North Korea Has a Population Crisis

South Korea is famous, or rather infamous, for its record low birth rate. News headlines regularly lament that the country has the world's lowest fertility rate, which in 2023 hit a jaw-dropping 0.72 babies per woman, far below the 2.1 line to sustain a population. Despite government spending of billions on pro-family policies, young South Koreans are delaying or foregoing children amid career pressures, high housing costs, and changing social values. Jokes about national extinction abound in Seoul's media as the population is projected to be halved by the end of the century. It's a demographic crisis in broad daylight.

But here's the twist. North Korea, South Korea's secretive northern socialist cousin, is facing a strikingly similar population problem. It is just less known since everything was in the shadows as usual.

Here is a poor, isolated, one-family-ruled socialist state of about 26 million people where the government supposedly provides housing, education, and healthcare for free. With such welfare, you might think citizens would have kids popping out incessantly to pay their gratitude to the state. After all, North Korea historically prized large families and manpower. You know, more people mean more workers and more due warriors.

Yet, the opposite is happening. North Korea's fertility rate has plummeted to around 1.8 births per woman in recent years, well below replacement level, and some analysts believe the real number is even lower, possibly closer to 1.4. It is not as bad as the fake Korea down south. But considering North Korea's zero immigration, the Kimdom is dying slowly. In short, the DPRK has quietly joined the low birth club. Its population is barely growing and is on track to start shrinking by the 2030s if nothing changes.

In South Korea, ultramodern capitalism and individualism have produced a baby bust. In North Korea, extreme poverty and authoritarian rule had the same effect. One country fears too few future workers for its high-tech economy. The other fears too few future soldiers and laborers to defend its regime. A militarized, centrally planned state obsessed with control and productivity, now finds itself struggling to persuade its people to have more babies. Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un, who can command missile launches and military parades on a whim, sadly cannot command a baby boom. Slogans, mass mobilizations, and even tearful appeals on state TV have so far failed to raise the birth rate.

In this episode, we delve into North Korea's unfolding population crisis, a story that spans a post-war baby boom, a devastating famine, and today's perplexing rich country problem in a poor country. It is the absurd North Korean population crisis about when a dictatorship tries to play matchmaker and maternity coach.

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The 546 triplets who were born at the Pyongyang Maternity Hospital left it on the 19th. The mother of the triplets is Liuni, living in Puktang County of South Pongan province, and the father is Limang Hyuk, a worker at Pungok use coal mine of the Bchang area use coal mining complex. Medical workers of the Pyongyang Maternity Hospital took scientific measures and made their sincere efforts for the safe delivery of triplets.

North Korea wasn't always short on babies. After the Korean War, the country had its own boomers. North Korea experienced a tremendous baby boom in the '50s and '60s. In 1953, as the war ended, the North had only around 9 million people. But aided by a young population structure and heavy post-war support from the Soviet Union and China, birth rates skyrocketed, peaking at approximately 5.12 in 1960. Women were marrying and having children early, and the government encouraged rebuilding the population. During the Cholma movement years, Pyongyang trumpeted miraculous economic growth rates on paper. Some even say 25 to 30% GDP growth in the late '50s, and it came with population growth. 1969 marked the peak with an annual population growth rate of about 2.9%, a quite shocking number equivalent to some of the most fertile nations in Africa. In those days, it wasn't uncommon for North Korean families to have six, seven, or more children. The regime was pleased, seeing a growing population as a sign of national strength. The country seemed on track to grow into a formidable nation just by sheer demographic momentum. It was also the time when mortality plummeted. Vaccination campaigns, free health care, and improved food rations under the socialist system saved countless lives that would have been lost in earlier times.

However, by the 1970s, things began to change. North Korea's breakneck economic growth was slowing, and interestingly, the government started to worry about too many mouths to feed. Yes, believe it or not, Pyongyang flirted with population control policies in the 1970s. The state quietly introduced a family planning slogan: "Two children is best." Late marriage and smaller families were encouraged. The public distribution system even offered free contraceptives, birth control pills, IUD insertions, and yes, even condoms. Legend has it that the state-issued 1970s condoms were so thick and low quality that many North Koreans didn't know quite what to do with them. Some claim that people blew them up like balloons for fun, since they certainly weren't enhancing anyone's romantic life. It was the first time they saw that rapid population growth potentially would outgrow food production and housing capability. To Pyongyang's planners, two kids per family was deemed optimal for the socialist utopia.

