Seoul, Aug 16 (UNI) South Korea’s birth rate has dropped throughout much of the past decade, spelling trouble for the military as regional threats and global conflicts simmer.
A new report has found that the number of South Korean troops declined by 20% in the past six years, in large part because of the dwindling pool of young men – reflecting the shrinking workforce and swelling elderly population in one of the world’s most rapidly aging countries, reports CNN.
The Defense Ministry report attributed the drop to “complex factors” including population decline and fewer men wanting to become officers due to “soldier treatment”. Though the report didn’t elaborate on that treatment, studies and surveys have previously highlighted the military’s notoriously harsh conditions.
As of July, the military had 450,000 troops, it said – down from 563,000 in 2019.
“If the number of standing army (members) continues to decline, there can be difficulties in securing elite manpower and limits in operating equipment,” warned the report, shared last week by lawmaker Choo Mi-ae.
The news comes at a bad time for South Korea, a key Western ally which hosts huge numbers of US troops and has a mutual defence treaty with Washington.
Just across the border, neighbouring North Korea has sent tens of thousands of soldiers to fight for Russia along the front lines with Ukraine – raising fears that Moscow may share advanced military technology with Pyongyang in exchange, violating international sanctions.
Meanwhile, North Korea has continued with its hostile rhetoric, threatening to destroy South Korea with nuclear weapons if attacked and warning that Seoul remains “the enemy”.
However, experts dismissed North Korea’s hostile rhetoric arguing that it doesn’t necessarily mean its military is better off.
The North, on the contrary, is facing its own population woes and birth rate decline – and its technology lags far behind the South, which is now hoping to plug the shortfall in military recruits through innovation.
“South Korea is incomparably far ahead of North Korea in terms of conventional weapons,” said Choi
Byung-ook, a national security professor at Sangmyung University.
“We have smaller troops now, but I like to say ‘small but strong military’, that’s what we need to become.”
On the surface, North Korea has a few advantages such as it is one of the world’s most heavily militarized nations with up to 1.3 million armed forces personnel, that’s nearly three times higher than South Korea’s troop numbers; long duration of military service (an average of 10 years) allowing them to have higher “unit cohesion (and) knowledge of each other’s capabilities vis-a-vis South Korean conscripts serve for a year and a half.
Moreover, North Korea’s fertility rate – defined as the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime – is also far higher, at 1.77 in 2025 compared to South Korea’s rate of 0.75, UN data shows.
The North has been having more babies per year than the South since 2018, said Jooyung Lee, senior economist at the Bank of Korea Economic Research Institute.
But the full picture is more complicated, experts told CNN.
For one, South Korea has a reserve force of about 3.1 million men. While their training may be basic, it would give them the numbers needed for potential warfare – and that’s not including the 28,500 US troops stationed in the country.
Pyongyang is also facing its own population problems, with its fertility rate dipping in the last few years after the pandemic, which made its leader Kim Jong Un to urge mothers to “give birth to many children” as a patriotic duty.
Their military has also enlisted more women to fill whatever gaps do exist. This trend began near the turn of the century after a previous dip in fertility, Lee said, with the proportion of female recruits now reaching as high as 20% by some estimates.
By contrast, women are not conscripted in South Korea – a controversial point that has stoked resentment among some young Korean men who argue their mandatory service puts them at a disadvantage in their studies, careers and personal lives.
As of 2023, volunteer females accounted for only 3.6% of the entire military, according to the Defense Ministry.
Some experts have suggested that conscripting more women could solve South Korea’s problem, but others argue that the country needs to move away from the idea of increasing its manpower – and instead focus on advancing its technology and making the troops elite.
On the battlefields of Europe, Ukraine has shown firsthand how an out-manned and out-gunned military can still hold back and inflict painful losses on a much larger opponent by embracing new and affordable technology.
However, some experts contend that there’s no robots or automation that can replace a trained soldier, airman, marine.
Instead, some advocated the need of improveing military welfare, fighting spirit as a whole and establishment of an optimized manpower structure system.
