South Korea now officially ‘super-aged’ society
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Elderly men hanging out at Jongmyo Park in central Seoul. With about a fifth of the population aged 65 and above, South Korea has officially become a "super-aged" society.
ST PHOTO: KIM JINHA
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SEOUL - South Korea has officially become a “super-aged” society, with the total ratio of its population aged 65 and above surpassing 20 per cent, according to the Ministry of Interior and Safety on Dec 24.
The number of Koreans aged 65 or older stood at 10.24 million, accounting for 20 per cent of the country’s total population, which currently stands at 51.22 million.
According to the United Nations, a super-aged society is one in which more than 20 per cent of the population is 65 or older. Those with over 14 per cent and 7 per cent are defined as aged societies and ageing societies, respectively.
According to the Interior Ministry, there were more women than men among those aged 65 and older. Of the whole population, 17.83 per cent of men and 22.15 per cent of women are senior citizens, indicating a 4.32 percentage point difference.
By region, 17.7 per cent of the Greater Seoul region’s population was 65 and above, while the figure was 22.38 per cent in other regions, indicating a higher proportion of senior citizens residing outside the capital area due to younger people moving out of rural areas into the cities.
Among individual provinces, South Jeolla had the highest proportion of residents aged 65 and above at 27.18 per cent, followed by North Gyeongsang at 26 per cent, Gangwon at 25.33 per cent and North Jeolla at 25.23 per cent.
The self-governing city of Sejong had the lowest share at 11.57 per cent.
In the capital city of Seoul, seniors accounted for 19.41 per cent of the total population.
Based on the recent numbers, a ministry official said in a statement that the government urgently needs to establish a “population-focused ministry” tasked with enacting “fundamental and systematic response measures” to address the rapidly ageing population.
The official was referring to the government’s previous plans to launch a new ministry regarding population strategies to address its demographic crisis
South Korea has reached super-aged society status ahead of expectations.
On July 10, the number of people aged 65 and above surpassed 10 million, leading the Interior Ministry to revise its forecast and predict that South Korea would become a super-aged society by early 2025.
Statistics Korea had also projected this milestone for 2025.
This age group has steadily increased since 2008, when those aged 65 and above numbered 4.94 million, or about 10.02 per cent of the total population.
In 2019, the ratio surpassed 15 per cent, reaching 19.05 per cent by January 2024, with 9.77 million individuals in this age group. THE KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS NETWORK
