Yoon said he would ask lawmakers to cooperate “to set up the Ministry of Low Birth Rate Counter Planning”.
“We will be creating a low-birth planning department in order to establish a more aggressive and powerful control tower,” he said.
“In order to overcome the low birth rate, which can be considered a national emergency, we will fully mobilise all of the state’s capabilities,” he added.
The country’s fertility rate – the number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime – dropped to 0.72 in 2023, down nearly 8 per cent from 2022, according to preliminary data from Statistics Korea in February.
That is far below the 2.1 children needed to maintain the current population of 51 million, which at these rates will nearly halve by the year 2100, experts estimate.
ARMS POLICY
Yoon, who has taken a tough line with the nuclear-armed North, said his country’s ties with Moscow had been strained by what Seoul and ally Washington say are arms shipments from North Korea to Russia.
“North Korea’s export of offensive weapons not only supports the illegal waging of war in relation to Ukraine but also clearly violates UN Security Council sanctions resolutions related to North Korea’s nuclear weapons,” Yoon said.
Despite tensions with Moscow over the purported arms shipments, Yoon said he aims to “manage our relationship with Russia as smoothly as possible”.
But he said Seoul would not be revising its longstanding policy of not selling arms into active conflicts, which has prevented it from providing military aid to Ukraine.
Seoul has long sought to join the ranks of the world’s top arms exporters — aiming to be the fourth largest, behind the United States, Russia and France — something that is now possible, industry research indicates.
