The Suicides in South Korea, and the Suicide of South Korea | Hacker News Reader

The Suicides in South Korea, and the Suicide of South Korea

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86 pointskwindla79 comments

I would attribute the low birth rate to the fact that economic growth has slowed down.

The 20s of this generation are literally the ones that are getting the shorter end of the stick. Imagine yourself being 18 year-old male in South Korea, 80% of highschool graduates go to college, so given the status of the job market you are pretty much forced to go to college unless you are willing to work in a poor environment (as in jobs that don't provide career progression, or pose high risk on personal health).

To add salt to this wound, the college tuition has been hiking. The parental generation of Korea who are in their 50s lived through a time of high economic growth, and education was affordable due to cheaper tuition that could be paid off in short term. Let's say that you take college somewhat seriously, and spend extra year or two after highschool to get into a solid college. You are now 20. After a year you have to serve the military. You are now 23-24, second year in college. After finishing college, you are 26, but there are good amount of people who take year or two off so you will get plenty of 27-28 year old males that have lot of debt, and not much job experience.

Ok, time to get a job. But hey, the job market sucks right now. Older people aren't retiring. Some companies give you contract or internship work but these barely pay for cost of living, and rarely convert to satisfying full-time positions. There were times when college degree meant a guaranteed full-time employment but not anymore. If you managed to land a full-time job after gaining job experience, you're probably 30. To make things better, real estate is spinning out of control so you wouldn't be able to afford a house any time soon. If you asked a person like this about getting married and having children within a year or two... You can't blame them for saying no.

Population kept scaling with the assumption that economic growth will match it, but things have slowed down. It's not like Koreans will go extinct or kill themselves as a whole. But it's the matter of how much is the population going to drop by and whether they can find breakthroughs in the meantime to grow its economic capacities.

As a side note, although people are mainly concerned about teens or young adults when discussing suicide issues, I would like to point out that suicide rate in Korea is exceptionally higher for older people (60+).

| Older people aren't retiring

This is called the "Lump of labour fallacy". In economics, the lump of labour fallacy is the misconception that there is a fixed amount of work—a lump of labour—to be done within an economy which can be distributed to create more or fewer jobs. [1] While in fact having older people active and productive actually benefits all age groups and spurs the creation of more jobs.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

Except the term was created to reject the idea that restricting hour of labor will lead to reduction of unemployment. All I am trying to say is that there is restricted number of jobs, and people have to live longer given increased life expectancy plus poor social security in Korea so elder are becoming competitors from the perspective of youth.

I don't particularly disagree with what the term you've introduced me argues. Korea has been trying to actively reduce work hours and etc and it still gets all the problems.

My point in saying that "older people aren't retiring" is that there's limited number of jobs, and companies don't have the capacity to hire all the people (reducing work hour can lead to larger total employment, but the income per person will be reduced so not like it helps much). If companies kept growing, and was able to employ people of all age groups then things would look good. But with no new players expanding the economy it's mostly about older people trying to hang onto their job and younger ones trying to break into what exists.

I totally agree with the fact that economic growth isn't 100% zero-sum. But that's when economy grows and everyone is winning, not when almost everyone is about to lose.

But saying that there are a limited number of jobs is exactly falling for that fallacy. There are as many jobs are there are people who want to work. There can be other problems, like not enough entrepreneurs, too many regulations, not enough capital per person to effectively compete globally, etc.

Old people being forced to retire or everyone being forced to work fewer hours would not help. That would result in massive load of productivity and value creation. The pie might get shared more equally, but it would be a much smaller pie.

Fair enough. I see where people can get that interpretation from reading what I wrote. But for last clarification allow me to say that I am not arguing that pie is going to be fixed size nor arguing that it can’t be grown. There are many attempts in progress for Korea but they aren’t turning out to be successful that’s all.

Some of the difficulties for growing the pie is listed under what you mentioned as possibility for Korea.

But until Korea can figure out a solution, people will end up fighting for a pie.

Where's the proof that this so-called fallacy is indeed a fallacy? After reading the wiki description it seem to me that while the core idea is true, this theory is overreaching in trying to explain away for example the impact of immigration on the job market.

You're ignoring a very important detail - the quality of jobs. Only if people lower their standards enough will there be as many jobs as people that want to work. A significant number of those jobs will be (nearly) worthless, causing other social issues.

Disguising a lack of jobs as "not enough entrepreneurs" or "too much regulation" is simply a malicious semantic trick.

> There are as many jobs are there are people who want to work.

What?

