Underpopulation Under Pressure in South Korea

By Seungbin Felix Lee ‘27 ARTLESS STUDENT WRITER

“We have to acknowledge that reality has changed We should guarantee [to the younger generation] that marriage and childbirth aren’t big risks, and inspire belief that society will together be responsible for the raising of their children. And doesn’t belief, after all, come from policy? So policy needs to be drastically changed.” ruthless cannot be justified in only regards to ‘obvious’ statistics depicting that population dramatically decreased at the start of 21st century. Indeed, it became further arduous for the ‘rags to riches’ miracle to become reality in South Korea because education emerged to be one of the most vital materials in judging individuals’ materialistic value.

Let’s say that you are born in an affluent family. You receive well-organised private education in expensive hagwons and tuitions. Consequently, your academic performance is superb, leading you straight to Seoul University. You then receive a wide variety of scout requests from prominent companies. There are steps unequivocally awaiting you. All you have to do is to get an occupation, endure spiteful reprimand from your boss, repeat these for approximately 20 years, meet with someone you do not love, marry them purely for financial reasons, and have many children to be socially accepted. Such a seemingly ‘trivial’ or ‘impactless’ life is astonishingly a dream for many MZ generations.

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Sang Hee

Kim, Vice President of the Committee for Childbirth and Aging Population is surely an odd number, primarily because it does not represent South Korea’s expected population in billion after several hundred years. Instead, it conversely denotes the general fertility rate in South Korea today, which is the lowest of all countries. The obvious question to arise, now, is to ask who is responsible for such an abysmally low number.

A typical perception is that the young people, commonly known as the MZ generation, are being unnecessarily ‘selfish’ and ‘close-minded’, thus being the fundamental of such an unprecedented crisis. These prejudic -

South Korea es developed as a result of the democratic system in most of the societies where individuals can make their own decisions; in other words, freedom of choice. Consequently, success and result came to define one’s ability, and those not capable of accomplishing so were considered to be ‘the outliers’ with indolence perceived to be one of their characteristics. Nonetheless, is this actually relevant in the current context?

To begin with, opportunities are exceptionally limited to the majority of MZ generation, though the society might not seem ostensibly competitive anymore. A simple-minded assumption that the world was previously more

Here is another example. You are born in a family suffering extreme poverty. Your mom died after giving birth to you, and you receive punches from your father instead of a proper education. You did not have time to go to university since you are running out of food right at that moment, so you decide to become a farmer to sacrifice your entire life in working, working, and working. Yet, the adults persist to exert pressure on you regarding dating someone, forming a stable family, and having children, merely an impossible thing to do.

Nowadays, this is an inevitable destiny of such reckless, ambitious, yet innocent young people. Young people are solely being used as a scapegoat for the condescending old people to satisfy their pride and a false belief that they have positively contributed to South Korea’s society.

¶hostility have unnerved the Syrian population.

While Turkey’s reluctance for a full-scale invasion is being voiced, both sides of the conflict have carried out bombardments on targeted areas according to their war plans.

Syria’s constant suffering also is exacerbated by the earthquake that devastated millions, which has now reportedly been followed by a magnitude 7.5 tremor killing masses of people across the subcontinent.The overall widespread destruction has been caused by quakes and aftershocks toppling buildings,rescuers scrambling to find survivors among the wreckage brought about by the disastrous natural crisis. The death toll has risen significantly as experts warn that the aftershock could continue for weeks.

The Danish geological institute officially stated that the tremors were felt as far away as Greenland. Meanwhile, Syrian Civil defence, a rescue group with operations in northern Syria, has made an official announcement to declare a state of emergency, urging foreign forces to take matters into their own hands. When the earthquake first hit,the main city of its epicentre was situated in the Kahramanmaras around the Gaziantep province, about 20 miles from the capital city of Gaziantep, which is home to more than two million people, including hundreds of thousands of Syrians who fled during the country’s war, which began in 2011. Such a crisis like this must be devastating to those who had already experienced such disastrous measures not long ago as even now its government is being publicly denounced for their inhumane actions during the 2011 catastrophe.

That being said, the Syrian government officials have tried to make helpful contributions toward the community as their governors have constantly been changing positions andbeen unwilling to take the lead in handling the ongoing emergency.

