On Wednesday, all the lights at the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs building in central Seoul will be switched off at 7 p.m. Announcements will be made urging staff to stop working and go home.
This not a wartime exercise or a fire drill. But it is a more desperate operation for the ministry, which is struggling to counter the country's low birthrate, even within the organization.
It is a ``Family Day'' event, where all staff members are encouraged to return home on time every third Wednesday each month and spend quality time with their family, and moreover, hopefully, have more kids.
Well, if you read the rest of the article "Ministry Plans Blackout for 'Procreation'", you'll see that it's largely bad writing, and the introduction of birthrate every time the Ministry is named, that makes my headline seem true. Interesting to note, too, that the day is "패밀리데이," family day written in Hangeul. It will be held every third Wednesday.
South Korea is very concerned about its low birthrate, the lowest in the world, even though it's one of the most densely-populated countries on Earth. But the story hits on another issue besides birthrate: overwork.
South Koreans were named the hardest-working people in the world by Forbes magazine in 2008, though the statistics and our observations tell us that they work long rather than work hard. In my post on that topic I demonstrated---with a quotation from T.R. Reid's excellent book Confucius Lives Next Door---that "productivity" is a loaded and ethnocentric word, but the point nonetheless remains that Koreans spend a lot of time away from home.
So do their children, for that matter, and the ironic thing here about "Family Day" is that while daddy might come home from the office at seven---one night out of the month at least---little Minsu and Sumin will be at their cramschool until 11.
28 comments:
what a joke. All it means is good ol' dad will just go to the soju tent earlier with his buddies and come home at the same time as always. The idea that Koreans are predisposed to be more family oriented is a myth in their own minds.
If minsu and sumin are at cram school until 11, and dad finishes at 7, even given a one hour commute, that gives them three hours for uninterrupted procreation.
Sounds good to me.
If my wife was an 아주마 I'd rather spend these Wednesdays going to 안마.
I read about this on the BBC website this morning... The reporter couldn't seem to hold himself back from laughing.
Is the BBC reporter ten years old?
Brian,
I knew you were a funny writer - I was expecting to see a link to Dokdo is Ours or something like that...
Nope, it's a genuine directive...
Of course, this might solve the other problem of Korea using too much energy... Hmm, maybe the blackout would lead to more, um, Koreans than they expect...
Just when you think Korea can't possibly do anything else to shock you...
I'm all for this idea especially if its implemented across the board for private companies as well. In fact they should hire workers to monitor everyone's procreation to make sure everyone is doing their part. Can't take advantage of that extra time if they're not home "working". Fines of course will probably be levied unless spouse substitution are allowed.
Maybe things have changed in France but I remember many accountants working for the Big Six firms always dreamed of getting transferred to France. Government policy was, even for private businesses, that work had to universally end at 5 or 6 pm. A security guard would escort you out the building if you tried to work beyond 6 pm.
This 7 pm policy, won't it just have the effect that poktangju drink ups now start 2-4 hours earlier and can go 2-4 hours longer?
Now I understand what's going on. At the gov't organization I work for, everyone packed up to go home at 6 PM. I never ever saw that in my 7 years there. They said on the second Wednesday of each month they can go home at 6PM. No drinking, they must go home and "be with the family."
At the elementary school where I worked last year, a few of the Korean teachers mentioned that teachers who had more than the standard 2 kids were officially rewarded with perks like having their pick of schools to work at, additional "points" toward promotion, things like that. I can't vouch for how true that is, but I'd be curious to hear whether anyone else has heard this.
Anyway, the "go home early and make babies" initiative seems a lot less crass than what I mentioned above, and I think it's a decent idea.
As for "little Sumin and Minsu", wouldn't they HAVE to be at hagwons late for the baby-makin' to happen? Maybe the govt could declare the second Wednesday of each month to be "play day" or something, and force all hagwons to be closed that day ... I'm sure that would go over real well.
Peter,
Two foreign teachers married to Koreans at my university have had kids in the last few years (one of them with two), and they are getting special tax rebates starting this year. So if my school and the gov't consider these non-Korean's as patriots, then I would consider all this as some sort of progress.
Now we just have to remind Koreans that there are too many kids in the world already.
David wrote:
Now we just have to remind Koreans that there are too many kids in the world already.
Provide an economic model that allows for sustainable economic growth and standard of living despite an inverted population pyramid and they might just listen.
WORD VERIFICATION: dementr
Methinks Blogspot's been reading too much Harry Potter.
Now we just have to remind Koreans that there are too many kids in the world already.
Too many in the world, yes. In Korea, no. Go preach about over-population in the countries where the problem exists. Korea and Japan are not one of them.