In the face of large short-term changes in labor supply, that's a bonkers claim to make.

It might be true over a very long time horizon, but even that's arguable.

That is with solid growth. When growth stalls, holding off retirement does indeed reduce opportunities for younger workers.

And this is an example of the "Economics Platitude Fallacy".

In 2015 I moved to South Korea to help assist globally inspired Korean job seekers create English resumes*. Your analysis is spot on. In an effort to combat a hyper-competitive job market, more young Koreans are turning to startups (which are often heavily supported by the government)

1: http://www.mobiinside.com/2017/12/05/rezi-korea-startup/

I have seen an alternative explanation: A lot of my Korean friends from privileged backgrounds say the problem with Korea today is nepotism, cheating and corruption. Though that is what is said in private, candidly.

Interesting that less-successful Koreans don't seem to actually share the same views.

Is this true? This despite previous year's events with the previous President?

Probably on par with other developed nations. It's also an increasing problem in America which is not necessarily fashionable to admit.

I can think of a way those differing views are consistent: there are a lot of jobs at GS25, and probably not a lot of parents who pull strings to get their kids entry-level jobs there; once you move up the food chain to more desired jobs that is likely the opposite.

The article did not mention what to me is the saddest aspect of suicide in South Korea. This is amongst the retired old folk. They don't want to be a burden on the world and their family, there isn't a lot of state support for them and so they take some nasty pesticides, hang themselves or poison themselves by carbon monoxide.

When they were young they looked after their grandparents, but, with family sizes not being what they were and with people moving away for jobs etc. they don't have a surplus of children or grandchildren (or great grandchildren) around to look after them. Hence the particularly tragic ending.

Not sure why the article cites the '...not enough social media followers' reason for suicide when the tragedy with the old folk is a bigger phenomenon.

I do not at all like the early established conceit of this article: that a country with a currently low birth rate is 'committing suicide'.

Yes, social conditions in South Korea are dreadful in many ways and yes, these conditions are definitely influencing South Koreans' decisions on whether to have children, or marry. But not marrying and not having children is not suicide, neither for the individual nor the society.

The Black Death is estimated to have reduced the size of Europe's population by 30% to 60% in the 14th century. After that extreme population shrinkage life improved dramatically for the ordinary people. People were more valued than they had been before. Shrinkage of a population can be healthy and, as it improves conditions for those who come after, will go into reverse at a certain point.

Sounds like the plot line for Avengers vs Thanos... Life would just be so much better if there was less of it.

There is never less of life, just fewer humans. When humans disappear other life takes their place. Also the economics of Black Death shows that if you live in a country with a declining population the rich are forced to pay the middle class more, unlike a country with an increasing population whether through birth or through immigration.

The Economic Impact of the Black Death of 1347–1352

http://msh.councilforeconed.org/documents/978-1-56183-758-8-...

The problem, of course, is that modern technological base NEEDS a certain amount of consumers for mass production to makes sense.

We aren't living in an agricultural-trade system anymore.

Besides, we need fresh bodies to populate heavenly colonies.

1/2 the world lives in extreme poverty, we have no shortage of consumers.

despite not living in an agricultural-trade system nothing has changed. if the economy is growing but the population is shrinking than either the working class should have more money or the rich and their corporations should. you should be able to get the same amount of tax out of either than you lost through the shrinking population. the rich and the corporations have shifted the tax burden to the growing population which helps them make more money in multiple ways... by paying less to workers because of more competition and then passing on the entire tax burden to the wage earners.

we have no heavenly colonies and when we do they will support very very small populations, say at most a million people probably 10,000 years in the future... in the meantime we'd be lucky to get 100 people to create a self-sustaining colony.

>>1/2 the world lives in extreme poverty, we have no shortage of consumers.

More like 10%: https://howmuch.net/articles/people-living-in-extreme-povert...

That's exactly what I thought! Call Thanos and he will solve it... More to the point, this is typical elitist nonsense: saying that the back death was good for future generations is just psychopathy in disguise. There is nothing preventing our society to improve life conditions for everyone, except that some elitist groups don't want to lose the privilege of having more than others.

"saying that the back death was good for future generations is just psychopathy in disguise"

I seem to recall reading somewhere that genes selected for among European survivors of the Black Death improved resistance to HIV.

I’ll do you one better. With 23andMe pull the raw data and look for the CCR7 gene. You can see if you have enhanced viral resistance! The future is now

Thanos’ problem was that he never read a book on urban planning. Maybe he would have gotten around to it in his garden time had he not been interrupted.

