The Death Cross

In South Korea, living alone and childless is becoming a way of life—with dramatic consequences for one of Asia’s most successful economies

- SAM KIM

They’re called the Sampo Generation: South Koreans in their 20s and 30s who’ve given up (po) T three (sam) of life’s conventional rites of passage— dating, marrying, and having children. They’ve made these choices because of economic constraints and in the process have worsened Korea’s demographic imbalances. Last year, when the country registered more deaths than births for the first time in recent history, then-Vice Finance Minister Kim Yong-beom pronounced the milestone a “death cross.”

I Live Alone is one of Korea’s most popular reality-TV shows. It follows the single lives of movie actors and K-pop singers engaging in mundane activities such as feeding their pets or eating ramen noodles in the middle of the night—all alone. People living alone already make up almost 40% of the population. Honbap (a solo meal) has worked its way into everyday language; there’s even a lunchbox brand called Honbap Day.

The typical age of a new mother in South Korea is 32, according to the National Statistical Office. The number of births per woman sank to a record low of 0.84 last year, the lowest rate in the world; in Seoul the rate is 0.64. The United Nations estimates that by 2050, Korea’s share of elderly people will become the largest of any country.

This demographic squeeze has slowed one of the world’s most advanced economies. While Korea’s gross domestic product growth last year, -1%, was less bad than many countries’ thanks to the nation’s effective containment of the coronavirus, its average over the past 10 years—2.5%—was well down from the average of more than 8% from 1980 to 2000, when its workforce was younger.