The state of affairs in Korea and Japan are of their own making. Both will never allow immigrants of any significant numbers. Koreans could set up a program that allows ethnic Koreans in China and Russia an opportunity to return, couldn't they?
I don't have an axe to grind in East Asia. Germany has the same problem. Racial and ethnic intolerance has its disadvantages.
There are too many people in the world. Period.
There are not too many people in the word. There are too many people in some places and not enough people in other places. The trick is trying to shuffle those people around. And trying to get people who leave a pretty big foot print to accept a smaller foot print. I read once that if everyone in the world lived with a Tokyo like population density you could fit the world population in Texas.
It's a question of getting populations to live smarter and more efficiently.
But ultimately Korea is trying to use a sieve to fill a bucket of water. Immigration is the solution but Koreans (and Japanese) clearly value a sea of black haired people over diversity.
"There are not too many people in the world."
Do the concepts of the environment and resources (of which Korea and Japan have none and must import) mean anything to you? I'm sorry, but that is just plain old wrongheaded shortsightedness.
"Immigration is the solution but Koreans (and Japanese) clearly value a sea of black haired people over diversity."
I see you are being polite. I agree. But, if Korea would instantiate a system in which ethnic Koreans could return and be treated with jobs and dignity and not resentment, then perhaps they would integrate into South Korean society within a generation or two. Their kids would be hardly recognizable from your average "real" Korean. And, "POOF," black-haired kiddies abound, and hegemony is maintained. Beyond those concerns, the international competition might elevate Korea to a world-class level of competition at an individual level, one that does not rely on a wide assortment of massive trade barriers and levies.
And to you Darth, I may be a nutcase here, but ask yourself if tax breaks and Wednesday evenings off will really work?
What about more screwing at the office? Conference rooms, supply closets, roof tops and such make for great baby making...
If someone has a problem with world population then they should do something about it. Obviously the solution is to remove oneself from the world thus reducing total world population by one. If enough people did this then we'd solve all the environmental problems at once because there would be much less humans on the planet. It would even solve world hunger...
See how crazy that line of thinking becomes, anyone who argues population control because of space / environmental but chooses to continue breathing (and thus consuming their fare share of those resources) is a hypocrite.
Its perfectly ~OK~ to be the chooser of the slain, but sucks to be on the receiving end of that choice.
palladin wrote:
If someone has a problem with world population then they should do something about it. Obviously the solution is to remove oneself from the world thus reducing total world population by one. If enough people did this then we'd solve all the environmental problems at once because there would be much less humans on the planet. It would even solve world hunger...
Is that the "obvious" solution? A less obvious solution to the problem of overpopulation would be to work it so individuals can have less of a footprint: if four people consume one-fourth less, that's like eliminating one person from the Earth, but without the nastiness of homicide or suicide.
Cut down on burgers and other forms of beef, for example, and you will help curb the depletion of the rainforest (even American- or Australian-grown beef is often fed on soybeans from denuded Brazilian rainforest), buy energy-saving lightbulbs, put up solar panels on your roof, etc, etc.
Actually, by living in Korea and using public transport (among other life changes), you've probably already got a smaller foot print than if you'd lived back in North America.
No need to kill yourself.
I'm certainly not an expert, but I don't believe the environmental shitstorm we've created is the result of global overpopulation, so much as it is the result of the way we choose to use our resources. If we weren't abusing fossil fuels, practicing slash-and-burn agriculture, etc., our sheer numbers likely wouldn't be a problem. Similarly, people don't starve because the world can't feed us all; they starve because certain areas are impoverished and grossly overpopulated, and because food isn't distributed fairly and evenly to all the peoples of the world by a kind-hearted food fairy.
Amen, Peter.
The planet could sustain billions more than it already does, but not if we keep as large a footprint as we have. That means doing responsible things, like eating smaller animals (chicken versus beef or pork) or few animals at all, using renewable energy sources, driving less, etc., etc.
South Korea's land is too small already for it's current population of 48,000,000. Also, there is still high scale emigration coming from Korea anyways, so why do koreans have to make more babies of koreans want to leave their own country? It makes no sense. Anyways, korea's traffic is too bad with limited land space and overpopulation. Koreans need to work on more birth control, family planning, easy access for contraceptives for both men and women. There is no need to encourage more births in Korea. It's alreay overpopulated. There are some states in U.S. that are bigger then Korea but the population is so small. Also, Canada and Australia are huge countries, but their population is half of South Korea. No more encouragment of birth is needed. Anyway, Koreans are also known for throwing away their babies. So, birth control is a must in both North and South Korea.