By the 1980s, North Korea's population growth had indeed slowed. Annual growth fell to around 1 to 1.5%, roughly half the rate of the boom years. Part of this was the natural result of the earlier births, and part was due to those modest family planning efforts and rising female education and workforce participation. The population was still growing, but the era of explosive expansion ended. Little did the great leader know that an era of contraction was around the corner.

Then came the 1990s and with it, catastrophe. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, cutting off vital aid and trade. North Korea's centrally planned economy went into freefall. And then a series of natural disasters and policy blunders led to the deadly famine known as the arduous march. During this famine, death rates spiked, not to mention the birth rate. Many couples couldn't even feed themselves, so of course, no babies. The population growth rate, which had dropped below 1%, fell to zero or even negative in the worst years of the famine. Precise data is a state secret. But by some estimates, 600,000 to 1 million North Koreans perished in the famine, a horrifying loss that shrank the population significantly. One scholarly analysis found that the total population fell from roughly 21.5 million in 1994 to around 21.2 million by 1998. A truly unprecedented event for a peacetime country.

The famine not only killed people directly but also scorched the country's demographic landscape. Fertility was suppressed for years as malnourished women stopped ovulating, and families traumatized by hunger hesitated to bring new lives into such a desperate world. North Korea's government, of course, kept all this under wraps. Demographic data from the 1990s were classified, and the regime only spoke of the famine in euphemistic terms. By the time the worst of the famine passed, the population started growing slowly again. Kim Jong-il's regime allowed limited market activities that helped alleviate extreme hunger, and the early 2000s saw a baby mini-rebound of sorts, though nothing like the post-war boom. Fertility remained relatively low.

Fast forward to the 2000s. North Korea's demographic profile now looked eerily like that of a developed country. The average fertility rate in the 2000s was roughly 1.8, according to official UN estimates. Independent research by South Korean demographers suggests it might have been closer to 1.4, with the lowest estimate of 1.38 babies per woman. Either way, North Korean women on average were having two children at most, not the four or five their grandmothers had. Meanwhile, life expectancy had improved enough that more people were reaching old age. So, North Korea is becoming a senior society as well. By 2025, about 12% of North Koreans were 65 or older. That's over one elder in 10 people, which meets the global definition of an aging society. South Korea, by comparison, is already super-aged with 20% elderly. But don't worry, the socialist Korea is catching up at an amazing speed. The median age in North Korea is about 36.5 years as of 2025, up from 32 in 2011. Perfectly reflecting this shift, North Korea's annual population growth rate has now plummeted to around 0.3%. In a country of 26 million, that's only on the order of 70 to 80,000 more people each year, basically adding just a midsize town. Some years it's likely even less. For context, the world average population growth rate is around 0.8%, and South Korea is negative 0.13%. North Korea is essentially on the brink of zero population growth, decades before it achieves high-income status. Demographers forecast that if current trends hold, North Korea's population potentially will enter absolute negative growth around 2033. This would mirror the trajectory of other East Asian societies like China and Japan. But what's astounding is that North Korea would be getting old and shrinking before it ever got rich. The country benefited from a brief population growth in the mid-20th century and then lost it in a blink. This historical arc from baby boom to baby bust sets the stage for the puzzle North Korea faces today. How did a poor, agrarian, tradition-minded society end up with birth rates akin to those of modern Tokyo or Seoul? To answer that, we must examine the social and economic forces at play and the surprising ways North Koreans' lives have changed since the famine.

According to the World Factbook of the US CIA, North Korea's fertility rate fell to 1.9 last year from 1.91 the previous year. Although the rate is higher than that of South Korea, it's still way below the world average of 2.4. Meanwhile, the North population is deadly aging, with the number of people aged 65 and older accounting for 9.75% in 2021. Generally, poverty and low development go hand in hand with high birth rates. Think of agrarian societies where having many children is insurance for the parents' old age and extra hands on the farm. North Korea in the 1960s fit that mold. And one might assume it still would. Unlike wealthy South Korea, the North has no glut of career-obsessed millennials putting off marriage, no so-expensive luxury condos and unaffordable nurseries.

So why on earth is North Korea's fertility so low now? The short answer: economic hardship and social changes have altered the cost-benefit calculus of having children in North Korea in some ways that oddly resemble rich developed countries and in other ways utterly unique to North Korea's context.

