S. Korea's local governments playing matchmaker, providing wedding halls to tackle demographic crisis
저출산에 지자체가 중매하고 예식장 마련… 저출산 근본 해결방안은?
The country is struggling with a low fertility rate despite more budget to tackle the demographic crisis.
In line with the central government's efforts to tackle this chronic issue, local governments have their own measures to encourage young people to find love and get married.
Our Kim Bo-kyoung shows us more.
A "demographic national emergency."
Those are the words President Yoon Suk Yeol used recently to describe South Korea's low birthrate crisis.
Despite the government's astronomical budget to tackle the low birthrate,
the total fertility rate the average number of expected births from a woman in her lifetime dropped to an all-time low of point-72 in 2023.
Along with the central government's efforts to encourage people to start families, local governments too are making all-out efforts, coming up with their own ways of addressing the birthrate in their regions.
One of them is Seongnam City whose own mayor has become a matchmaker.
Dubbed "Solomon's Choice", a mass blind-date program is being hosted by the city's government to help young people meet each other in a more natural way.
"Even if young people are even considering marrying, they are too busy working and cannot actively seek chances to go out to find love. The local government's way of selecting people to join the program is fair and trustworthy so a lot of participants seem to have trust in us."
The matchmaking program that started last year has already helped to make more than a hundred couples, with one of the couples set to get married.
That couple was introduced through the program in November last year, and will become newly-weds in July.
The groom-to-be had no hesitations about recommending the program to others.
Q: "How is meeting a new person during a mass blind date different from a one-on-one meeting?"
"On a one-on-one blind date, there is pressure on the guy to lead the conversation, but here, all participants arrive with the intention of actively seeking a match so they all actively speak. Also even if you are not into one, you can talk to another person right away so there are more chances."
Though forming such an atmosphere for people to find love and marry might seem like a limited measure to beat the demographic crisis, an expert says it is necessary.
"Against population crisis, local governments have been desperate in hosting additional, new population recently. There are several ways to do that first, hosting new public organizations, second, hosting private companies, and third, promoting marriage... One common reason for not getting married would be not finding a suitable partner."
Once you find your destiny, you need to marry which is again, not simple.
According to Statistics Korea, people in their 20s and 30s said not having enough money was the top reason for not marrying.
Most of the pressure comes from buying a house, but the money needed for a wedding is also a burden.
Private matchmaking company Gayeon says the average cost for wedding preparation, excluding a house, is around 45 thousand U.S. dollars.
What's worse is that businesses associated with weddings including wedding halls, and dress and makeup shops do not have set prices, nor do they clearly disclose costs, making it even harder for uninformed couples.
Seoul City's solution was opening public facilities for couples to use for weddings, to lessen their burden.
"This beautiful hanok is actually a complex cultural space promoting oriental medicine. But it was transformed into a wedding hall for the day so a couple could have a cost-effective wedding."
Mr. Park and his bride chose this venue through the city's "public wedding hall program", which is opening up a total of 28 venues for weddings.
The program began during the pandemic, as wedding halls closed their doors and wedding hall rental prices surged.
The biggest advantage of renting public facilities is that they are cheap, comparatively, and prices are transparent.
"Many people choose usual wedding halls. We wanted to have a memorable, meaningful event for guests, so we chose this venue through the program. We were able to check the price transparently because they showed us the estimate and contract in detail."
Seoul City aims to expand the program, making it much cheaper for couples...
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2024-06-21, 18:00 (KST)
2 окт 2024
