Seoul, Feb 25 || The number of babies born in South Korea grew at the fastest pace in 15 years in 2025, with the country's total fertility rate rising to 0.8 for the first time in four years, government data showed on Wednesday.
A total of 254,500 babies were born last year, up 6.8 per cent, or 16,100, from 2024, according to the provisional data from the Ministry of Data and Statistics. The ministry will announce the final statistics in August, reports news agency.
The 2025 tally marks the steepest on-year increase since 2010, and the second consecutive year of growth.
The total fertility rate, the average number of children a woman is expected to have over her lifetime, came to 0.8, up 0.05 from a year earlier, recovering the threshold for the first time in four years.
The ministry attributed the rebound in the number of newborns to an increase in marriages and the continued growth in the population of women in their early 30s, the prime childbearing age group, since 2021.
"The number of marriages gained ground for 21 straight months from April 2024 to December last year as couples who had delayed their marriages due to the COVID-19 pandemic tied the knot," Park Hyun-jeong, a ministry official, explained.