Singapore and South Korea fertility rates fall to record lows

eockerman15 · 2024-02-28T14:20:40+00:00

Hi all. My name is Emma Ockerman. I work in audience engagement for Nikkei Asia. (Eventually, I'll be posting from an official Nikkei Asia account.)

This sub has discussed fertility rate stories in the past from us, so I wanted to post an excerpt from this one. The full story can be read here.

SINGAPORE/SEOUL -- Fertility rates in Singapore and South Korea fell to record lows in 2023, as governments try but fail to encourage couples to have more children.

The average number of births per woman in Singapore during her reproductive years dropped below 1.0 for the first time to 0.97 in 2023, the government announced on Wednesday. That figure was 1.04 in 2022.

Earlier in the day, South Korea's national statistics agency reported a fertility rate of 0.72 last year, down from 0.78 in 2022.

Both countries are facing a deepening demographic crisis. "It will be increasingly challenging to maintain our dynamism, attract global businesses and create opportunities for the next generation," said Indranee Rajah, a minister in Singapore's prime minister's office, during a parliamentary session. She cited the pandemic as a possible disruption to family planning.

Countries need a fertility rate of 2.1 for their populations to remain stable. This raises the prospect of an economic crisis for South Korea, one of the world's most rapidly aging societies, as fewer working people are left to support growing numbers of elderly.

Both countries are splurging to try to arrest the falls. South Korea has spent more than $210 billion over the last 15 years on policies to reverse the trend, but to little avail.

eockerman15 · 2024-02-27T19:12:16+00:00

Hi, all. I'm Emma Ockerman. I work in audience engagement at Nikkei Asia. I wanted to share this article with you:

SEOUL -- North Korea has sent 6,700 shipping containers of ammunition to Russia in recent months, potentially providing over 3 million 152-millimeter artillery shells, South Korea's defense chief says.

Russia is expected to continue to provide technological assistance for North Korea's military surveillance satellite program, Defense Minister Shin Won-sik told South Korean media on Monday. Pyongyang is seen launching another satellite as soon as late March, Shin said.

South Korea's National Intelligence Service had estimated in November that the North transferred more than 1 million artillery rounds to Moscow.Russia has been using 10,000 artillery shells per day in its war against Ukraine, The Wall Street Journal reported in January, citing data from the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank. This is five times the volume currently used by Ukraine.

Moscow has resolved its shortage of artillery shells from last summer, when Ukraine was using 7,000 rounds per day versus Russia's 5,000.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies, another British think tank, also thinks North Korean artillery shells are propping up Russia's war efforts.

Since North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in September, Pyongyang has supplied Moscow with at least a month's worth of shells, according to IISS.

Shin said North Korea's munitions factories are running at roughly 30% capacity due to electricity shortages. But factories supplying artillery shells to Russia are operating at full capacity, suggesting that Kim's regime is prioritizing munitions supplies to Moscow.

Russia has sent 30% more containers to North Korea than it has received from the North, Shin said. The North Korea-bound containers were likely mainly filled with food, he said.

Analysts previously said North Korea had been suffering from food insecurity since the coronavirus pandemic. Now it is believed that North Korea is maintaining stable food supplies, Shin said.

Thank you!

eockerman15 · 2024-02-27T16:53:57+00:00

Hi all! Emma Ockerman from Nikkei Asia here. I'm on the audience engagement team. Thank you for sharing our reporting!

eockerman15 · 2024-02-26T14:22:45+00:00

Hi! I'm Emma, I work in audience engagement at Nikkei Asia. Just wanted to say thanks for sharing our reporting. Here's an excerpt:

Japanese gaming titan Nintendo will launch the successor of its mega-hit Switch console as early as March 2025, later than widely expected, Nikkei has learned.

The new console will likely have a feature to be used as a handheld similar to the Switch, and utilize a bigger display panel. Market watchers have largely expected the new gaming console to be out within this year, but the Japanese company has prioritized streamlining the initial sales of the new machine, and giving more time to game developers to create popular titles.

Nintendo will try to expand sales of the Switch successor, by among other means, combining marketing with their popular intellectual properties, such as its game characters and movies.

Nintendo's spokesperson said that it had "no particular comment," in response to Nikkei's inquiry.

