TheEconomistOctober 17th 2020 311S
hin joo-heelearned to cook at the age
of 39, while his wife was pregnant with
their son. He says it started as a modest
challenge to himself: “I wanted to do some-
thing nice for her at least once a week.” To
his surprise, he found that he enjoyed it.
These days the couple share child care and
housework more or less equally, helped
along by his flexible hours as a civil servant
and her control over her schedule running
a private art school. They hope that their
son, now seven, will grow up without old-
fashioned preconceptions about men’s
and women’s work. “I truly believe those
stereotypes will disappear in the next gen-
eration,” says Mr Shin.
That may be optimistic, but the family’s
set-up, although still unusual for South Ko-
rea, is less exotic than it would have been
just a few years ago, thanks in part to a gra-
dual shift in the authorities’ response to
the country’s demographic decline. For de-
cades South Korean women have had too
few children to keep the population steady
in the long run. Last year deaths exceeded
births for the first time. A series of cam-paigns and incentives to encourage wom-
en to have more children have not worked.
So the authorities have begun to focus
on stopping the shrinking of the work-
force, as opposed to the population. Mak-
ing big changes to the retirement age or ad-
mitting lots of immigrants would be tricky
politically, so officials are instead making
it easier for women to join and remain in
the labour market, where they are under-
represented. The resulting developments
are a far cry from an egalitarian revolution,
but both the work culture and relations be-
tween the sexes are beginning to change.
Sejong, where Mr Shin lives with his
family, is a good place to observe the im-
pact of those changes on families. It is anewly built administrative city south of
Seoul, the capital, and it will probably
struggle to achieve the government’s popu-
lation target of half a million inhabitants
by the middle of the decade. But it is popu-
lar with young families and couples plan-
ning to start one. At 37 the average Sejongite
is nearly six years younger than the average
Korean. Children make up nearly a quarter
of the population, compared with 15% on
the national level. The city consistently re-
cords the highest fertility rate in the coun-
try. Last year the average woman in Sejong
could expect to have 1.5 children over her
lifetime, fully double the rate in Seoul,
though still below the average for rich
countries (see chart on next page).
Sejong is indeed child-friendly. The city
centre is compact and provides little raz-
zle-dazzle but plenty of green spaces, walk-
ing paths and nipper-nurturing infrastruc-
ture (half the coffee shop where Mr Shin
and his family chose to be interviewed is
taken up by an enormous sandbox). The
government is pouring money into child
care and family support, and regularly asks
parents what they want the city to do for
them. It helps that many locals work in the
civil service, which has to offer flexible
working hours like those enjoyed by Mr
Shin, encouraging a more equal distribu-
tion of labour at home. “It’s extremely bor-
ing to live here if you don’t have kids, but
for us it’s perfect,” says Park Hye-kyung, Mr
Shin’s wife. Though many of her female
friends are stuck at home with children,Sexual politics in South KoreaCradle to desk
SEJONG
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