First, let's consider the legacy of the '90s Great Famine. That trauma fundamentally shifted North Koreans' mindset about family and survival. During the famine, the state's public distribution system collapsed, and families had to be largely self-reliant for food, income, and raising kids. This is a huge change from the earlier paternalistic socialist system. Women, in particular, became breadwinners during and after the famine by selling goods in the black markets, while men were stuck in nearly non-functional state jobs. A generation of women born in the 1970s and '80s surprisingly found themselves entrepreneurs and hustlers by necessity. Running noodle stalls, trading rice, smuggling alcohol and cigarettes, all necessary precautions to keep their families fed and alive. These women discovered that taking time out for pregnancy and child care could be financially ruinous. In the cutthroat markets, if you stepped away for a few months to have a baby, you might lose your customers and your spot to a competitor. There's no paid maternity leave when you're an underground female entrepreneur, right? Many of them delay childbirth simply because they cannot afford to pause their work. This dynamic is somewhat analogous to career women in developed countries postponing childbirth for their jobs. Except in North Korea, it's not about career advancement in a corporate sense. It's literally about day-to-day survival and not losing your tiny income stream. A female food vendor in Chong Jin might not frame it in demographic terms, but when she decides, "I can only handle one kid if I'm going to keep earning money at the market," she's contributing to the national fertility slump in the aggregate.

Secondly, raising children in North Korea, while theoretically low-cost thanks to the state-supplied education and health care, is practically very challenging and costly in time and effort. The government loves to boast that parents don't have to worry about tuition or hospital bills like those in the capitalist world. But the on-the-ground reality is far from a socialist utopia. The state benefits are minimal or of poor quality, and parents must procure many things themselves. For instance, schooling is free, but parents still need to provide school supplies, uniforms, and often contributions to the school. Medical care is free, but medicines are scarce, so families have to buy drugs on the black market. Food rations are inconsistent, so feeding children falls on the parents' own ability to get food. In essence, the state's safety net has gaping holes, and having more children means more mouths to feed.

North Korean women further face a crushing double burden. They are expected to work full-time and also handle almost all housework and child care duties. Unlike in some traditional societies where women might be full-time homemakers, North Korean women are expected to both earn money and manage the home. The regime actually prides itself on having liberated women from tedious housework to realize their full potential in the workforce. It has made female labor participation in North Korea very high. But this liberation actually did not come with any emancipation from house chores. Add to that the fact that North Korean households lack most labor-saving appliances like vacuum cleaners and dishwashers common elsewhere. Basic items like washing machines and microwave ovens are not widely available. Even if a family owns a gadget, the electricity supply is so sporadic that you often can't run it. So everything—washing clothes, cleaning floors, cooking from scratch—takes substantial labor every day. A North Korean mother might spend hours hand-scrubbing laundry or gathering heating fuel, tasks her counterparts in Seoul or Shanghai never even think about. Having a second or third child in these conditions translates to a massive additional workload on the mother with very little support. Culturally, gender norms in North Korea remain conservative. The idea of fathers doing diapers and dishes is frankly laughable to many North Koreans. A North Korean female guide told me that at home, her husband wouldn't even go change a diaper because that was women's work. The patriarchal attitude is still strong, meaning women cannot count on their male partners to lighten the load. It's no surprise that many conclude, "Thanks, but one is enough." If you can't greatly reduce women's burdens, just urging them to have more kids is unrealistic.

Another factor is urbanization and new aspirations. Over 60% of North Koreans nowadays live in urban areas. And even in rural communities, people have been exposed to the idea of smaller, well-planned families instead of the old-style agrarian household. A North Korean couple might not have a fancy car or big mortgage to worry about, but they increasingly desire to invest in the one or two children they do have, ensuring they have enough food, maybe some nice clothes, or private tutoring if available for a brighter future. In fact, studies have found that in the 2000s, as average family size in North Korea shrank to one or two kids, the living standards of those households actually improved. More households could afford rice instead of corn, and meat consumption rose because there were fewer mouths to feed. Parents with only one child were more willing to splurge on a new pair of shoes or a birthday snack for that child, something they couldn't do if they had five kids. This trend, concentrating resources on fewer children, mirrors the quality-over-quantity mindset seen in richer countries, albeit for different reasons. North Koreans learned the hard way that having a big family in lean times can mean everyone starves. Whereas a smaller family has a better chance at decent nutrition and upward mobility. It's a very rational adaptation.

