record low for the figure during the first quarter. If this trend continues, this year’s total fertility rate may fall below that recorded last year.

At the UN population forum in 2006, demographer and Oxford University professor emeritus David Coleman estimated that South Korea may become the first country to disappear from the face of the earth from population extinction if its seriously low birth rate continued.

At a symposium on the low birth rate crisis and the future of South Korea held in the Gangnam District of Seoul in May, Coleman commented that while population decline is an international phenomenon, it is especially marked in East Asia, warning that if things continue on like this, South Korea as a country may cease to exist by 2750, and all Japanese people may disappear by the year 3000.

By Joh Yun-yeong, staff reporter

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]