Trend Compressed modernity drives an extreme demographic transition in Korea and Japan

Summary

Among the crises the two countries face together in the twenty-first century, the report singles out the population crisis of low fertility and ageing as especially hard, because it is difficult to solve and its effects are far-reaching. Drawing on sociologist Chang Kyung-sup's idea of compressed modernity, it argues that Japan as well as Korea shows its features and that their shared population crisis is its product. The concept stresses not only speed but also the uneven and contradictory character of modernization, whose burdens fell on individuals and families rather than on the state or social systems. East Asian latecomers did not follow the Western pattern of demographic transition, as both mortality and fertility fell unusually quickly and deeply. This extreme transition has produced rapid ageing and a crisis of population decline.