Finally, there's the psychological dimension. Decades of hardship have bred a sense of insecurity about the future. Young North Korean adults today grew up in the late Kim Jong-il era, which was marked by chronic food insecurity and international sanctions. Many of these young people are cynical about government promises. They've been told since birth that they live in a socialist paradise. Yet they experienced hunger and saw the illegal market economy actually put food on the table. Convincing this generation to trust the state when it says, "Have more children. We will take care of your family," is a hard sell. As one North Korean defector quipped, "We trusted the state and had many babies in the '80s, then watched them die in the '90s." The trauma of the famine lingers in the collective memory. No one wants to relive the agony of not being able to feed their kids. So people won't have more kids if they feel they can't guarantee a secure life for them. In a country with no real social safety net, children are a risky investment.

All these factors combined to create a situation where North Korea's birth rate has fallen to rich-country levels for some very unrich reasons. As Nicholas Eberstadt, a prominent demographer, observed, North Korea has stumbled into a low fertility trap while still mired in deep poverty. It's a very rare case. Usually, nations go through a demographic transition after industrializing and developing a robust middle class. North Korea seems to be leaping to the final stage without the prosperity that usually accompanies it. This is the demographic puzzle that Kim Jong-un is now urgently trying to solve. For a regime that equates national power with masses of loyal citizens, the notion of a shrinking, aging populace is terrifying. Fewer youths mean fewer soldiers for the army, fewer workers for factories and farms, and eventually fewer people to laud the Kim family's greatness. In a potential unification scenario with the South, a smaller northern population also means less clout. So with a mix of propaganda, perks, and punishments, the North Korean government is pushing a significant pro-life campaign.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was spotted shedding a tear as he addressed the regime's low birthrates at the National Mother's Meeting. Kim, seemingly caught in emotions, saying that he always thinks about mothers when he has a hard time. Then he called on women to have more children, saying it is every household's duty to tackle low birth rates. When the leadership in Pyongyang finally acknowledged the population problem, they became fanatical about engineering a baby boom by Kim's decree. Kim Jong-un's government essentially flipped from decades of laissez-faire stance to a full-scale pro-natal push. The pivot began in the mid-2000s and has escalated each year with policies that range from banning abortions to offering medals for hero mothers. It's a textbook example of North Korean-style social engineering, equal parts carrot and stick, both wrapped in ideological rhetoric.

In Kim Jong-un's early years, North Korea still quietly maintained the two-child norm that it had inherited from Kim Jong-il. Family planning services were available, and the state didn't yet signal panic about population. But as internal data started to show birth rates falling toward 1.9 or even below, alarms went off. In 2015, the Supreme People's Assembly issued a dramatic new decree. Abortion was completely banned. Sterilization surgeries were banned. And distribution of contraceptives in hospitals and pharmacies was stopped. The state even began cracking down on the black market sale of imported condoms and birth control pills. Overnight, North Korea went from handing out contraceptives to hunting them down. Doctors caught performing illegal abortions or tubal ligations could face criminal charges.

Pyongyang's propaganda then slowly started shifting to match the new policy. In 2017, state media introduced new slogans extolling the family. The mantra became "The family is the basic cell of socialist society," and editorials began to pop up hinting that having more children is a patriotic duty and most glorious. For decades, North Korean media seldom talked about the ideal number of kids per family. Now they were explicitly praising multi-child families and invoking nationalism, as if to say, "True socialist women will bear as many sons and daughters as possible for the motherland."

On the ground, local authorities also got busy. Following a Workers' Party meeting in June 2021, where Kim Jong-un for the first time publicly raised concern about the declining birth rate, a flurry of directives went out. Kim declared that creating a better environment for child-rearing was the most important policy and the party's greatest wish to be achieved at any cost. Those are pretty strong words in North Korea's political language. Within weeks, each province and county received orders to investigate the situation of unmarried and childless women and even to ideologically pressure them. The state was essentially labeling not having children as an antisocialist, bourgeois trend. Local neighborhood watch units were told to keep an eye on young women's trends and encourage them to marry and procreate. Imagine being a 25-year-old female factory worker and having party cadres show up to quiz you on why you aren't married with a baby yet. That has been happening in the Kimdom.

