Subnational gender balances in South Korea

Within one generation, the South Korean economy developed from one of the poorest countries in the world during the 1950s to a developed, high-income country by the end of the 1990s. During the latter part of this period, South Korea (hereafter called Korea) experienced rapid demographic change characterized by a steep decline in fertility levels and abnormally high sex ratios at birth (SRB). Unlike other East and South-East Asian countries that underwent similar economic and demographic changes, Korea has witnessed a steady decline in the SRB since the end of 1990s through 2000s (Chung and Gupta, 2007). In this paper, we visualize the current spatial distribution of population born during the peak years of SRB.

In order to understand the spatial impacts of rise in son-preference during the 1980s and 1990s, we have visualized in Figure 1 the current sex ratio in the 252 second-level administrative units (si/gun/gu) of individuals born during this period. We used a hexagonal cartogram to illustrate the patterns and to avoid underrepresenting small but populous administrative units in metropolitan areas. These were created in R (R Core Team, 2017) using data from the 2015 census data (KOSIS, 2015) on the ratio of males to females aged between age 20 and 35, i.e. born between 1981 and 1995. The shading of each administrative unit is based on the corresponding deciles of the sex ratio distribution (across all second-level administrative units) and hence there are either 25 or 26 administrative units for each shade in our color palette. We use a green shading to indicate regions in the lower decile where there are more females than males, grey shading for the decile close to the natural sex ratio at birth and then a range of shadings from light to a dark orange in regions where there are more males than females. Furthermore, we added boundaries in grey colour to indicate the 17 first-level units of Korea. Of these, text labels are provided for the Special City (Seoul), Special Self-governing City (Sejoung) and six other metropolitan cities.

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Figure 1.

Korean sex ratios, 2015.

In over 90% of the second-level administrative units, there are more males than females in the 20- to 35-year-old populations, i.e. sex ratios are greater than 100. Except for Daegu and Ulsan, the administrative units with the highest male shares (the dark orange shaded hexagons) are predominantly concentrated in the Province first-level administrative units (the regions without text labels). These tend to be characterized as more rural or conservative regions in Korea, reflecting past gender imbalances. One notable exception is Gyeonggi-do, the Province that surrounds Seoul. In this more urbanized area along with Seoul, the gender ratio is more balanced or female-dominated. South-Eastern cities such as Busan, Ulsan and Daegu contain administrative units with relatively high sex ratios, a legacy of particularly strong son-preferences in these areas during the 1980s and early 1990s.

Potential implications of the current sex balance in the 20- to 35-year-old population in Korea are two-fold. First, the current and future marriage market has a potential excess of bachelors. There is estimated to be up to 700,000 extra males born since the mid-1980s in Korea who might be unable to find a female spouse or will delay marriage for several years in search of a partner (Poston, 2002). Whilst Korean males tend to marry females who are a few years younger, extensive delays to allow partnering with younger generations born during periods of declines in SRB are unlikely to fully alleviate the excess demand for female brides (Park and Cho, 1995). Second, there exists the potential for growth in international migration to meet the excess demand for female brides. This new migration flow to Korea has already begun, with government supporting marriage migrants from less wealthy countries such as the Philippines, Vietnam, Mongolia and Eastern European countries as well as China where there is a sizable Korean-speaking minority (Korean Institute for Healthy Family, 2014). The flow of marriage migrants over recent years has been intermittent. The percentage of cross-border marriages started to decline in 2008 from a high of 11.2%, until a recent increase in 2016 to 7.7%, up from 7.4% in 2015 (KOSIS, 2017). As extra bachelors enter the marriage market in coming years, this small recent increase in cross-border marriages might well continue its upward trend for several years ahead.