Why we're single: Korean women say high standards, men say no chances to date

Finding the right person to marry is a tall order anywhere, but South Koreans in particular say that their high standards for potential partners or lack of opportunities to meet them are their main reasons for remaining single.

Local match-making application Noon Date recently revealed the results of a survey of 12,060 unmarried men and women across the country, and asked why respondents remain single.

For women, 28 percent said it is because their standards for a potential romantic partner are high. It was followed by a lack of opportunities to meet people to date (23 percent) and the respondent's own perceived lack of attractiveness (16 percent).

Men, on the other hand, picked the lack of opportunities to meet people to date (29 percent) as their first choice. It was followed by 23 percent who cited their own perceived lack of attractiveness and 14 percent who said their standards for a romantic partner are high.

Korea in recent years has been suffering from a downward trend in marriages as well as continually falling fertility rates. The number of annual marriages in the country had hovered at around 400,000 throughout the 1980s and most of the 1990s, but dipped below the 200,000 mark in 2021, falling again to 193,657 in 2023.

With fewer people in Korea getting married and an increasing number of those married opting not to have children, the total fertility rate -- the number of children a woman is expected to have throughout her lifetime -- plunged to a record low of 0.72 in 2023. The figure is the lowest in the world for a country, and is projected to drop as low as 0.52 if the nation stays the course.