Meanwhile, officials began organizing model mothers tours. They selected exemplary moms who had, say, three or more kids and still fulfilled their work quotas and sent them around factories and communities to give inspirational talks. Factory women were a key target because a huge portion of young North Korean women work in state factories for shoes or garments. Throughout 2021, there were instances of these reproduction heroes visiting places like the Kim Jong Suk textile mill and the Sinui Cosmetics Factory to testify how joyful and meaningful it is to raise multiple children. Picture a propaganda road show. A beautiful, smiling mother of four standing in front of an assembly of textile workers, exhorting them that bearing lots of sons and daughters and raising them well is important for the future of our country and nation. It's simultaneously earnest and a bit absurd.

Alongside the moral pressure, material incentives were introduced on a trial basis. In 2019, well before Kim's public speeches on the topic, some provincial authorities quietly began reward programs for larger families. For example, in the northern province of Ryanggang and parts of Hamgyong, families with three or more children got priority in housing allocation, extra grain rations, and even family honor certificates. There were reports of freebies like baby clothes, soap, and school supplies being given to these families. In the city of Chongjin, local officials formed visitation teams to go door-to-door thanking and assisting multi-child households. Just imagine the image of officials bowing to a mother of five and handing her a bag of rice. Pyongyang commanded that cadres must personally ensure these pro-natal policies were being implemented and report back on their progress. These were just early pilot projects testing what kind of benefits might actually encourage North Koreans to have more kids.

By 2022, the campaign turned into a speedy mode. After two grim pandemic years, Kim Jong-un emerged even more concerned about the population trend. In October 2022, at a high-level party meeting, Kim explicitly called the declining birth rate a major challenge for the country. Likely the first time such frank language was used officially. Then in November 2022, something interesting happened. Kim appeared in public with his little daughter Kim Ju-ae for the first time. North Korea watchers were fascinated. Was he signaling a future successor? But many analysts believe one reason for showcasing his child was propaganda to present Kim as a devoted family man and normalize the image of having kids. In subsequent months, Kim kept bringing his young daughter to missile launches and events, almost as a marketing campaign for fatherhood. State media showed photos of the leader holding the girl's hand, smiling like a proud dad. The message to the public: "Look, our marshal has children. Real Koreans raise a family, not just missiles." Internally, some say it was also to quash rumors about Kim's health or infertility to prove the Paektu bloodline will continue to the fourth generation. Definitely, Kim wanted to appear with a loving family image to encourage the importance of family and having children.

Then came the climax in 2023. North Korea convened the Fifth National Conference of Mothers, an event not held in 11 years. In early December 2023, hundreds of model mothers from across the country were invited to the capital for a grand meeting devoted entirely to motherhood and childbirth. Kim Jong-un attended in person and gave an emotional speech, even appearing to shed tears on state television. Those images were striking. Kim wiping his eyes as he spoke about the sacrifices of mothers. He praised mothers as the driving force of our socialist family and said that preventing the decline in births was the responsibility of every household. He framed having children as a way to carry forward the revolution and strengthen the nation. It was heavy on ideological fervor, invoking the mothers of past revolutionary martyrs. Kim also announced new governmental measures, a mother and child health law that would improve support for childbearing and reiterated that mothers with many kids were true patriots. He then took group photos with the delegate moms, telling them that household affairs are national affairs and calling motherhood a part of national history. The whole spectacle was like a cross between a pep rally and a church revival meeting, but this time for procreation. Imagine a leader of a country essentially begging and exhorting women to go home and make more babies, complete with tears and applause.

Concrete incentives were expanded nationwide in 2024. The government rolled out what one might call a baby bonus package across the country. Key features included hero mother awards. This title, borrowed from the Soviet honorary system, would be bestowed complete with medals and certificates on mothers who meet certain criteria, typically with three or more kids. There will be priority access to housing for larger families. In Pyongyang, for example, the policy now states that families with three or more children get first dibs on new housing units, including those flashy high-rise apartments Kim has been unveiling in the Hasang District. This is a big deal in a country where housing is allocated by the state and good apartments are scarce.

