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Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

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Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are citing a British-US founder's product, an US magazine, and Encyclopedia Britannica to assert it all started in Britain. I'd wager we need a bit more geographically/culturally varied sources to have a fair guess at the truth.

Can you provide some of these sources for folks open to educating themselves?

You can look for M. Bairoch's research for instance ("Révolution Industrielle et Sous-Développement")

Some other put the "start" of industrialization way before, at the end of the Renaissance.

As I understand it, there was a progressive flow of industrialization that was clearly visible in Belgium/Netherland, and also started brewing in the other surrounding countries, but the "Industrial Revolution" term was coined by a British author for a specific point happening first in England, then in Belgium/France/the US etc. afterwards.

It kinda comes down to where you set the stake of what is meant by "industriailzed", a bit like where you set the beginning of the "space conquest" and thus decide who was first to reach the critical milestone.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you think of us all as one race, the human race, the fact that a few corners of the world are declining in fertility It is not a few corners of the world. It is currently "developed countries", but we have no reason to believe that the non-"developed countries" will do any better. > is arguably an environmental victory that could soften some crises’s in the future. We are like 99.9% genetically similar, why risk…

Regarding the idea I’m taking a blase Attitude. My arguments allow for two separate defences against this argument. Both that humans are not very genetically different so a change in genetics should hardly affect culture, and that culture isn’t dependent on genetics. How blase can I be while preparing two different defences against your allegations? Regarding argument 1, I will say there is no problem with the supply…

> Regarding the idea

Perhaps my use of "society" overemphasized the culture aspect that you pick up on. "perserving culture" is of a secondary importance to me, what's more important is the people themselves. As you say, the memes will be able to fend for themselves and survive even if the people in the society do not. People are not merely the transmission vectors of DNA and memes.

> there is no problem with the supply of people, global population is growing. > and at this point the growing countries outweigh the shrinking ones sharply.

Global population may be growing (for now) but the rate at which its growing is decreasing [0].

Further, (and I wish I had a source at hand) the problem with relying on immigration to sustain population levels in a country is that many countries do too good of a job at assimilation. The fertility rate of immigrants rapidly converges to the local level over the course of 2-3 generations.

> You are worried about a decline in children in a set of countries. I’m worried a decline in children, immigrants, population, in every country in the world simultaneously.

I don't think that's true. You and I are worried about the same thing. I look at Japan and Korean as habringer of what's to come for the rest of the countries in the world (and thus the world as a whole), i.e. an aging population without enough children to maintain any semblence of the current way of life working, much less to replenish the population.

[0]: https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/06/2019-Revision-–-W...

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#233

Lots of highly opinionated clickwarriors in this comments section. Free time brought to you, almost certainly, by having relatively few kids.

on reddit they seem to be fixated on the "korean women needs to be liberated by chivalrous white male no wonder korean women dont want to marry korean men"

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Men today produce fewer sperm than in the past, and the sperm are less healthy. The question, then, is what could be causing this decline in fertility[0]. This has everything to do with monogamous relationships and marriages in most of the developed human world. In the natural world, there are many factors at play that help ensure only the "healthiest" males conceive with females. Most factors are indirect, such as…

That's an elaborate portrait and narrative you've painted there. Do you have sources for that?

It was something I saw many years ago on NHK as one theory of why human sperm quality keeps deteriorating. As far as I'm concerned, it makes sense to me. Remove more and more factors that would encourage healthier sperm and it's only natural that our sperm will deteriorate.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#236

My first kid just reached 18. Now I'm seriously thinking of having another one. Remember when we were younger and the world's population hit 7 billion, everyone was really, really concerned about overpopulation??? I even did not want to have any kids because of this. Now, Korea is seriously going to be worse than even Japan. And faster too. Back in Jamaica one of my grandma had 7 children, the other one had 8 (with 2…

The answer is easy. Middle easterners want kids for cultural and religious reasons. I know any talk of religion and/or culture is verboten in modern American discourse but it's a significant factor in most the world. Yet it makes most Americans uncomfortable

>Middle easterners want kids for cultural and religious reasons.

Would middle eastern women want just as many kids if they had the same freedom and opportunities as women in developed countries?

