EVENTS

South Korea’s total fertility rate has fallen to 0.80 in 2025, making it one of the lowest globally. With a current population of 51.8 million, the country is projected to shrink to 36.2 million by 2072. Such data from Korea stirs concerns as Korean society has already begun to experience the ramifications of the low fertility rate, including a shrinking workforce, school closures, business shutdowns, and many more. There are various reasons behind the low fertility rates in South Korea. Existing explanations for low fertility rates usually point to a range of factors such as education, financial pressures, career development, traditional gender roles, gender inequality, among many others. Rather than treating these as a list of discrete causes, this presentation analyses them cumulatively, using Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire’s concept of “critical consciousness” as a unifying framework. It argues that the development of “critical consciousness” among South Korean women has led to the decline of fertility rates in South Korea. The analysis unfolds across three stages. In stage I, education and lived experience give women awareness of the structural inequalities embedded in Korean society. In stage II, the awareness develops into a sense of agency. In stage III, the agency translates into critical action (individual or collective such as the 4B movement) against conventional norms and expectations, of which declining fertility is one significant expression.

Speaker

Torunika Roy is a Research Associate at the Council for Strategic and Defence Research (CSDR) in New Delhi. She has submitted her PhD in Korean Studies at the Centre for East Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She holds a BA degree in International Studies, specializing in East Asian Studies and International Law and Diplomacy, from Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea. Furthermore, she received an MA degree in International Relations and Area Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She is proficient in Hindi, English, Bangla and Korean. Her research focuses on East Asian politics, security, and socio-political transformations, with particular expertise on the Korean Peninsula, India-Korea relations, and Indo-Pacific strategic affairs. Her work has been published in leading outlets, including The Indian Express, Frontline, Hindustan Times, ThePrint, and Global Asia.

Chair

Govind Kelkar has a PhD in Political Economy of China and is a Visiting Professor at the Council for Social Development and the Institute for Human Development, India. She is the Executive Director of GenDev Centre for Research and Innovation, India, and was a Senior Advisor at Landesa, Seattle, USA. In her concurrent assignments, Professor Kelkar was the International Research Coordinator of ENERGIA International in the Netherlands, and the Research Lead of Gender and Energy at the Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai, India. She is a Distinguished Adjunct Faculty at the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, Thailand. Professor Kelkar holds a position of Honorary Professor at the Institute of Ethnology of the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences in China. She has authored sixteen books and numerous scholarly publications. Her recent book is titled Witch Hunts: Culture, Patriarchy and Structural Transformation (co-authored, Cambridge University Press, 2020); a compendium titled Gender, Culture and Capital: Witch Hunts and Ritual Attacks Across Northeast India (2023); and recent publications on the gender dynamics of soft power in emerging economies across East Asia.

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