But I would be totally down to watch a series about economic development during the blip (and after the blip!). If half of all people disappeared, you would probably see a massive surge in wages. But it might not be enough to keep society alive. Assuming they did solve for it, the post blip period would almost certainly result in massive global crises as countries which experienced heavy immigration are now overpopulated and countries which experienced mass emigration now have a lot of people with basically no societal infrastructure anymore.

God save disputes over property rights

Spoiler alert, perhaps too late. The critical difference is that we're talking about the societal choice between allowing people to choose not to have children versus nudging them to various degrees to do have children. Compare to the movie's choice between letting people live versus killing them.

The Black Death effected nearly all border countries. If South Korea was 'suiciding' via the same phenomena every country around it was experiencing, the difference between itself and external threats would not be so significant.

South Korea's near neighbours (China, Japan, Eastern Russia) have below replacement total fertility rates. I just looked up North Korea's - apparently it was 2.05 in 2005-2010 which is also (just) below replacement level. [1] Not sure how trustworthy NK's statistics are but anyway, with it having had famines in recent living memory (the 90s) I doubt it's about to overwhelm South Korea by population growth. The statistics I looked at had the crude death rate almost doubling since 1980 while the crude birth rate declined.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_North_Korea#Vi...

Having grown up in South Korea in the 70s and 80s, I would not describe the social conditions of modern South Korea dreadful. Yes there are issues, but it is heaven compared to the times of 70s and 80s.

And let's not forget that S Korea is one of the most densely populated country.

Thanks for your comment. Yes, I should have used some word other than 'dreadful'.

How would you contrast your experience as a young adult to that of young adults in South Korea today?

>But not marrying and not having children is not suicide, neither for the individual nor the society.

Isn't it?

Take away the moral connotations for a second. If a country's population does not reproduce, tautologically, it will die off.

Sure, not reproducing is not suicide in the same way that a shotgun in the mouth is. But isn't it, in the same way that refusing food is?

After WWII, the UN adopted a definition of genocide that included "(d)imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group." If China were doing it to SK, we'd call it genocide. If SK is doing it to SK...?

I'm not trying to assign blame here. But that's the point: whether you die in your bed surrounded by family, in your garage with the car exhaust on, or in a totalitarian purge---you are still dead.

So, I don't know---neglect? decline? twilight? Sustainable (non-) growth? Call it whatever you want, <2.0 TFR reduces the population however anyone feels about it.

Obviously there are still children being born in South Korea, just less of them than in recent times.

> Take away the moral connotations for a second. If a country's population does not reproduce, tautologically, it will die off.

Technically, yes. At anything less than 2 births per woman (actually a bit more than that due to deaths before reproduction) a country will experience exponential decay, which approaches zero as time goes to infinity.

An exponential decay in population is a lot less disruptive than exponential rise. The former introduces difficulties like an inverted population pyramid, and countries that experience it will have to make tough choices around restructuring social security and pensions. But exponential population increases create shortages of basic necessities like water and space. I don't think it's coincidence that educated wealthy countries tend to have dropping population growth.

> Take away the moral connotations for a second. If a country's population does not reproduce, tautologically, it will die off.

Countries are not defined exclusively by biological descent, so this is not tautologically true, nor is it even practically true, since negative natural growth with positive population growth had been observed in countries.

>Countries are not defined exclusively by biological descent,

Perhaps not exclusively, but in the main? If you are in the U.S., do you count yourself as a member of whichever indigenous people lived where you are before you? Would they? Would this change if you adopted their customs?

>Countries are not defined exclusively by biological descent

This has become "true" in just the last ~50 years, and only marginally so.

>...nor is it even practically true, since negative natural growth with positive population growth had been observed in countries.

Only with substantial immigration is this the case, which brings with it a whole host of other potential problems.

> This has become "true" in just the last ~50 years

No, it's been true that nations are memetic rather than genetic constructs as long as nations have existed, and migration and assimilation have existed and been factors for a much longer time than 50 years. Non-transitory sub-replacement levels of natural population growth may be a recent phenomenon, but the nature of nations being such that such does not tautologically spell doom has been true much longer.

Ehh, this is just factually wrong and discounts the histories of Europe and e.g. Africa in such a grand way that it's hard to even know where to start. If you wanted to restrict your claim to something like "nations have memetic characteristics that often follow from genetic lineage that don't make membership in that nation strictly genetic" then I'd be inclined to agree. But back to the point, sup-replacement levels of natural population growth is a recent phenomenon and it's hard to say what comes next - since we don't have any perfectly analogous historical parallels.

