Cutback in soldiers, teachers

Social consensus needed to cope with demographic issue

The government has unveiled its second policy package to cushion the impact of the expected fall in the country's population in the coming decades. The measures worked out by an interagency taskforce call for reducing the number of Korea's standing armed forces from the current 580,000 to 500,000 by 2022, and cutting down on the training of new teachers more rapidly than previously planned.

The anticipated drop in the population is a grave issue that will affect almost all areas, such as politics, the economy, society and culture. That means the government's population policies should be diverse and complex. The sharp downsizing of the number of schoolteachers, for instance, will inevitably spark fierce opposition from interest groups. Given the rapidly dwindling number of students, however, it will be next to impossible to maintain their number at the current level.

Also, the plan to cut the standing military to 500,000 is designed to retain the number of troops at that level through natural decrement. To do so, the government will convert some reservists into active-duty soldiers and lengthen the service period of mid-ranking and noncommissioned officers. It will also expand the proportion of female military personnel and obligate naturalized citizens to serve.

Korea's birthrate stood at 0.98 last year ― rock bottom among 201 countries. If the current trend continues, the population will peak at 52 million in 2038 and begin to decline to 39 million by 2067. There is even a grim report that says the last Korean will die a few hundred years later. This is a matter of life and death for the nation.

The government has poured no less than 268 trillion won ($231 billion) into lifting the low birthrate but has ultimately failed to turn the situation around, and is now shifting its policy focus to improving quality of life. Such a policy change, however, will lead rivaling political groups to fall into disputes over "welfare populism." The nation needs a broad social consensus on the demographic issue.