Predicting population growth out 100+ years is unlikely to be accurate. South Korea is likely to have a larger population out as far as we can reasonably predict.
Have you seen how grim the current fertility rates are? Agreed on extrapolating outwards being iffy but this isn't a 100+ year thing. It's something happening right now
Short term a lack of people can change attitude around immigration. As a wealthy country SK can definitely attract people if they choose to do so.
Long term, the people born each year are children of people who decided to have kids which is counter to the overall trend in the country. There’s huge selective pressure around deciding to have kids in modern societies.
"Long term, the people born each year are children of people who decided to have kids".
If there's far fewer parents because this cohort of potential parents is much smaller, then you have necessarily fewer children going forward. Even if you double the number of people that want kids, it becomes very hard to reverse the demographic decline, let alone grow your society. Even if you could, there's still a giant demographic hole in your population that will cause big issues over time.
Outside of immigration (which is a big discussion on its own) PLUS a healthy birth rate among these immigrants, I'm unsure where your optimism comes from for them reversing their demographics and growing.
Immigration is a terrible solution to a population crisis. That's like dousing an electrical fire in water. Sure, the fire might disappear for a second before it kills you.
Increasing tax burden on young people to support old ones will discourage that.
Immigration is a very dificult topic in both Japan and South Korea societies. The fact that EU is becoming increasingly anti-immigration won't help to advocate for this.
Where are you getting the specific values of 6 months and ±2% out 10 years? Genuinely curious to learn more. Maybe back-testing of archived predictions from prior decades against the eventual reality?
