Bank of Korea Governor Kim Choong-soo yesterday stressed the need to ease immigration policy and bring more foreign workers to a country whose rapidly aging population poses a serious economic challenge.
Speaking to foreign journalists in Seoul, Kim said Asia’s fourth-largest economy needed to “embrace more migrant workers” in order to drive future growth.
“For instance, the US welcomes 1 million, even up to 2 million immigrants a year, which helps its demographics remain so young and maintain economic vitality,” Kim said.
After years of promoting family planning in a crowded country of 50 million, South Korea has a chronically low birth rate that will halve the size of its youth population by 2060 and decimate its workforce.
One obvious way out was the adoption of “more future-oriented and open immigration policies,” Kim said. “By doing so we will be able to utilize these workers ... in the right places of the economy and retain social vitality at the same time.”
By 2050, South Koreans aged 60 years or older will account for 39 percent of the population, up from 17 percent last year, data from the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs show.
South Korea’s fertility rate — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — stood at just 1.01 in 2011, compared with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average of 1.71.
With South Koreans increasingly shunning low-paying manual jobs, Seoul in 2004 adopted legislation allowing companies to hire manual workers from 15 countries — mostly Southeast Asia. As of last year, more than 500,000 registered migrant workers — mostly from China and Southeast Asia — were working in the country.
Once an economic juggernaut that grew nearly 7 percent a year on average since the end of the Korean War in 1953, South Korea has in recent years entered a phase of more measured growth.
The economy is expected to grow 2.8 percent this year after expanding 2 percent last year, Kim said.
The domestic unit of the Chinese-owned, Dutch-headquartered chipmaker Nexperia BV will soon be able to produce semiconductors locally within China, according to two company sources. Nexperia is at the center of a global tug-of-war over critical semiconductor technology, with a Dutch court in February ordering a probe into alleged mismanagement at the company. The geopolitical tussle has disrupted supply chains, with some carmakers reportedly forced to cut production due to chip shortages. Local production would allow Nexperia’s domestic arm, Nexperia Semiconductors (China) Ltd (安世半導體中國), to bypass restrictions in place since October on the supply of silicon wafers — etched with tiny components to
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
Taiwan is open to joining a global liquefied natural gas (LNG) program if one is created, but on the condition that countries provide delivery even in a scenario where there is a conflict with China, an energy department official said yesterday. While Taiwan’s priority is to have enough LNG at home, the nation is open to exploring potential strategic reserves in other countries such as Japan or South Korea, Energy Administration Deputy Director-General Chen Chung-hsien (陳崇憲) said. While the LNG market does not have a global reserve for emergencies like that of oil, the concept has been raised a few times —
AI-FUELED DEMAND: The company has been benefiting from the skyrocketing prices for DRAM chips amid the AI frenzy, especially its core product — DDR4 DRAM chips DRAM chipmaker Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday reported that its revenue for the first quarter surged 582.91 percent to NT$49.09 billion (US$1.54 billion) from NT$7.19 billion a year earlier, as the supply crunch caused chip price spikes. Last quarter’s figure is the highest on record. On a quarterly basis, revenue jumped 63.14 percent from NT$30.09 billion, the company said. In January, Nanya Technology expected global DRAM supply scarcity to continue through the first half of 2028, thanks to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) forecast prices of standard DRAM chips would rise between 58 percent and 63
RSS