These governors are responsible for the pandemonium amongst themselves, even with most of their civilians either dead or displaced across the country among the rubble. The casualties of war from recent years and the unresolved tension amongst Turkey and Syria has finally been acknowledged and addressed, but they seem to be only half aware of the constant shameful burden their citizens have suffered through behind the scenes of their bloodshed.

2022 German coup plot and Neo-Nazism in Germany

ichsbürger movement, a far-right, anti-semist, extreme nationalist, and monarchist movement. The members of the movement rejected the constitution and the Federal Republic of Germany. The Economist claimed that the members of the Reichsburger movement “draw ridicule even from the neo-nazis’ and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution labels the organisation as “enemies of the state, profiters, and conspiracy theorists”. Undoubtedly, the movement is based upon extremist beliefs which challenge the legitimacy of the Federal Government and democracy while dreaming of a government based upon the German Empire.

Despite its extremist and unrealistic worldview, the followers of the movement have increased rapidly. In 2018, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution reported the number of followers to be about 18000 people which is 80% more that the report in 2016. Marina Springs of BBC also reported that the radicalisation and expansion of the movement may “go hand in hand with the growth of pandemic disinformation online” which indicates that the movement clearly hasn’t gotten any smaller since 2018. The main problem of the expansion is that the movement promotes violence to its followers. It is evident that the 2022 coup d’état plot wasn’t the first of its crimes.

On 7th december 2022, 25 members of the Patriotische Union were reported to have been arrested by 5000 German police forces across 11 states of Deutschland on suspicion of plotting a coup d’état to overthrow the German government and establish a monarchist German government which replicated the German Reich and the German Empire. The far-right extremist terrorists were plotting for “Day X” when the Union and its followers would storm the German parliament in order to seize power. Main members such as Pinz Reuss Heinrich XIII, who is a descendant of the House of Reuss, were arrested during this process and the anti-terrorism operation in 2022 became the largest operation in German history.

Patriotische Union, the main organisation of the coup d’état plot, is largely based upon the Re-

In 2016, in Georgesmund, a man who described himself as a Reichburger shot 3 Bavarian police officers and was later imprisoned with a life sentence. In 2014, a Reichburger organisation planned to militarise itself by bringing in weapons into Germany but was later caught by the German police. In April of 2022, just before the major operation, four members of the Vereinte Patrioten, a Reichburger organisation, were arrested for plotting to overthrow the federal government by cutting out the electricity substations in Germany with bombs.

By John Hyeonbeom Shin ‘27 ARTLESS STUDENT WRITER Middle East

Clearly, the expansion of the Reichburger movement is not only a worry for the Federal Government of Germany but also for the innocent citizens of Germany. The recent operation against the coup d’état plot shocked the German citizens when aristocrats, and several former members of the German government and military were arrested or detained. It is of paramount importance to understand that the organisation attempts to replicate the German Reich, a nation which holds the utmost responsibility for the World War II, and the Prussian Empire, which holds one of the largest responsibility for the World War I. The militarisation, the expansion, and the popularisation of the Reichsburger is not only dangerous not only to the Federal Republic of Germany but the international community overall.

Works Cited

1https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-far-right-reichsb%C3%BCrger-movement-larger-than-earlier-estimated/a-43580603

2https://www.bbc.com/news/ world-europe-63885028

3https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ deutschland/italien-liefert-beireichsbuerger-razzia-verhaftetendeutschen-aus-a-6506a060-fc3a4e7d-ad90-234ed40e4051

4https://www.verfassungsschutz. de/SharedDocs/publikationen/ EN/reichsbuerger-and-selb - stverwalter/2018-12-reichsbuerger-und-selbstverwalter-enemies-of-the-state-profiteers-conspiracytheorists.pdf?__ blob=publicationFile&v=5

5https://www.economist.com/ europe/2016/11/10/hundreds-ofgermans-are-living-as-if-the-reichnever-ended

6https://www.faz.net/aktuell/ gesellschaft/kriminalitaet/reichsbuerger-erhaelt-lebenslange-haft-wegen-polizistenmordes-15259630.html

7https://archive.md/xKehd