[senozhatsky]

> There is one thing I can't understand from the article: it says a low birth rate as a reason of an increase in migration. Why would a low birth rate lead to more migration?

Good question. My understanding is that (from the article)

    The low birthrate is leading to severe labor shortages ... prompting the
    country to welcome more foreign workers.

So foreign workers (e.g. from South-East Asia?) make it harder for Koreans to find a job in SK? But it's all the same (severe labor shortages) in Japan, if not worse.

[kijin]

"Labor shortage" in the context of high unemployment (edit: as in South Korea, not Japan) usually just means, from the point of view of employers, a shortage of suckers who are willing to accept low wages.

Besides, the birth rate in SK hovered between 1.4 and 1.5 during much of the 80s and 90s, and only dropped to current levels (around 1.1) since the early 2000s. Most people who are looking for jobs right now were born in the 90s; the ultra-low-birth-rate generation is still in K-12. It's a lame excuse.

Foreign workers are willing to accept the kind of crappy treatment that most young Koreans would not hesitate to report to the authorities. That's why they're hired and Koreans are not. Then the Koreans become foreign workers in Japan...

[barry-cotter]

Japan has low unemployment, not high.

https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/unemployment-rate

> The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in Japan increased unexpectedly to 2.5 percent in March 2019 from a five-month low of 2.3 percent in the previous month

[kijin]

Sorry for the confusion. I was responding to the parent's last line where he asked about foreign workers and labor shortage in SK. Edited to clarify which country I'm talking about.