Next, extra rations and tax breaks. Multi-child families are promised additional grain allotments and reduced local labor duty taxes to better feed the family. After the birth, these moms get extended maternity leave. Officially, North Korea's labor law now guarantees 240 days of maternity leave for new mothers, which is surprisingly quite generous on paper. In a rather specific incentive, if a woman has triplets, the state will assume direct care of the children. This sounds bizarre. If you miraculously pop out three at once, the regime will literally help raise them, providing free baby formula and nutritional supplements. To further alleviate the mother's duty, the government claimed to build more daycare centers and kindergartens so that women can have child care while they work. Although North Korea always had a system of state child care, the spots had always been limited and access was always prioritized for the big cadres. Presumably, the average citizen gets a chance now. By 2025, some cities were experimenting with a quasi-loyalty program. Parents earn points for each additional child, which can be redeemed for goods or extra benefits. Think of it like a frequent breeder reward card. The more kids, the more points to get household items or priority in certain queues. It sounds the same as other incentives, but the best part about a point system is transparency and straightforwardness. The effort even extends to cultural campaigns, emphasizing traditional family values and incorporating pro-baby themes into state music and school lessons.

All told, North Korea's approach is a full-court press to boost birth numbers, ban the baby blockers, award parents of many kids with modest gifts and honors, propagandize motherhood as a revolutionary duty, and publicly implore everyone to procreate for the nation. So, has this great pro-natalist drive succeeded? So far, the results have been underwhelming. Despite Kim's apparent personal investment in the campaign, North Korea's fertility rate has not bounced back. By the end of 2025, data indicated the birth rate was still around 1.8 or maybe even lower, and population growth stuck at 0.3%, basically the lowest levels on record, unchanged by the policy storm. Kim Jong-un's flurry of baby boom policies achieved nothing but preventing the further decline in the birth rate.

But why did these policies fail? An article published by DPRK Today on April 30th emphasized the benefits for North Korean families with three or more children. They're reportedly guaranteed food and housing in addition to a string of other benefits. North Korea has supposedly done everything a government can do to encourage child birth except actually mandating pregnancy. In practice, however, the barriers and disincentives that keep birth rates low are deeply ingrained in North Koreans' daily reality. The campaign fails because it never addresses the root problems: the economic hardships that prospective parents face, the unequal burden on women, and the lingering lack of hope for a better future.

Let's start with the economics. The incentives offered—supposedly enough baby formula for every big family—but the reality is perhaps only 200g of extra rice ration. You might get a big house, but that's only if you have the baby. Many young couples are already struggling to get any independent housing at all. Living space is extremely tight in cities, as multiple generations sometimes crowd together. Young couples should have their own apartment before giving birth to any child, not vice versa. A bit more corn or an allowance during maternity leave is helpful, but it doesn't cover the long 18-plus years of feeding, clothing, and educating an additional child, especially in a country where the public distribution and education systems often demand informal payments. For most couples, their incomes from markets or meager state salaries barely cover the basics for the only kid they have now. The government's promises sometimes ring hollow. You never know when those baby formulas will finally be delivered. North Korean parents have learned to be skeptical about their supreme leader.

Now we take maternity leave as another example. The state grants every mom 8 months of paid leave. But a recent report by Daily NK revealed that women with good, high-paying jobs often return to work just 10 to 15 days after giving birth. Why? Because they're afraid of losing their position or income if they stay away too long. North Korea's economy has a strange dual nature. There are the formal jobs which pay token salaries, and the informal perks that make certain positions lucrative. For example, being a bookkeeper at a trading company or a cashier at a state-run cafeteria for officials can give a woman access to bribes, extra food, or lucrative side hustles. These plum jobs are limited and competitive. If a woman in such a position takes the full maternity leave, her manager might take bribes from others and permanently replace her. As one source put it, "Accounting and bookkeeping positions aren't offered to just anybody. If managers choose a replacement, the woman may find it impossible to return to her position after maternity leave." So rationally, every woman with a better job would cut short her leave to keep the job. One extreme real example: a woman working at a police department's cafeteria, a job that let her bring home leftover food, was back on the job 10 days after delivering her baby. She simply could not afford to recuperate longer since her entire family needed the perks from that job to eat well. Her own mother would bring the newborn to the workplace at feeding times so she could keep on the job. This is a far cry from the idyllic image of a mother leisurely enjoying state-supported maternity time.

Women in less desirable jobs, say ordinary factory workers or farm laborers, do tend to use their full maternity leave because there's not much to lose. But even many of those women don't actually rest during leave. The same investigation noted that some use the time to run a small business at the market or do other money-making activities from home. They might sew clothes for sale or trade homemade snacks, all while officially on leave. Why? Because the state maternity pay, even if it arrives, is negligible, and their family needs money. The reality is that women here can't afford to get the rest they need or look after their health, the report says it bluntly. The economic pressure on women is just so intense that maternity leave often exists only on paper.

