Kim Jong-un urges mums to have more children and ‘strengthen national power’
Kim Jong-un has called on women to have more children in a bid to halt the continuing fall in North Korea’s birthrate and ‘strengthen national power’.
The Supreme Leader made the appeal during an event for mothers in Pyongyang at the weekend, describing the challenge as ‘everyone’s housekeeping’.
He said: ‘Stopping the decline in birthrates and providing good child care and education are all our family affairs that we should solve together with our mothers.’
UN figures estimate that as of 2023 the fertility rate, or the average number of children being born to a woman in North Korea, stood at 1.8, amid an extended fall in the rate during recent decades.
The figure remains higher than in some of North Korea’s neighbours, which have been grappling with a similar downward trend.
South Korea’s fertility rate, the lowest in the developed world, is believed to be due to a potent cocktail of reasons discouraging people from having babies, including a decaying job market, a brutally competitive school environment for children, traditionally weak child care assistance and a male-centered corporate culture where many women find it impossible to combine careers and family.
While North Korea is one of the poorest nations in the world, the change in its demographic structure is similar to that of rich countries, some observers say.
Ahn Kyung-su, head of DPRKHEALTH.ORG, a website focusing on health issues in North Korea, said: ‘Many families in North Korea also don’t intend to have more than one child these days as they know they need lots of money to raise their kids, send them to school and help them get jobs.’
Ahn, who has interviewed many North Korean defectors, said the smuggling of a vast amount of South Korean TV dramas and movies in the past 20 years that showed an elevated social status for women has also likely influenced women in North Korea not to have many children.
Pyongyang implemented birth control programs in the 1970-80s to slow a postwar population growth.
The country’s fertility rate recorded a major decline following a famine in the mid-1990s that was estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands of people, the Seoul-based Hyundai Research Institute said in a report in August.
‘Given North Korea lacks resources and technological advancements, it could face difficulties to revive and develop its manufacturing industry if sufficient labor forces are not provided,’ the institute report said.
According to North Korean state media reports this year, the country has introduced a set of benefits for families with three or more children, including preferential free housing arrangements, state subsidies, free food, medicine and household goods and educational perks for children.
South Korea’s statistics agency estimates the North’s population at 25.7 million.
The Hyundai institute report said that North Korea was expected to experience a population shrink from 2034 and forecast its population would decrease to 23.7 million by 2070.
Ahn, the website head, said that Kim Jong Un’s repeated public appearances with his young daughter, Ju Ae, are also likely be efforts to encourage families.
Other experts said the daughter’s appearances were more likely an attempt to show she’s her father’s heir.
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