District in Busan to offer P42,000 for starting a relationship, P842,000 for getting married
In case you missed it: A district in Busan, South Korea is offering tons of cash to single Korean and foreign individuals who would start a romantic relationship and ultimately get married and have children amid the country's population crisis.
According to Korean media, Saha is holding a mass blind dating event for “single Korean and foreign men and women” in October. It's meant for people, aged between 23 and 43, who live or work in the area.
The man and woman who would be together after the event will be given one million won (P42,000). If they hold a “sang-gyeon-rye,” or a meeting of family members (arranged typically before the wedding), they will be given two million won (P84,000). If they get married, 20 million won (P842,000) awaits the couple.
Saha will also provide additional support for their housing for up to five years, according to the Korea Times.
The Korea Herald reported that it's worth 30 million won (P1.2 million) for housing or 800,000 won (P33,000) in monthly rent for up to five years.
The specific rules and the scale of the event have yet to be announced.
If this year’s affair turns out successful, Saha said it would make it an annual event with more non-Korean participants.
"This project is designed to overcome the demographic crisis amid South Korea's low birth rate by forming a multicultural local community in the future," The Korea Herald quoted Saha District Head Lee Gap-jun as saying.
In a report last May, CNN South Korea noted that the country has the world’s lowest fertility rate or the average number of children a woman will have in her lifetime. It recorded a fertility rate of 0.72 in 2023—down from 0.78 the previous year—in the latest drop in its string of annual declines. Countries need a fertility rate of 2.1 to maintain a stable population without migration.
South Korea and other Asian nations are dealing with aging populations just a few decades after their rapid industrialization, CNN reported.
While European nations have the same problem, they're able to mitigate its speed and impact through immigration.
Countries like South Korea, Japan, and China, meanwhile, have shied away from mass immigration to tackle their working age population's decline.
Experts cited as reasons South Korea's demographic shifts the demanding work cultures, stagnating wages, rising costs of living, changing attitudes toward marriage and gender equality, and rising disillusionment among younger generations, according to CNN.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said their low birth rate can be considered a "national emergency." In May, he said he would ask for parliament’s cooperation to establish the Ministry of Low Birth Rate Counter-Planning.