The decline in birth rates is a natural response of the people to an overly competitive life.

When you are doing everything you can just to survive, you have neither the time nor the interest to consider having children.

China and South Korea have similarities, but South Korea is more extreme because young people in China at least have an escape route; if they can’t make it in big cities, they can return to their hometowns, and the social tolerance is relatively high. Young people in South Korea, if they can't succeed in Seoul, are considered losers.

Economically, it is also quite similar, with low personal consumption, high fixed assets, and increasing foreign exchange reserves.

Perhaps it is all a legacy of the 1997 financial crisis, with a kind of phobia towards being cut by Wall Street, hence the desperate accumulation of foreign exchange reserves, which leads to the above economic model.

Japan is a pioneer, but Japan's military strength is the pinnacle of this model, and the Plaza Accord led to a decline in Japanese exports.

Let's see what the outcome of this round of tariff wars will be; perhaps it has suppressed Chinese exports, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Could South Korea even benefit from this misfortune? But this also means that the problem is further delayed.

Until the birth rate serves as this hard limit.