WSJ: ‘Korea overcomes preference for boys through education’

WSJ: ‘Korea overcomes preference for boys through education’. November. 28, 2015 08:40. snow@donga.com.

With imbalance in male and female populations serious worldwide, the world is paying attention to the secret of how Korea achieved a balance of populations between the two genders.

In a report entitled “Asia Struggles for a Solution to Its "Missing Women Problem: How South Korea turned the tide on a demographic imbalance threatening economic growth and social structures” on Thursday, the U.S. daily Wall Street Journal gave detailed account of the process Korea overcame imbalance in male and female populations.

Korea with deep-rooted Confucian tradition was one of the countries that had strong preference for boys over girls up until the mid-1980s. After the introduction of the ultrasonic scan to check the health of fetuses, abortion of female fetuses became more common since the 1990s, which resulted in a gender ratio of boys and girls for the third child in a family jumping to 193 to 100 once in the 1990s. However, after the era of democracy opened in the late 1990s, and feminine movement was widely staged, changes started to occur. After the abolishment of the patriarchal family system in 2005, the tradition of preference for boys also began to lose ground gradually.

Recently, the gender ratio at birth, which stood at 116.5 (number of boys per 100 girls) in the 1990s, fall to the normal level (105.3). The portion of parents who believe "they definitely need a boy" declined from 40 percent in 1991 to 8 percent in 2012. The Wall Street Journal said, “Asian countries where the male population far exceeds the female population including India and China should refer to Korea, which not only succeeded in industrialization and urbanization but also in shifting the trend of democratic imbalance through feminine movement and the power of education.”

Meanwhile, WSJ reported as the imbalance in gender populations widens, the number of crimes committed by young people increases in tandem. Citing a study conducted by Columbia University in the U.S., the newspaper said, “About 33 percent of crimes that increased from 1992 to 2004 in China were committed due to an imbalance in gender populations, "adding, “As people strove to amass wealth to seek marriage (amid imbalance in gender populations), violence and crimes increased.”