South Korea's Population Crisis Shrinks Military Amid Threat From North
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
South Korea's military is 20 percent smaller than it was six years ago as the world's lowest birth rate shrinks the pool of men available for enlistment, according to a new report from the country's defense ministry.
Why It Matters
South Korea's fertility rate—the world's lowest—stood at 0.75 births per woman in 2024, well below the 2.1 rate needed to sustain a population. That same year, the share of the population aged 65 and older passed 20 percent, making the nation as a so-called "super-aged" society along with Japan.
These demographic shifts are expected to have far-reaching effects not only on world's fourth-largest economy and but also security amid flaring tension with nuclear-armed North Korea.
Newsweek reached out to the South Korean Embassy in Washington by email for comment.
What To Know
South Korea's active-duty force now numbers 450,000, down by about 110,000 from 2019, with 17 divisions having been disbanded or merged.
The figures come from a joint report by the Defense Ministry and the Military Manpower Administration, shared with the media by Choo Mi-ae, a lawmaker on the South Korean parliament's judiciary committee.
The army has been the most affected, losing more than 100,000 soldiers over that six-year period. Meanwhile the percentage of applicants who become career officers is about half the previous rate.
The defense ministry has said the military is 50,000 troops shy of the minimum level considered sufficient to maintain defense readiness. Officials have cited the nation's record-low birth rate as the driving factor.
The number of 20-year-old men—the primary age for conscription—has fallen 30 percent since 2019 to about 230,000.
Some analysts have pointed to the role technology could play to reduce the streamline the modern standing armies.
"In Japan's case or in South Korea's case, I think that the fact that they're facing a much more urgent shortage of people to serve in the military there, it's driving them to invest more in especially labor-saving technologies," Andrew Oros, professor of political science and international studies at Washington College, said during a June 2024 interview with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
Others are less optimistic.
"There are limits to replacing people with technology, especially when facing a heavily armed adversary right across the border," the Korea Times quoted one senior defense ministry official as saying.
North Korea, despite being technologically inferior, maintains more than twice as many active-duty troops, an estimated 6,000 artillery units within range of South Korean population centers, and continues to expand its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs.
What Happens Next
South Korea has spent more than $200 billion on pro-natal programs, from fertility treatments to housing subsidies, since 2008.
Births rose in 2024 for the first time in 10 years amid a wave of marriages among women in their early to mid-30s, members of what's been dubbed Korea's "second baby boomers," but it remains to be seen whether the trend will hold longer term.
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