Achievements and new challenges for population policy in Korea

The rapid socio-economic development of Korea was primarily due to the successful implementation of a series of Five-Year Economic Development Plans that started in 1962. Concomit with socio-economic development, Korea's demographic change has been made at a pace the world has not seen before. The country's total fertility rate (TFR) was as high as 6.0 children per woman in 1960. By 1983, the figure dropped to the order of the population replacement level, and in 2005 to 1.08. It has since been hovering 1.2. Since 1962, the population policy in Korea could be largely divided into three phases of the population control policy with emphasis on the national family planning programs (1962~1996), population quality and welfare improvement policy (1996~2004), and fertility encouragement policy (2006~) to briefly describe major phases and developmental processes of the population policy. This paper aims to provide an overview of developments in Korea’s population control policy in chronological order, changes in fertility and contraceptive behaviors on the past accomplishments, as well as a few socio-cultural and demographic problems that Korea encountered in the course of implementing the population policy in Korea.