Sawt Falasteen - 'Joyful' South Koreans hope rising births will continue

South Korea's statistics office earlier in the day announced that the country's fertility rate, or the average number of babies a woman is expected to have in her lifetime, was 0.75 last year.

It's only a small uptick from the year before -- and still far below the figure of 2.1 needed to maintain South Korea's population of 51 million.

But approached by AFP on the bustling streets of Seoul, many saw the rising fertility rate -- for the first time since 2015 -- as a positive step in the right direction.

"The news of the birth rate rebounding after nine years is incredibly joyful for me," said Jun Sang-pill, a 34-year-old office worker.

Housewife Park Ye-jin, 41, said her child had recently finished elementary school -- along with only 99 other students.

That, she explained, was only a fifth of the kids in her graduating class when she was that age.

"The graduation ceremony felt quite empty, and I felt sad," she told AFP.

Nearby, on its vast electronic screen, Seoul's National Museum of Korean Contemporary History displays adverts from the country's presidential committee on population policy -- a government body set up in 2023 to find ways to reverse the declining birth rate.

Seoul has poured billions of dollars into efforts to encourage women to have more children and maintain population stability.

Experts say there are multiple reasons for the low birth rate, from high child-rearing costs and property prices to a notoriously competitive society that makes well-paid jobs difficult to secure.

- 'Disappearing' country -

And state efforts had so far failed to boost the birth rate -- sparking increasingly dire predictions about the fate of the country.

"With the birth rate dropping like this, there were even talks about the possibility of South Korea disappearing," housewife Park said.

Some online were not as positive about the news.

"South Korea's birth rate is not just the lowest among OECD countries but it is still the absolute lowest. Please do not distort the facts," the top comment on the country's largest internet portal read.

"First increase in nine years!" another wrote on Threads.

"South Korea's birth rate graph looks like a bitcoin chart now."

Office worker Jun was more optimistic.

"I hope that this rebound will be the starting point for a continuous increase in South Korea's birth rate in the future," he said.

And Park expressed hope that "graduation ceremonies will feel fuller" in the future.

"I believe those empty schoolyards and classrooms can be filled with the sound of children's laughter," she said.

"It makes me really happy."

H.Jarrar--SF-PST