>If a country's population does not reproduce, tautologically, it will die off.

No, its population will shrink. It's implausible that this will continue to the death of the country.

Suicide is a one-and-done deal. Population decline is gradual and reversible.

If a country's population does not reproduce, tautologically, it will die off.

This is true in a sense, if you think of a country being defined genetically instead of culturally. But assimilating immigrants into a culture is often considered racist too these days. So in a practical sense you are correct even if your basic premise is wrong.

Modern life puts a strain on people, mentally, responsibility-wise as well.

There are a number of places on earth with much greater problems and yet have high birth rates. It’s clear “dreadful” isn’t what slows pop growth. It’s rather the converse. When a society achieves a certain comfort level (material, economic, political, social, etc.) people typically have fewer children.

Also, scanning Wikipedia, North Korea's suicide rate in the top ten of nations but only about 1.5 times that of the US (where despair is also reputed to reside).

Greece and Venezuela, countries mostly in the news for misery and starvation, rank quite low on the suicide list.

I'm not sure how one can parse the situation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...

This isn't very scientific, and people living in those countries might disagree, but my sense of the messes in Greece and Venezuela is that they are acute crises, which have to come to and end sooner or later. It might not be a good ending, but one way or the other the situation will have to be resolved. People aren't as likely to kill themselves over a temporary emergency, without aggravating factors like pre-existing mental illness. In addition, Venezuelans can still find a sense of community and purpose (even if that's just "opposition to Maduro" or "opposition to opposition to Maduro"), and community belonging and purpose are strong deterrents to suicide.

By contrast, the "suicides of despair" reported in the US and elsewhere seem to be a response to chronic, secular (as in long-term trends, not irreligious) hopelessness of their situation ever improving, aggravated by loneliness and isolation. It doesn't surprise me, then, that suicides can be more common even in a region where conditions are strictly better.

Well said. I always bristle when I read an articles drawing such conclusions.

I find this social behavior amazing. And I'm very surprised that humans are capable of it. This is a behavior often recognised in animals that are in captivity.

Personal experience is with some finches. Finches refuse to hatch their fertilised eggs by breaking them, if they were forced to mate in a cage. I was a breeder for a brief while.

Do you have a third-party source for this? Never heard of this behavior.

It's called infanticide and it's very common throughout nature. Just recently a lion in a German zoo ate her newborn cubs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide_(zoology)

https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/08/europe/germany-lioness-eats-c...

Good point. But parent comment described infanticide by finches as a response to captivity, as if they were deliberately preventing offspring from growing up in captivity. In contrast, the "motives" given in the Wiki article are either 1. sexual conflict (e.g. offspring of a rival male), or 2. resource scarcity.

The CNN article seems more similar, even as the zoo is very careful not to say the behavior is caused by captivity.

Perhaps certain modern societies are a bit like zoos in which we have placed ourselves on exhibit.

Haha yes modernity does compare[0] to zoos. We're self-domesticating.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Zoo_(book)

> while calling someone “unmarried” in English has no strong connotations, the word’s standard Korean equivalent, mihon (미혼), implies that its object may not have married yet but one day will. An alternative term has thus gained traction in recent years: bihon (비혼), which suggests a deliberate choice not to marry, and thus not to engage in anything that comes along with marriage.

I found this part interesting. There are a few analogues in English with similar phenomena, both of which I'm personally familiar with due to communities I'm part of.

- Because the word "childless" implies that childless people are lacking something they want, many of us who actively recoil at the thought of having children have taken to using the term "childfree". Someone who wants children but doesn't have them is childless; someone who doesn't want children and has avoided having them is childfree.

- Historically, trans people, and especially trans women have been classed into two categories, "pre-op" and "post-op", based on whether or not somebody has had Genital Reconstruction Surgery. As there are an increasing number of trans women who aren't interested in having GRS at all, many who would otherwise have been considered "pre-op" are now using the term "non-op". And on top of that, as the trans community has continued to de-emphasize GRS, I've also seen the prominence of those terms fade away in general. Years and years ago (long before I transitioned), it wasn't uncommon for someone's op status to always be attached to any mention of them being trans (usually in the form "So-and-so is a pre-op transsexual"), and nowadays you only see op status used when someone is specifically discussing GRS (and honestly, the status of my genitalia is private medical information, and I have no interest in rattling it off when introducing myself or having other people rattle it off when introducing me; it's tacky and gross).

The cruel way to refer to a "childfree" woman is "barren".