Now, layer on the domestic drudgery we described earlier. A North Korean mother, even after returning from her brief leave to full-time work, is expected to cook, clean, fetch water or wood, launder clothes, etc., with minimal help. In developed countries facing low birth rates, governments at least talk about work-life balance, paternity leave, daycare, and sharing housework. In North Korea, those conversations aren't happening. The cultural expectation remains that a good socialist mother will somehow heroically do it all. It's a superwoman myth that many women roll their eyes at because they know the toll it takes.

Trauma and distrust further undermine the campaign. Kim Jong-un might cry on TV urging women to have more kids, but a lot of people will see that as propaganda theatrics. The North Korean social contract was broken, and it hasn't been fully repaired since the '90s Great Famine. Back in 2021, when the government began investigating unmarried women, they reportedly framed the issue as young people being corrupted by capitalism, implying that if you don't want to marry and reproduce, you're essentially ideologically impure. Such moralizing might actually backfire among younger North Koreans, many of whom have grown up exposed to foreign media via smuggled USB sticks and have tasted minor personal freedoms in the markets. Telling a woman who saw her neighbor's children die of hunger that she's selfish for not having a baby is, to put it mildly, tone-deaf.

Here is another harsh reality. North Korea's authoritarian system can punish dissent, but it cannot easily punish people for not having children, as Romania did under Ceaușescu. Pyongyang's ability to force higher birth rates is limited. They've applied social pressure and banned contraceptives, but people always find a way. If a woman truly doesn't want a child, she might induce an abortion herself through dangerous herbs or by bribing a doctor in secret. The government can't monitor every bedroom. So unless individuals are personally convinced or motivated to have more children, they can quietly subvert the state's wishes in their bedrooms. The campaign might produce a few more large families at the margins. Perhaps some loyal party cadre's wives will try for a fourth kid to earn a medal, but it's unlikely to spark a broad baby boom without bigger changes.

Reality on the ground strongly undercuts the regime's pro-natal push. Economic incentives are too small, social support too weak, and the demands on women too high to spark a significant change in behavior. The campaign has done a great job at revealing the regime's anxiety, but not such a great job at relieving the people's anxiety about raising kids under current conditions. As a result, many North Koreans are quietly ignoring the call to breed for the fatherland. The marshal can say whatever he wants on TV, but he's not the one who will wake up at 3:00 a.m. when the baby's crying for milk or figure out how to pay for extra food. People have become adept at wearing a mask of compliance publicly while making their own decisions privately.

North Korea's population crisis illuminates a fundamental truth about the limits of authoritarian power. The Kim regime can command many things, like demanding citizens attend mass rallies, adhering to rigid ideological doctrine, and even spending years in military service. But it cannot simply command its people to create new life. Childbearing is one area where slogans and fear have limited effect because it ultimately comes down to personal hope, love, and the ability to provide for a family. In a very real sense, the regime can enforce obedience, but it can't engineer love, nor the parental willingness to nurture more offspring in uncertain times.

Kim Jong-un stared into his nation's future and saw a bleak picture: a dwindling, aging populace that threatens to undermine the very foundations of his power. It must be deeply frustrating for a dictator used to absolute control. He can manufacture missiles on a whim, but he can't manufacture babies. In the end, the North Korean people, particularly the women, hold a quiet power in this realm. By choosing to have fewer children, they are indirectly asserting some control over their lives and perhaps even over the regime's trajectory. This isn't an organized resistance, but it is a form of collective action or inaction. People will have more babies when they believe those babies will have better lives than they did. Until that belief takes hold, no amount of medals for hero mothers or tearful speeches will likely make a sizable difference.

For North Korea to truly fix its population crisis, it would need to undertake far more profound changes: improving living standards, ensuring food security, empowering women, and restoring some faith in the future. Those remedies, however, would require loosening Kim's tight grip and investing in the welfare of the people in ways that open up society. Thus, Kim Jong-un is caught in a dilemma. The very measures that might encourage North Koreans to have more children could also loosen his authoritarian hold. It's a trade-off he has so far been unwilling to fully embrace. As it stands, North Korea is likely to continue grappling with this slow-burning crisis. A regime that has treated its people like instruments of state power now finds itself desperate for those same people to reproduce out of intrinsic motivation. Love of family, not fear of authority, is what leads people to bring children into the world. In a dark twist of fate, the military-first country now needs a baby-first revolution. And hope remains one of the scarcest commodities of the kingdom.