Seoul, South Korea - Reacting to concerns over Korea's declining birthrate, Buddhist, Catholic and Protestant leaders yesterday launched a joint movement to encourage Koreans to have more children.
"Catholics, Protestants and Buddhists share the opinion that the low birthrate is a national disaster. We want to heighten society's awareness of this problem," read a statement from the Civic Alliance to Counter the Low Birth Rate and the Aging of Society.
The group is headed by Bishop Peter Ri Ki-hun, president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Korea's Committee for Family Pastoral Ministry; Kim In-suk, head of the Buddhist Women's Development Institute at the Jogye order, Korea's largest Buddhist sect, and Reverend Song Gil-won of the Christian Council of Korea.
The group says its initiatives will include providing child care at about 50,000 Protestant churches, 2,000 Catholic churches and 20,000 Buddhist temples to ease the burdens on working parents. It also intends to promote adoption and discourage abortion, which is illegal in Korea in most cases.
The civic group plans to distribute educational material to women, encouraging them to have children. It also intends to host a conference in September on putting family and childbirth at the center of Korean society.
According to the National Statistical Office, Korea's fertility rate ―the average number of children that would be born to each woman if they all lived to the end of their childbearing years ―fell from 1.47 in 2000 to 1.19 in 2003.
The number of births per 1,000 people dropped from 13.4 in 2000 to 10.2 in 2003.
Earlier this year, the statistics office forecast that at the current birthrate, the nation's population will peak at 50 million in the year 2020 and then begin to decline.
The trend has implications for the social welfare system for the elderly; currently, according to the same report, eight economically active people are supporting one retired person over 65, but by 2050, the ratio would be 1.4 to 1.