Tesla CEO Elon Musk once said South Korea would be the first country on Earth to disappear. If the country's birth rate stays where it is, he will not be proven wrong. With the world's lowest fertility rate, annual births have fallen from more than 1 million in 1970 to 250,000 last year. Long life expectancy combined with few births will soon make Korea the oldest country in the world. Climate change is another threat. Many Koreans felt the climate crisis firsthand during last summer's sweltering heat. Korea also stands to be hit hardest by the carbon emission caps set under global climate accords, because its economy is built on heavy and chemical industries. On top of that, economic inequality, political polarization and deepening social conflict amount to another grave hazard confronting the country in this era.
Look around the world, however, and these are not problems Korea alone faces today. Populations are shrinking in more than half the countries on the planet, and roughly four decades of globalization have narrowed income gaps between nations while widening them within them. Worsening income distribution, together with the spread of social media, is reshaping domestic political ground, driving political polarization and deeper conflict, expanding populism, putting democracy at risk and ultimately reordering the international system.
Korea's younger generation appears mired in deep frustration. The conditions they face and the tasks they must take on are daunting, and the light of hope is obscured. Yet every challenge also opens unseen opportunities. Seen broadly, the challenges Korea now faces are bound up with a civilizational shift in the world order. It is true that Korea is suffering unusually acutely from the problems afflicting the global village, but if it succeeds in overcoming them for the sake of its own survival, it can offer the world a model and emerge as a central nation.
This is a period of upheaval in the international order and a turning point for civilization, as the centuries-long dominance of the West gives way to a rebalancing between East and West. The combined population of the United States and Europe is 1.1 billion, while Asia's reaches 4.8 billion. Over the remainder of the 21st century, the gaps in income, technology and knowledge between East and West will narrow far more than they have today. For the world to remain at peace, East and West must achieve harmony and fusion in their systems of governance, their civilizations and the international order. Popular culture is already moving in that direction. Look around, and it is hard to find a country better suited to this task than Korea.
I remain hopeful about Korea's future, and the reason is its people. Korea has nothing but people, and it rose on the strength of its people. Setting aside the quality of that education, young Koreans today have spent more hours in school than their peers anywhere in the world, are at home in the digital information age, and match the young people of any advanced country in global awareness and foreign language ability. If my generation and my parents' generation lifted Korea to the threshold of advanced-economy status through imitation and catch-up, the generation now in their 40s and younger, which will soon begin to lead the country, has more than enough skill and capacity to settle Korea firmly among advanced nations and carry it to the center of the world. But the potential of each individual does not translate automatically into national strength. Building a culture of inclusion, tolerance and cooperation within the Korean community, and setting its politics right, remains the share that the older generation must provide.