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#237

My wife and I are Korean-American, albeit with many ties to our country of origin. Something I've noticed is that many couples that do want a child have a very difficult time conceiving. People are having kids at a later age on average, but even younger couples seem to have a hard time. Various gynecological disorders seem to be very common too - fibroids, endometriosis, adenomyosis, amongst others, all of which affe…

What type of adoption are you thinking of? From what I've heard, adopting a newborn is very difficult.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#238
post #188

Korean politics is blaming feminism for this phenomenon, but it's really a mix of all the issues in the comments, as well as sexual crime injustices (bare minimal sentencing for sex crimes) and women afraid of bringing a child into such society. It's just a natural evolutionary reaction.

yeah this is a bad take that people on r/korea are pushing which consist drum roll please....mostly white men/women who keep this echo chamber narrative going...so that they think that korean women are going to flock to westerners more (?) its bizarre to me as somebody who has many Korean friends who just crack up when I translate that subreddit for them.

first feminism in korea is toxic. they are female version of incel culture. very few things translate well to western audiences who unfortunately do not read past headlines on reddit. one example is this left/right equating to US left/right wing. this Korean feminist is also similar, it is not an counterpart to the US feminist movement. there are very few moderate feminists in the mainstream. it is of the radical variety calling for violence against men. for example, they caused controversy for instance streaming sexually assaulting underaged boys and poisoning patrons at a restaurant and uploading it in their community groups. In fact many Japanese feminists point out how toxic the feminist in Korea are, they are not about equality, they are about usurping. Most just live with their parents.

now thats out of the way, sex crimes are treated differently in korea due to the complex judicial system that is the result of multiple period of colonialism. its not as rampant as reddit has you believe but the punishment is also too lenient and should be stronger.

more women are entering the workforce and they are afraid to lose their careers. the same is true in advanced economies, women in these part of the world have far more choice and power than in third world countries. of course they are not going to give up their comforts. the redpill take you are subscribing to is NOT what Korean Koreans subscribe to. After all there is a record number of cohabiting men and women in Korea, they just simply choose not to have kids or get married anymore.

also if you think you have game in korea just because of your skin color, trust me, they know exactly why you are here and they dont care. the "white sexpat" have ruined it for rest of us here. most international marriage in korea is between neighboring countries. this is true for Japan and China as well. People who look like each other but are from different cultures.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the idea I’m taking a blase Attitude. My arguments allow for two separate defences against this argument. Both that humans are not very genetically different so a change in genetics should hardly affect culture, and that culture isn’t dependent on genetics. How blase can I be while preparing two different defences against your allegations? Regarding argument 1, I will say there is no problem with the supply…

> Regarding the idea Perhaps my use of "society" overemphasized the culture aspect that you pick up on. "perserving culture" is of a secondary importance to me, what's more important is the people themselves. As you say, the memes will be able to fend for themselves and survive even if the people in the society do not. People are not merely the transmission vectors of DNA and memes. > there is no problem with the sup…

Honestly I'm trying to play devils advocate here a bit for the sake of dialouge, cheers mate.

I would love to save western cultures and the genetics are part of the culture. They just are. The regional adaptions people's bodies have to their climate and geography and local food sources really does influence their interests and their cultures to a degree. Peoples bodies are different and that makes them do different things, that's one example I can think of genetics influencing culture. If all the whites die off for instance there will probably be less people doing extreme snowboarding while chugging milk.

Yet the concerns I've raised I believe we should at the very least be wary of.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big part of our social circle consists of recent immigrants from Korea ( But it does seem to affect Korean-Americans that have been here longer too. Even amongst our close family, my cousin is affected, two of her cousins are affected. All three were born and raised in Korea to adulthood and came here within the past 10 years. My cousin has an American (Caucasian) husband, her two cousins have born-in-the-USA Korea…

To be honest, this sounds environmental in nature… I wouldn’t be surprised if this is intentional. That said, all I have is the constant drum of “the world is over populated” by leaders around the world to back up my reasoning for potentially being intentional. Plenty of non-intentional possibilities as well.

What do you mean intentional? If people are intentionally trying to limit births, why would that lead to a large amount of fertility procedures?
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