2024-03-16 22:56:00
Former President Donald Trump (right) and Republican Senator JD Vance are shaking hands at a rally held in Ohio in February last year. Vance is being mentioned as a candidate to be Trump’s running mate in the November presidential election. /AP Yonhap News
Senator JD Vance, who is considered a strong candidate for Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump’s running mate (Vice President), recently expressed concern about the population crisis in American society and said, “There are signs of going the way of South Korea.” He said. This is expressed in this way out of concern about low birth rates, and it shows that Korea, which recorded a record total fertility rate of 0.72 as of 2023, has become a byword for low birth rates around the world. Rep. Vance is well-known in Korea as the author of the best-selling book ‘Hillbilly Song’, which contains the joys and sorrows of the poor and marginalized white working class.
Rep. Vance said this in an interview with Politico magazine published on the 15th. He said, “When I live in Washington, some pretty serious people come to me periodically and are concerned about the aging population of the United States and its negative impact on social security. I answer that there is a more serious problem at stake.” He continued, “In the near future, the United States could follow the path of Korea, where children no longer make noise on the streets and schools cannot be filled because there are no children.” He added, “This is not a problem of the government failing to provide social security, but society. “It is a crisis and problem that could lead to complete collapse,” he said.
Vance even used profanity while explaining this situation, which appears to be based on the perception that Korea’s low birth rate is that serious. Vance, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in Ohio in 2022, is a pro-Trump figure in the Republican Party and is one of the figures mentioned as Trump’s vice presidential candidate in the November presidential election. He has advocated opposition to support for Ukraine and an end to military intervention in key regions, under the isolationist view that ‘the United States does not need to be involved in what is happening around the world.’ He said, “There is no benefit to the hard-working working class in the Midwest for America to fight abroad.”
Republican Senator JD Vance is giving a speech prior to former President Donald Trump’s speech held in Ohio on the 16th. /AP Yonhap News
In addition to Vance, Korea’s low birth rate issue is frequently mentioned by major U.S. figures and the media. Tesla founder Elon Musk is a representative example. In May of last year, Musk attached the World Bank’s birth rate ranking table by country, in which Korea ranked last, and said, “If there is no change, the Korean population will fall below the current 6% within three generations.” In September of the same year, he shared a Bloomberg article about the Korean government’s policy to encourage childbirth and called it “an interesting move.”
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