The decreasing birthrates mean fewer workers can pave the way for social development, which means that Korea's dream of a $20,000 national income per capita will be unattainable, pointed out Kim Seung-gwon at the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs. If birthrates continue to drop, local manufacturers will have to import more than 3 million foreign workers to survive, he said.

Why are Korean women having so few children? For the most part, experts say, they are getting married later and divorced more often. Other factors include the costs of raising children, higher sterility rates because of later marriages and disadvantages for pregnant women or new mothers in the workplace.

Many countries have similar worries, but many are adopting countermeasures. For example, France over the past decade has instituted various incentives for women to have more children in an effort to maintain its birth rate of 1.5.

The United States Hudson Institute recently announced that due to the advanced nations' decreasing birthrates and aging populations, the political dynamics of developing countries and advanced countries will be reversed in about 50 years.

Marriage and reproduction are certainly personal choices. However, without children, there is no future for the family or the nation.

In research conducted last month by the Chosun Ilbo and Korea Gallup on 1,033 women in their 20s and 30s, 15 percent of those married said they would not have children, while 50 percent who had just one child said they did not plan to have another. The tradition to continue having children until you have a son has long disappeared, evidently. Now, the general trend is to have only one child, regardless of the sex, or have no children at all.

Single women were more extreme about not wanting marriage or children. Nearly three-quarters of the respondents said they did not believe women must get married, and 56 percent of the single women answered positively about not having children after marriage. Another poll conducted by the institute in 1991 indicated that only 8.5 percent answered that married couples do not need to have children.

A professor of sociology at University of Munich, Ulich Beck, said that such trends were common to advanced nations. These societies pressure women to enter the labor market, have jobs and yet cherish their family and households, he explained.

Nearly a quarter of respondents to a poll conducted recently by the Chosun Ilbo said the main reason for not wanting marriage and children was because it is too hard to raise a child and have a satisfying social life at the same time.

And of course it's difficult for married people to make ends meet, further discouraging marriage. In the 1980s, the average monthly salary of Korean employees was W150,000 and the cost of an apartment in Seoul per pyung (3.3 square meters) was about W800,000. Now, the average monthly salary is W1.4 milion, but the cost of an apartment per pyung is over W10 million.

Kim Hyun-jung, an unmarried company employee, said she no longer believes that she has to get married and have children by a certain age. Kim added that rather than living in a poor economic condition after marriage, it is better to live alone.

Madelyn Cain, the American author of "Childless Revolution," holds that the trend of women wanting to live childless will have a far deeper and wider influence on society than any other movements.

The Chosun Ilbo study supported that trend, as the average response by single women to the question of how many children was optimal for a woman to have was 1.14. That indicates that the birthrate, now at 1.17, could very well drop much further.

Experts believe the main reason for the low birthrate is the trend to get married later. In the 1990s, the average age for men getting married for the first time was 27.9, and women 24.9. Now the same numbers are 29.8 for men and 27 for women.

Marriages are being delayed and couples are not having more than one child due to child-rearing costs that usually exceed W800,000 ($675) per month. Ahn Byung-chul, a professor at Hanyang University, explained that in an agricultural economy, children were valued as workers; but since the time and money needed for child-rearing is so high these days, couples with kids have trouble making ends meet.

And more couples are sterile because they marry older. Doctors say that as many as 700,000 of the nations 3.7 million couples who are in their 20s to 40s suffer from sterility.

The most serious side effect of the low birthrate is a shortage of younger workers. The number of workers aged 15-24 was 7.69 million in 2000, but the number is expected to fall to 5.87 million by 2020 and 4.87 million by 2030.

The labor force aged 25-49 made up 58.8 percent of the population in 2000, but will fall to 40 percent by 2030. The "aging" of the labor force will eventually cause the economy to run out of steam and decrease national productivity, scholars warn.

A heavier burden will lie on the younger generation to take care of those aged 65 and above. In 1970, 17.5 people aged 15-64 were responsible for taking care of one aged person. Now, 8.6 people carry that burden. By 2020 it will be 4.7, and by 2030, 2.8. In reality, people aged 20-40 are the actual constituents of the labor force, which indicates that the actual responsibility for the younger generation will be far heavier.

The exhaustion of welfare expenses is another concern. The health insurance medical fee per person, which was W590,000 in 2001, is expected to increase to W700,000 in 2020 and W1 million in 2050. With more elderly people, medical costs will rise while the number of people bearing the expenses will fall.

The situation with the national pension is just as desperate. If the current 9 percent insurance premium is maintained, the national pension finances will show a loss in 2035 and be drained by 2047. Even before the nation reaches its dream of $20,000 national income per capita, the nation may suffer losses from taking care of its elderly.

Even today, the number of young men enlisting in the army, to a point at which the army cannot meet its demand for soldiers. The Military Manpower Administration believes that there will be a shortage of 70,000 men in 2007 and 100,000 men in 2025. In other words, the army's numbers will fall by a third in 22 years.

Director Lee Eon-oh of the Samsung Economic Research Institute said if the birthrate keeps falling, all areas of society will be hit and it will be difficult to revitalize the nation. Lee advised that birth encouragement policies be devised and implemented immediately.