While globally we won’t be able to avoid population decline, individual countries will keep on making easy (immigration) and difficult (encouraging births) paths towards growth. Without economic growth, there is apparently doom. And with population growth comes a rise in GDP.
Korea, like Japan, is notoriously an anti-immigration monoculture. Any actual immigrants or resident foreign workers are not treated well.
Surprisingly (to me), Korea has been using foreign labour in a very odd and archaic way:
South Korea’s population began to shrink for the first time last year. It’s an omen of things to come. Like people in other developed economies, South Koreans are having fewer babies and their society is aging. One solution would be to allow greater immigration, and that would require changes in how non-Korean workers are seen and treated.
…Cambodian migrant, Khen Srey Nuon, has been living in a shed inside a greenhouse. “The water here freezes in winter. My room is also usually freezing. It’s difficult to live in. My employer gives me drinking water, but it’s not so clean, so I have to buy my own.”
In December, a Cambodian migrant worker was found dead in the greenhouse where she was living. After that, the government stopped issuing employment permits to employers who housed workers in greenhouses. But Kim Yi-chan says South Korea’s system remains stacked against the migrants and is basically a form of modern-day slavery.
…The approximate age of the people working in the fields right now is over 70. And once they reach 75 or older, it will be hard for them to remain in the workforce.
Until I read that last line, I thought this was terrible, literally slavery. But for elderly people to suffer such conditions, that makes it worse still.
Also, this:
South Korea is now being slammed by Amnesty International for a number of abuses afflicting its migrant-dominated agriculture sector.
The 20,000 foreign workers fuelling South Korea’s farming industry regularly encounter intimidation, violence, excessive working hours, forced labour and no rest days, according to an Amnesty report released yesterday. And because of a “flawed” work permit scheme, the migrants have few options for recourse.
https://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/s-korean-farming-industry-slammed
With such an attitude towards foreign workers, South Korea (and presumably Japan) will really struggle with population decline and will likely be the countries that show us first what that looks like economically.