Korea Needs a Baby Boom or Migration

South Korea’s UN‑based projections imply its population could fall from ~52 million today to ~22 million by 2100 under plausible assumptions. Using a simple population model, the article shows that avoiding that outcome would require either an improbable rebound in fertility (roughly to replacement levels or above) or sustained, large net migration for decades. — This reframes Korean demographic policy as a hard tradeoff between politically fraught large-scale immigration and an economically transformative but unlikely fertility rebound, with implications for labor markets, welfare spending, and immigration politics.