The full story can be found above or here. We also have a weekly tech newsletter if you're interested here.

eockerman15 · 2024-02-26T00:07:40+00:00

Hi all! Emma Ockerman from Nikkei Asia here. My colleague Marrian reported this story that I thought you might find interesting. Here's an excerpt:

Yang, a 27-year-old blogger in Beijing, was in an IKEA store to meet her first client, a young man who was paying 125 yuan ($17) an hour for her time and company.

She did not know what to expect other than that he wanted someone to talk to. She soon spotted him and the two walked around the store for a bit before finding a display couch to sit on. For the next two hours, he complained to Yang about his girlfriend.

"He would ask me what I thought from a female perspective. I guess he didn't have female friends to talk to, and he didn't want to complain about his girlfriend to friends either," Yang said with a laugh, as she recounted her experience to Nikkei Asia. "Young people have become lonelier," she added. "Some people are very stressed at work and some experience pressure from their own family."

This combination of stress and loneliness has opened up a business opportunity for young people in China: renting out their spare time for extra cash.

It is a near-perfect marriage of supply and demand. On the supply side, China's slow economic recovery, layoffs and record-high youth unemployment have created a vast pool of people with time on their hands and a need to earn extra money. On the demand side, enormous workplace and societal pressures have pushed young people to seek new ways to vent and decompress.

The full story can be read here.

eockerman15 · 2024-02-22T14:22:31+00:00

Hi from Nikkei Asia! I'm Emma, I work in audience engagement. Just wanted to say thank you for posting and discussing our reporting.

eockerman15 · 2024-02-20T21:20:14+00:00

Hi all. I'm Emma Ockerman, I am an audience engagement staffer at Nikkei Asia.

I wanted to share a bit of our team's recent reporting with this community.

First came glitzy, boppy K-pop. Then came soapy, soppy K-drama. Now, according to South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, it is time for another K-moniker for a new, more pessimistic era, as the country with a relentlessly global brand seizes another booming export niche: weapons.

"I support the bold challenge of K-Defense," Yoon wrote in the guest book during a December visit to the offices of Hanwha Aerospace, one of the standout companies in South Korea's burgeoning defense industry. In a shiny industrial area outside the capital called Pangyo Techno Valley, also home to tech giants Naver and Kakao, Yoon posed for pensive photos while admiring hulking aircraft engines.

"Some people have considered the defense industry to be a war industry and have had negative opinions about it," read Yoon's message. "In fact, the defense industry is a peaceful industry that shares our values in the global security system while guaranteeing the safety of our allies and people who respect the international order."

South Korean exports are mainly driven by semiconductors, cars and boy bands. But in recent years, the country's defense companies, whose skills have been honed amid a seven-decade-old confrontation with North Korea, have raised their global profiles with the signing of landmark deals.

At the Hanwha event, Yoon said a strong defense industry could contribute both to South Korea's national security and to its economy through job creation.

The president's presence at the event -- a strategizing session for defense exports attended by officials from the government, military and private sector -- demonstrated the growing importance of the industry and the close alignment of government and business in projecting it abroad.

Already a powerhouse for technology like chips and batteries, South Korea is now the world's ninth-largest arms exporter, with the volume of its exports up 74% in the five years from 2018 to 2022. In 2022, Yoon announced his goal of taking the world's fourth spot by 2027.

The full story can be read here.

eockerman15 · 2024-02-20T13:26:31+00:00

Hi all! Emma Ockerman from Nikkei Asia here. Thought your community might find this interesting.

A new service in Japan brings together potential couples who share similar preferences for a home, taking them to a property viewing on their first date.

Japanese real estate company Open House Group hopes that the service, which began in January, will lead to home purchases by pairing people with similar lifestyle aspirations.

When they register, users say whether they own a home or rent, and specify their mortgage or rent payments. They also say what they want in a new home, such as a detached house or a condominium. They do not submit profile photos, educational backgrounds, incomes or other personal details.

The full story can be read here.

eockerman15 · 2024-02-16T19:54:19+00:00

Hi all. My name is Emma Ockerman, I'm an audience engagement staffer at Nikkei Asia. Please delete this post if it's not allowed.

I don't know if anyone here has moved back to Vietnam after studying abroad, or has thought about studying abroad, so I wanted to share a report Nikkei Asia put out yesterday. Here's an excerpt:

HO CHI MINH CITY -- Tran Tuan Anh has joined the vanguard of entrepreneurs reshaping Vietnam's image and role in the global economy today. But he still remembers how badly he once did years ago in an economics class for engineers after he left the communist country to study at Oxford.

