Experts predict that by 2025, 1 in 5 Koreans will be 65+

Article: South Korea is aging fast... by 2025, 1 in 5 Koreans will be over 65 years old

Source: Yonhap News via Nate

1. [+909, -21] Honestly, this is scarier than the virus. It's basically going to run our country into the ground. It's just that we don't feel the implication of it in our day to day lives so we're able to ignore it but we're going to start feeling it in 10 years.

2. [+666, -38] I remember watching a KBS show that covered this topic and predicted that in 10-20 years, we won't have any laborers and that we'll have to look in other countries (especially South East Asia) to beg people to come and grant them citizenships. In just 7 years, we'll be severely lacking a labor force while still having to support the elderly population with huge taxes.

3. [+631, -25] People born into poverty are not able to escape it due to the rising costs in real estate. And they're not going to want to born their children into the same life of slavery either. Korea will end up broken with people either unable to get married or refusing to. 

4. [+69, -1] The taxes that our younger generation are paying are to keep the elderly population alive. I don't think that we'll have enough people to pay taxes for us once we reach the elderly age...

5. [+57, -1] The younger generation is not getting married or having children while the elderly population continues to reach longer life expectancy rates. With the pandemic these days, I've realized that we're all going to have to prepare meticulously for our own retirements.

6. [+56, -1] This is why I chose to be a DINK. By the time we have kids and they're old enough to be working and contributing to society by 2050, 30% of the population will be elderly... and that's terrifying. I don't know that increasing life expectancy rates is a blessing...

7. [+53, -0] Poverty is a big problem with the elderly population even now, and that's with a strong younger generation that's able to support them. By the time people in their 30s-50s reach elderly age in the future, we will no longer have a younger generation to support us. At that rate, the elderly will be living only because they haven't died, and I bet suicide rates will be more grim then too. We're basically f*cked.

8. [+51, -0] I have been noticing more elderly on the subway than the younger population these days

9. [+30, -1] Please don't have children if you don't have the money for it. Why would the kid deserve such a life?

10. [+30, -0] I'm able to get by on my own now but I don't know that I'll have the means to live happily if I were to get married and have children

11. [+29, -0] Even animals don't reproduce if the environmental conditions aren't right for them. Why would humans be any different? Having kids in poverty is a one way path for the parents into destruction.

12. [+25, -0] People have become too smart too. They've realized that having children is a difficulty in this economy.

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