For South Korea’s kindergarten teachers, the national dearth of children due is already painfully evident and impacting their career prospects.

The country’s record-low birth rates are projected to cause the closure of roughly one-third of daycare centres and kindergartens by 2028, a report by the Korea Institute of Child Care and Education warned in January.

This would mean the number of these institutions slipping from 39,053 in 2022 to just 26,637 in 2028, with 12,416 at risk of shutting down.

“Some childcare teachers are preparing for qualifications related to senior care,” reveals “Evelyn”, a kindergarten teacher, who did not wish to give her real name due to the sensitivity of the matter.

Evelyn has seen enrolment numbers dive at the municipal kindergarten for one to five-year-olds in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi province, south of Seoul, where she has worked since 2022.

“The student capacity is about 125 children, but currently, we only have 68 children enrolled,” she says. “The decrease in the number of children affects our financial support from the government, leading to budget cuts.”

“Additionally, the decrease in the number of children has impacted the quality of care provided, as there are fewer support staff available. There has been a reduction in the number of classes, leading to resignations among teachers.”

It’s a situation that London could soon find itself in. In Britain, nurseries are already closing due to government underfunding; babies are also quickly becoming a “luxury item”, says Joeli Brearley, the chief executive and founder of mothers charity Pregnant Then Screwed. “We’re running out of them. It is no surprise to us that fertility rates have hit the floor. We have one of the most expensive childcare sectors in the world, so much so that for three quarters of mothers, it no longer makes financial sense to work. With childcare fees outstripping the cost of housing for more than two thirds of families, almost half of families are borrowing money to pay their childcare bills.”

Among 18 to 34-year-olds, 22 per cent said they were deferring, having fewer or even abandoning their plans for children owing to the cost of living, according to a new financial resilience report by Royal London. That includes the likes of Izzy Brantingham and Cameron Clark, who are both 26 and live in south London. Their concerns about childcare costs were an influential factor when considering parenthood.

“People in our generation have lots of things they want to ‘tick off’ before they tie themselves down with kids,” says Brantingham, a PR professional. “Having children means that holidays, buying a house, moving abroad all fall out of the question because of the cost of childcare.”

“I would also be very worried about taking a year off for maternity and then coming back to work and being behind the rest of the people who started at the same time as me,” she adds. “Many people are also finding their partners and settling down later now, so kids aren’t even in the question until early 30s for most.”

“I wouldn’t even think about it until the age of 30 because of the opportunities women now have to grow their careers,” adds Jessica Carrick, 26, who works in the wellness industry and lives with her partner Mark, an accountant, in east London. “I don’t have family around for childcare support, so you are very much alone in raising a child. And then there is the cost of living crisis… I can’t even afford to look after myself day-to-day, so having to feed a child and pay for childcare is not doable at the moment.”

‘The odds are stacked against women’

For a country in the developed world to increase or maintain its population it needs a birth rate of 2.1 children per woman on average. This is known as the “replacement rate”.

In England and Wales, the average birth rate declined to 1.49 children per woman in 2022, according to ONS figures. With its birth rate of just 0.72 children per woman, South Korea’s fertility rate is so critically low that experts predict the population will have halved by the year 2100.

But the impact will be felt much sooner. A report in May by the Korean Peninsula Population Institute for the Future said the economically active population, aged 15 to 64, is anticipated to plunge by nearly 10 million by 2044.

This decline “will damage consumption, leading to the collapse of the domestic market. It will also increase the burden of supporting the senior population, leading to an economic slowdown and prolonged low growth,” the institute said.

The shrinking workforce in relation to the number of pensioners means ageing societies suffer from a smaller tax base to fund care of the elderly. More pensioners for each person of working age necessitates higher taxes or lower spending per pensioner or, most likely, a combination of the two.

A smaller population would also shrink the pool qualified to take part in South Korea’s mandatory military service, weakening its defence capabilities in a region that sees regular threats from nuclear-armed North Korea and faces a potential flashpoint over the Taiwan Strait.

The dire projections have triggered panic in successive governments, which for nearly 20 years have poured more than £220 billion into solving the problem, offering financial incentives from baby bonuses to housing support.

Recently there has been a cascade of ever more creative solutions.

In Seoul, where the birth rate has sunk to 0.55, the city authorities have offered subsidised egg-freezing procedures for hundreds of women, and senior politicians have suggested hiring foreign nannies at below the minimum wage.

The government has pledged to scrap “killer questions” from intensely competitive university entrance exams to crack down on private school cartels and reduce the exorbitant cost of education, and it has launched a £78.8 billion high-speed rail project to slash commuting times.

“With a two-hour commute on the way home, for example, how can anyone make time for babies? The idea is to give people more leisure time after work,” said Park Sang-woo, the land minister, announcing the Great Train eXpress (GTX) to Seoul’s outlying areas.

President Yoon personally inaugurated a section of the first line, which will cut the journey time from Suseo, southern Seoul, to the township of Dongtan from 80 to 19 minutes.

Just weeks later, in early May, he announced the creation of a new cabinet-level “low-birth response planning ministry” to co-ordinate education, labour and welfare policies.

And yet nothing, after years of inducements, appears to be turning the tide.

“Financial incentives help but they are not the full story,” says Wahlberg.

“Work pressure, combined with living pressure and living costs, is a driving factor. East Asia is renowned for its work culture. In China, they call it 996 – from 9am to 9pm, six days a week,” he says.

“Number two is the discrimination of women,” he adds. “If there is some kind of a social contract, if women read the small print, the odds are stacked against them.”

This is especially true in South Korea, where women are the most highly educated of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries but experience the worst gender pay gap.

At home, women are still expected to carry the weight of childcare, housework and catering to the needs of their in-laws, decreasing their chances to return to work. Those who do often find themselves overlooked for promotions as they struggle to balance their career and home life.

Faced with such a binary choice, more women, especially those who have strived for years through Korea’s tough education system, are choosing to embrace a child-free life and stick with their career path.

Khim Jangsu, and Lee Hyo-jin, both now 40, made a firm decision eight years into their marriage to remain a so-called dink (double income, no kids) couple.