Number of newlywed couples with no children rises in South Korea

By Riyaz ul Khaliq

ISTANBUL (AA) – South Korea is witnessing a rise in the number of newlywed people with no children, data released on Monday showed.

The data released by Statistics Korea revealed almost “half of the recently married couples in South Korea had no children in 2021 … amid the country's chronic low birthrate and changing social norms,” Yonhap News Agency reported.

Of 871,428 couples who tied knots in the five years until November 2021, around 45.8% did not have children, recording a rise from 44.5% in 2020.

The data was generated among the couples who tied the knot for the first time during this period.

“The proportion of newly-married couples with children has been on a steady decline from 63.7% in 2016 and 62.5% in 2017 to 54.2% in 2021,” the data showed.

The data confirmed that the far east nation is struggling with a lesser number of “childbirths as the number of babies born to newlyweds came to just 0.66 in 2021, down from 0.68 tallied a year earlier.”