[pjc50]

I deliberately chose the population number graph rather than the birth rate graph because that's the one that actually affects resource usage (housing etc), rather than its first derivative.

If the numbers start dropping to the extent that opportunities open up, I believe that people's views might start changing.

We see localized depopulation of e.g. small Italian or Japanese villages as the local economy dries up. But Korea still has a real and growing economy! It's just perhaps not evenly distributed.

[viridian]

You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. The median age is 45.6 and rapidly rising. All of these people can't decide to adapt to market conditions and have children. The population crash is almost inevitable unless SK breaks free of population-wide human behaviors and goes from having less than 1 child per couple to having 6.