South Korea’s birthrate rose for a second-straight year in 2025, government data showed on Wednesday, in a further sign that a country facing a demographic crisis for nearly a decade may be starting to turn a corner.
South Korea’s total fertility rate, the average number of babies a woman is expected to have during her reproductive life, stood at 0.80 in 2025, up from 0.75 in 2024, according to preliminary data from the Ministry of Data and Statistics. New births in the Asian country started to rebound in 2024 on a post-pandemic boost and supported by government policies, after eight consecutive years of declines that saw it register the world’s lowest birthrate at 0.72 in 2023.
There were 5.0 new births per 1,000 people in 2025, up from 4.7 in 2024. That compared with 5.6 in China last year, 4.6 in Taiwan last year and 5.7 in Japan in 2024, where the trend remains downwards.
The pace of the rebound is faster than the government’s optimistic-case projection of 0.75 in 2025 and 0.80 in 2026, which forecasts the total fertility rate to break above 1.0 per woman in 2031, Park said.
Marriages, a leading indicator of new births with a time lag of one to two years, rose 8.1% in 2025, after recording the biggest-ever jump of 14.8% in 2024.
