Both the UN projections and Korea's statistics bureau projections in 2023 show Korea was not supposed to recover 0.8 TFR before 2030. Even this modest recovery projection was criticized and laughed at when it was first announced, the overwhelming opinion being Korea would continue downwards to 0.5.

The projections take into account the increased births from the echo boom cohort and also COVID-delayed marriages.

In reality, Korea's recovery is drawing an exponential curve, beating expectations by 20% recovering 0.9 10 years ahead of schedule, and is headed for 1.0 by 2028 which would be recovered almost 20 years ahead of schedule.

There are opinions that going from 0.72 to 0.91 is insignificant, but the cumulative birth gains from Jan 2024 to July 2026 is already 46,282 births. If we reach 1.0 in 2030 and then taper off and follow the more conservative UN estimates, we already end up with 2.1 million more people by 2100 than if we were to have followed the UN graph after 2023.

Hyundai and Kia make some of the world’s best electric cars.

I was wondering in practice, how prevalent are electric cars in Korea, how is daily life with them, how is public charging infrastructure?

When I last visited in 2023, I only saw one public charger, and there seemed to be way fewer electric cars on the road than I saw in my home of Germany at the time (where it also wasn’t high, and it’s still highly tied to home ownership, which correlates with money for a new expensive car and with having a private parking space where you can install a home charger). Many taxis were still liquid gas with huge tanks in the trunk.

Is Korea switching to electric cars, or are those mainly for export? What about city buses? I assume it doesn’t yet make sense for the overland buses to switch.

2026 아이치-나고야 아시안게임에서 한국이 150개의 메달을 획득하며 종합 3위를 차지하는 쾌거를 이뤘습니다. 오늘 들은 소식 중 최고네요.

I recently watched Na Hong-jin's new film, Hope. Having absolutely loved The Wailing and his earlier work, I went in with high expectations, but it turned out to be a massive disappointment. One thing that really stood out to me was the excessive use of profanity. It made me realize how much recent Korean media seems to rely on swearing and how it devalues the curse words. While curse words have always been present in older Korean films, it never felt as excessive or constant as it does now. It feels cheap and really dilutes the lines that relies on curses to give it impact. I can't say that I'm a fan of the direction Korean medias are heading.

What do you guys think?