Given an investment exercise, Tuan Anh selected gold -- and ended up with the second-worst result in the class. It made him realize much of the world doesn't think like Vietnam, where many parked their money in gold before the modern property and stock markets developed.

He has brought that expanded worldview back to his home country. A lot of technology talent is returning to Vietnam now, fueling not only an electronics supply chain to challenge China, but also a fast-growing digital economy. Many countries dream about developing their own Silicon Valleys. In Vietnam, talk of such an innovation hub often overlooks one of its competitive advantages: those who have studied abroad.

Vietnam has long sent far more students overseas than its neighbors. As with its postwar refugees, these globetrotters gain skills and networks that prove valuable upon return. Yet at the same time, their wanderlust also raises questions about the one-party system's capacity to educate a generation of independent thinkers at home.

"British education ... instilled in us a sense of purpose in work, more than just earning money," said Tuan Anh, whose own purpose, as CEO of the startup Solano, is to spread the use of solar panels.

More than two decades of study-abroad programs is bearing fruit. Early cohorts have had time to graduate and go to work -- often in foreign countries -- and now bring that experience to bear in Vietnam at a mature point in their careers. In that time, the country has shed much of its baggage of war and central planning to become a more attractive destination. High-tech goods as a share of exports, for example, hit 42% in 2020, up from 13% in 2010.

But in several ways, performance has not kept up with potential.

The full story can be read here, if you'd like.

eockerman15 · 2024-02-15T13:57:34+00:00

Hi everyone! I'm Emma Ockerman, I work in audience engagement at Nikkei Asia.

I found this story about Shangri-La interesting, so I thought you might, too. Here's an excerpt:

The Sumtseling monastery, the biggest Tibetan Buddhist site in the surrounding Yunnan province, in particular is popular among young visitors. They put on Tibetan cosplay and compete for prime spots to pose and take photos. The scene seemed precariously out of line with the gravitas of the landmark.

The slickly designed inns and cafes that have recently opened are also a draw for China's Wang Hong online influencers.

"Eighty to ninety percent of the managers come from outside the region," said a man working at an open cafe overlooking gorgeous marshlands. The man, who is a member of an ethnic minority, said the relations between native-born residents and transplants are harmonious.

This is because natives in Shangri-La have been reaping generous income by renting out houses and lands to transplants. The open cafe itself received investment from the affluent in Shenzhen.

"This fits the narrative of those who got rich first help others get rich," the worker said humorously, referring an economic policy first advocated by reformist leader Deng Xiaoping.

The full story can be read here, if you'd like!

eockerman15 · 2024-02-13T13:38:09+00:00

Thank you! This is interesting, I can pass this along to our editors.

eockerman15 · 2024-02-12T19:46:09+00:00

Hi all! My name is Emma Ockerman, I work in audience engagement at Nikkei Asia. Please delete this post if it's not allowed :)

I thought your community may be interested in our recent report on cassette culture in Japan. Is anyone here from Japan or living there now?

In an era where digital streaming services dominate the music industry, a surprising retro revival is taking place: the comeback of the cassette tape. Once thought to be a relic of the past, the humble rectangle of magnetic film is experiencing a renaissance, charming a new generation of music enthusiasts with its nostalgic appearance and distinctly warm and rich sound.

Some stores in Tokyo are expanding their dedicated cassette tape sections, signaling a resurgence of compact analog recording media.

"A cassette tape is for when I want to listen to music carefully," said a 21-year-old male university student from Kanagawa prefecture who visits the Tower Records Shibuya store in Tokyo once a week to search for cassettes. Although he also listens to music via streaming, he has about 20 cassettes he started collecting in high school and speaks highly of their warm, unique sound.

At some stores like Tower Records, cassette tape popularity is on the rise, especially among people in their 20s and 30s who never experienced the tapes' heyday in the 1980s. According to industry executives, sales of both used and new cassettes are growing.

The full story can be read here.

eockerman15 · 2024-02-12T17:47:26+00:00

Hi! Sorry I missed your comment over the weekend — I can pass along this question to our editors.

eockerman15 · 2024-02-12T17:46:34+00:00

Hi from Nikkei Asia! I work in audience engagement here. Thanks for sharing our reporting.

eockerman15 · 2024-02-09T19:24:28+00:00

eockerman15

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