When a baby is born in a rural village, the whole community celebrates. [Provided by Imgye-myeon, Jeongseon-gun]
When a baby is born in a rural village, the whole community celebrates. [Provided by Imgye-myeon, Jeongseon-gun]

The Malthusian theory of population — the flawed doctrine that food production grows only arithmetically while population grows geometrically — once served as a convenient justification for South Korea's policies to suppress population growth.

That theory has since been proven entirely wrong. South Korea's population continues to inch upward only thanks to an influx of naturalized citizens, while the underlying fertility rate has fallen below 1.0.

South Korea was once a model student of Malthus, but it has been roughly two decades since the country recognized its teacher's failures and walked out of the classroom.

Across the many cities and towns now shrinking in population, there is little affection for the false ideology Malthus promoted — or for the past leaders who exploited it.

Before long, South Korea may see a phenomenon similar to Spain's, where entire villages and towns have become ghost communities as populations dwindle.

Numerous countermeasures have been tried over the past two decades, yet no truly effective solution has emerged.

People marry and have children when they feel the world is worth living in — when enough reasons exist to embrace life.

Yet for many young people, opening their eyes to the world means confronting a landscape of discouraging realities: a justice system perceived as lenient toward the wealthy and harsh toward the poor, rigid apartment-based class hierarchies, university ranking obsessions, nepotism, a prosecutorial culture that dominates public life, unpredictable judicial rulings, civil servants in regional offices who treat residents with condescension, workplace gapjil from superiors, and a precarious non-regular employment system that leaves workers feeling like second-class citizens. Together, these conditions push people toward giving up on marriage and children.

While other local governments pursue a range of population-decline countermeasures, Gangneung has decided to run those same policies in parallel — while also concluding that policymakers must first share a genuine understanding of how serious the situation is. To that end, the city will provide population education to all municipal employees.

When public officials grasp the severity of the crisis through education — not just intellectually but viscerally — they come to understand that addressing population decline cannot stop at expanding digital resident registration or raising childbirth incentives. The real work lies in making life genuinely worth living for members of society: improving the educational environment, the quality of everyday life, and the relationship between labor and reward.

This education session is therefore expected to serve as a catalyst for more precise and effective population governance going forward.

This marks the first time Gangneung has conducted population education targeting all of its public officials, and such initiatives remain rare across the broader public sector.

Gangneung Mayor Kim Jung-nam said Friday, ahead of the session, "As we enter the ninth term of elected local government, this is the moment for all public officials to unite in overcoming the population decline crisis." He added that he hoped the session would "allow us to share a common understanding of the severity of the demographic crisis and serve as an opportunity to prioritize population growth and improvements to living conditions in every policy and project we pursue."

The session is scheduled for Monday at the main auditorium of Gangneung City Hall, held in conjunction with the first monthly assembly of the ninth elected term.

It was organized to help the city respond proactively to population decline driven by the low birth rate and aging, and to embed a population-policy perspective into the planning and execution of all major city policies and projects. It is the first time Gangneung has held population education for its entire staff.

Topics to be covered include the importance of population trends, the low birth rate and aging, youth population and balanced regional development, and the causes of local extinction along with response strategies for local governments.

Following the session, Gangneung plans to deepen all departments' understanding of demographic change and strengthen officials' capacity to incorporate a population-policy perspective when planning and carrying out their respective policies and projects.


abc@heraldcorp.com