Paul, as I said earlier, provide an economic model that allows for sustainable economic growth and standard of living despite an inverted population pyramid and you might be right.
"There are not too many people in the world."
Do the concepts of the environment and resources (of which Korea and Japan have none and must import) mean anything to you? I'm sorry, but that is just plain old wrongheaded shortsightedness.
Malthus thought the same thing. Geez, to make this claim is to honestly believe human ingenuity is limited.
Japan is a great example for my claim. Small land but large population. Japanese enjoy a high standard of living, good health, low crime, and they make efficient use of everything.
Other than merely assertion, do you have anything to back up your claim?
Some calculations (figures from wiki):
1) Tokyo has a population density of 5847 people per sq km
2) Texas has an area of 696,241 sq km
3) If we build a Texas sized city using Tokyo's population density, Texas could house: 4,070,921,127.
So two Texases could house the world's population with room to grow.
It's never going to happen, of course, but it's an indication that humans live pretty inefficiently and there are a great number of efficiencies we can tap and still comfortably support the world's population and more.
Got anything, David?
Puffin Watch wrote:
3) If we build a Texas sized city using Tokyo's population density, Texas could house: 4,070,921,127.
So two Texases could house the world's population with room to grow.
What would they eat?
As sympathetic as I am to your point, I don't think that's the best illustration. Japan (and South Korea) are crowded countries that still have to feed their population, and you don't make the case with an apples-and-oranges comparison of a wholly urban landscape like Tokyo (or Seoul) with a place that both houses people and produces crops and meat for them (like Texas). If all we had was two Texases for the world's population, most would die off as soon as the canned goods supply was depleted.
Our resistance to Malthusian predictions of doom so far notwithstanding, I don't think human innovation will always save the day. We have also been saved by having new realms to exploit, but that will not always be the case. If we do find cheap ways, say, to desalinate water, that will reset the markers. If we do find ways to efficiently tap into renewable energy sources (particularly low-impact ones like solar or wind), we also reset the markers. But changing eating habits is another one of those. The global obsession with beef is extremely in efficient and unhealthy in terms of human footprint, and it may not be sustainable, and we might not find out in what ways until it's too late even for human innovation to do something about it.
But the key is not to much population reduction as it is getting fertility to replacement levels, about 2.1 child per woman. That means gradually reducing fertility in many places, but it also means bolstering it in others, like South Korea. There simply isn't an economic model — yet — that allows for a healthy economy with an inverted population pyramid (i.e., fewer young supporting many elderly).
Do that, and you've won the Nobel Prize.
You don't think the North American continent could produce all the food and energy needed for Texarcana World and then we leave all the rest of the world as fallow?
Clearly, the citizens of Texarcana World wouldn't be big meat eaters. If you can create a world where you can get everyone to live with high, efficient densities then you can get them to eat the most efficient food possible. I'm sure we'd develop an efficient crop that could then be flavored and texurized to simulate meat. Or we can grow meat in tanks. Truly a day no pigs would day.
Again, the point of this exercise is to demonstrate my original claim: people are not living as efficiently as they could.
There is more then enough room in places like the USA and Australia for people, resources and food. Economics come into play because people want their products at the cheapest possible value.
And yes the population problem isn't so much a problem of birth rate, but of longer life expectancy's. An average human who lives 70 years is productive only 37 of those years. 1~23 is youth / education, and 60~70 is retirement when their too old to work much (although I've seen some older people who can move). Taking care of those last 10 years is a killer on resources, and taking 20+ years to get someone productive is too long. Some professions can't become productive till 28~30 because of arcane university requirements making their degree take 8~10 years.
And yes Kushibo we need to live in a smaller footprint, but that is a very bad way to describe it (due to political agendas). Eatting less beef / pork isn't the answer, there is plenty of room to sustain those. Using less packaged / disposable items is a huge part of the answer. We're producing too much paper / Styrofoam trash from food wrappings and product packaging.
And FYI, Solar / Wind isn't the answer either. It was calculated that if you covered every square inch of the USA with Solar panels it wouldn't be enough energy to power California much less the rest of the USA. And this is assuming the panels are operating at 100% efficiency 24 hours a day every day of the year (physically impossible as the earth is turning and we have weather). Wind is in the same situation, a wind turbine collects energy but the space behind the turbine has less wind energy afterwords. So you must space the turbines out far from each other which reduces their power density. Also they are even less power dense then Solar. Both of these approaches make sense if you can get them from free or at low opportunity. I'm all for putting long duration panels on the roofs of house's (because that space is free anyway) and using that to reduce the homes power requirements.
For a real replacement to fossil fuels we need nuclear, its the only source with enough power density and fuel availability to meet our current and future power requirements.
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