My understanding was that barren referred to the inability to have children as opposed to someone who could have children but doesn't want to. Is that not correct?

Barren is a reference to her ability to have children, and means the same as "sterile" in males.

My point is that the word "barren" was appropriate maybe 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago. But I can very, very clearly imagine the different looks on a woman's face if you asked "Are you unable to have children?" vs. "Are you barren?"

The writer has an interesting slant on SK (I flipped through a few of his other essays). I don't know enough about South Korea to distill it, but it doesn't feel right. Something vaguely exoticiszed... Maybe .... "snotty expat?"

Are there any South Koreans here who will speak out? I'd trust a local's opinion over the above writer's.

I'm Korean. The author's principal mistake is casting Western anxieties onto a radically different society. This projection reveals nothing about Korea. It serves only as a linear multiplier of Western anxieties.

Confucianism and Taoism, the principal founding blocks of Korean consciousness, are deeply feminist. (Look up "Confucian feminism", "Taoist feminism", or "Do-ol" on any search engine; or just consider the fact that Feng Shui is a vagina-worshipping cult) The patriarchy apparent in them is only superficial. The superficial patriarchical aspects of Confucianism have sometimes morphed with the deeply patriarchal aspects of Christianity, and have produced some devastating effects, I admit.

Point is, you are absolutely correct, the author is exoticizing without any understanding of Korean society beyond the superficial.

It's rather disappointing to see a self-identified Korean being (currently) downvoted in an article all about Korea.

Even if you disagree with their thesis that "the principal founding blocks of Korean consciousness are deeply feminist", it's still an interesting take. And their other point that the author is exoticising Korea is bang on I think. We have seen the same for decades with Japan and its population decline. Seems like it's Korea's turn now.

And why can't the LA Review of Books employ a Korean to write its 'Korea Blog'? Why do we always have non-anglophone countries being "explained" by anglophones?

Whenever I write a comment calling out Eurocentrism on HN, and I get downvoted, I know I'm doing something right. :)

as a German user I sometimes feel like I'm being lumped in with the generally very 'American' attitude of the website, funnily enough you don't even need to go as far as Korea.

In particular in tech circles it feels like people adopt very universalist attitudes instead of keeping in mind that different cultures are anything but.

I'm Korean: I didn't downvote GP, but honestly the argument doesn't look good.

Korea used to be a highly sexist/Confucian country for the past several centuries (and still is, to a degree). Confucianism are Taoism are about as much feminist as Christianity and Islam, that is, you can make them look feminist if you want. They are all ancient philosophies practiced by diverse peoples. Something is bound to sound feminist if you look hard enough.

Besides Korea is not exactly a threatened Amazonian tribe. It has literate tradition going back ~2,000 years, chip factories, skyscrapers, and idol groups. (I heard some of them are even popular worldwide these days.) There's certainly enough room for non-Koreans to talk about Korea.

* Finally, Do-ol (도올) is a quack. For an expert of traditional Asian philosophy, he always seemed too eager to promote himself rather than, you know, doing actual study of the values he's supposedly an expert of. Doubly ironic, considering how much traditional Confucian philosophy despised self-promotion. I heard he used to even praise Xi Jinping as an ideal Confucian ruler, so go figure.

Traditional Confucian philosophy certainly did not despise self-promotion. Confucius proclaimed himself the greatest sage alive, and his arrogant attitude turned off every ruler he was trying to advise.

I wouldn't call Do-ol the greatest sage alive, but he is one of the most original and prolific thinkers in modern Korean philosophy. Before you dismiss him as a quack, try reading at least one of his fifty books.

> Traditional Confucian philosophy certainly did not despise self-promotion. Confucius proclaimed himself the greatest sage alive, and his arrogant attitude turned off every ruler he was trying to advise.

This doesn't actually follow - "do as I say, not as I do" and all that. The actions of the philosopher and the preferences of the philosophy do not have to match.

> And why can't the LA Review of Books employ a Korean to write its 'Korea Blog'? Why do we always have non-anglophone countries being "explained" by anglophones?

I was wondering the same, myself.

I'm sure they could run a group of Korean & Korean-American stringers to contribute weekly articles. It's LA - I'm sure there are a few Koreans around. If nothing else, "Current Events"(tm) would suggest that having a better understanding of Korean culture and history would serve the American populace well...

Why the downvotes? Can someone explain? Why westerns (I'm not going to say "anglos") always project their culture? You're not unique, you know.

