WSJ: Korea overcomes preference for boys through education

With imbalance in male and female populationsserious worldwide, the world is paying attention to the secret of how Koreaachieved a balance of populations between the two genders.

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In a report entitled Asia Struggles fora Solution to Its Missing Women Problem: How South Korea turned the tide on ademographic imbalance threatening economic growth and social structures on Thursday, the U.S. daily Wall Street Journal gave detailed accountof the process Korea overcame imbalance in male and female populations.

Korea with deep-rooted Confuciantradition was one of the countries that had strong preference for boys overgirls up until the mid-1980s. After the introduction of the ultrasonic scan tocheck the health of fetuses, abortion of female fetuses became more common sincethe 1990s, which resulted in a gender ratio of boys and girls for the third child in a family jumping to 193 to 100 once in the 1990s. However, after theera of democracy opened in the late 1990s, and feminine movement was widelystaged, changes started to occur. After the abolishment of the patriarchal family system in 2005, the tradition of preference for boys also began to lose ground gradually.

Recently, the gender ratio at birth,which stood at 116.5 (number of boys per 100 girls) in the 1990s, fall to the normallevel (105.3). The portion of parents who believe they definitely need a boydeclined from 40 percent in 1991 to 8 percent in 2012. The Wall Street Journalsaid, Asian countries where the male population far exceeds the female populationincluding India and China should refer to Korea, which not only succeeded in industrializationand urbanization but also in shifting the trend of democratic imbalance throughfeminine movement and the power of education.

Meanwhile, WSJ reported as the imbalancein gender populations widens, the number of crimes committed by young peopleincreases in tandem. Citing a study conducted by Columbia University in theU.S., the newspaper said, About 33 percent of crimes that increased from 1992to 2004 in China were committed due to an imbalance in gender populations,adding, As people strove to amass wealth to seek marriage (amid imbalance ingender populations), violence and crimes increased.