S. Korea to create new deputy PM post for population planning

The government will propose new legislation next month to create a deputy prime minister post dedicated to population planning, marking a major organizational shift to address the nation's aging population and low birth rate, the presidential office announced Monday.

The proposed reorganization will have Education Minister Lee Ju-ho hand over his deputy prime minister role -- overseeing social affairs-related issues in education, labor and welfare -- to the newly created position of population planning minister. The new minister, if the revision is approved, will serve as one of the two deputy prime ministers in South Korea's Cabinet, alongside Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok.

"As the president recently (on June 19) declared a national demographic emergency, the government will pull out all the stops by establishing the Population Planning Ministry," presidential chief of staff Chung Jin-seok told a parliamentary hearing at the National Assembly in Seoul.

"We will closely communicate with the parliament to seek a turnaround from the continued decline in birth rate," Chung said.

The new minister will be tasked with the mid- to long-term strategy for national development through policies ranging from boosting the fertility rate to addressing population aging, securing the working-age population and embracing more immigrants, according to Interior Minister Lee Sang-min in a press briefing in Seoul.

In particular, the new ministry will lay out "a bigger picture" on immigration policy to attract working-age people, Kim Jung-ki, director general of the organization bureau of the Interior Ministry said in the briefing, adding that foreign workers were one option to mitigate the labor shortage.

The new ministry would be given the authority to establish, execute, coordinate and evaluate population-related policies in the Yoon Suk Yeol administration, Interior Minister Lee also said. The functions of the Welfare Ministry and Finance Ministry would be partially folded into the new ministry. The Population Planning Ministry would also oversee demographics-related projects by the Gender Equality Ministry, the Labor Ministry and the Welfare Ministry.

According to the Interior Ministry, the Population Planning Ministry will effectively become the default decision-making body regarding budget planning for demographic policies.

These moves are to be proposed through two revisions, including one concerning the Government Organization Act, later this month, according to Seoul.

Director General Kim of the Interior Ministry said the government expects the revision to gain the opposition-controlled National Assembly's approval within the next three months, as social consensus has already been reached. Once the legislation passes, it would take about three more months for the new ministry to come into being, according to the government.

This comes as numbers regarding the population decline suggest a grim outlook for South Korea's economy, with fewer South Koreans giving birth and people living longer.

Women in South Korea have been expected to give birth to fewer than one baby throughout their lifetime since 2018. As of 2023, South Korea's birth rate hit another fresh low of 0.72, down from 0.78 in 2022, while the life expectancy in South Korea came to 83.6 years last year. By next year, more than 1 in 5 South Koreans will be aged 65 or older, just seven years after the country became an aged society in 2017, where at least 14 percent of the population is 65 or older, according to the Statistics Korea.

In the April general election, more than half of those eligible to vote were aged 50 or older for the first time in South Korea's modern history.

Meanwhile, the government will also propose reviving the position of minister without portfolio, according to Monday's announcement. The Park Geun-hye administration abolished the post about a decade ago.

The Interior Ministry proposed to call the post "minister for political affairs." It had been also called "minister for special affairs" in the past.

Chief of staff Chung told parliament that the new minister without portfolio would be tasked with "strengthening effective and practical communication between the National Assembly and the government," as political bickering has dominated the National Assembly, where the opposition parties have the power to pass bills without the ruling party's consent.

The reorganizations would add two Cabinet members, while increasing the number of ministries in South Korea to 20 from the current 19.