So a Korean, who probably knows more about the topic of Korean culture than the average American HN reader, gives their view and somehow these other readers think they know better and downvote him/her?

Typical HN attitude really ... people on this board seem to have this "know it all / know it better than you" attitude even when they clearly don't.

As someone who is not a Westerner or American, this place always makes me feel that it is just a self validating echo chamber being so sure of your views even when it isn't matched to reality.

Although much of the sentiment of the article is correct, the author seems to be trying really hard to push a narrative (suicide by being attacked by social media followers, really?). Also, less desire to marry is certainly not exclusive to Korea. Same thing in the U.S., and probably most of the rest of the developed world as well. I'd still bet that the average Korean is more interested in marriage than the average westernized feminist American, but that's just me guessing.

In any case, it's most certainly true that life is hard in Korea if you're not in the top 10% or so. They've got among the most competitive (pre-college) education systems in the world that in my opinion is more tantamount to torture because 11 year kids are literally at cram schools until 10-11pm at night. Getting into the right university is extraordinarily competitive and basically determines your future.

And then the job market is extremely competitive, with probably among the longest hours and worst working conditions as far as office jobs go. If you're only working 9:30am-5:30pm, you're considered lucky and probably working at a foreign company. You've got to be completely subservient to your boss, and there's always some upper manager who makes the atmosphere toxic. If you're a woman, you'll basically get pressured to leave as soon as you have a baby. And buying a home - a prerequisite for a man to marry in Korean culture - has gotten unaffordable unless your parents can subsidize you. And of course tack on 2 years of military service, so most Korean men don't even start their first job until their 27 or so.

It's no surprise to me that Korea has the highest suicide rate in the world, and that people are choosing to drop out of this cutthroat rat race. I spoke to an expat with kids who's lived here in Korea for the last 20+ years who told me the younger generation has basically given up on finding a good job and buying a home, focusing more on travel and experiences. Perhaps an exaggeration, but not completely removed from reality.

In Korea's defense, I see the same pattern in the U.S. (thanks baby boomers), just maybe not as extreme. Although university is perhaps getting more expensive in Korea, it's certainly nowhere near the extreme that it is in the U.S. And at least Korea has a very good universal healthcare system. Similar to the U.S., I think the only hope of real change is for the baby boomers to retire or get out of politics and for the younger generation to take over. Let's call a spade for a spade here - baby boomers created this mess (whether we're talking the U.S. or Korea), and they're not going to bring us out.

Unfortunately it's just the way advanced countries work. The society there is not made for people. So people do not have offspring and do not want to live. Although it's quite interesting that South Korea turned unfit for habitation in such a short time.

> not made for *common people

If you're rich, it's never been a better time to be alive. Higher wealthy inequality than ever, financially desperate unattached workers to take advantage of. Increasing wealth inequality/concentration is simply the default nature of any capitalist system without policies in place to redistribute wealth.

Casualties of war* are not counted in percentages(%):

http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/suicide-rate-by-c...

India beats China by a big margin, even with the subpar statistics Dept.

* If life is war then suicide is casualty(short-life) sort by 'Total Per Year'

Low birth rate is a sign of intelligence, it has nothing to do with suicides.

I'm very much a non-religious person, but as a science person you absolutely have to question the almost glaring correlation between people properly practicing religion and discipline, happiness, and procreation.

and the data of this correlation is... all in your head

I am a lifelong gamer and for about as long, my parents have hated it. I remember one time they made me read about Korean guys packed like rats in computer labs, chainsmoking cigarettes and farming gold / whatever you farm in WoW for 18 hours a day. They were paid next to nothing and largely used their spare time to also farm to make money on the side.

I wrote it off at the time because reasons but to think that society, parents, or getting a low score on a single test would all but force them into a position like that is mind boggling. This was over a decade ago too, I can only assume it's gotten worse for a lot of people.

I can't see anything like this happening in the US because of half the country being red states that would be appalled at the thought of not getting married and having kids.

>I can't see anything like this happening in the US

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/22/u-s-fertili...

The US is already below replacement rate on average and growth is mostly coming from immigration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

Only 5 states have a fertility rate above 2, and they are very low population states. Deep blue state are around 1.5/1.6 and red states are around 1.8/1.9

Ah, thank you. I was thinking of commenting something similar, but I didn't have numbers.

The oddity of South Korea and Japan isn't that they aren't having kids; that's par for the course for a first-world nation. It's that they have no significant amount of immigration. If South Korea and Japan took in the same proportions of immigrants as North America and Europe, they would have the same population projections as us.

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