They propose “importing” women from poor countries to procreate and improve low birth rates

Given this situation, some voices of the ruler Democratic Party of South Korea have proposed “importing” foreign women from more disadvantaged countries to marry South Koreans from rural areas.

This proposal has been put on the table by the mayor of Jindo County, Kim Hee-su, who has already been expelled of the party.

“All members of the Supreme Council unanimously voted to expel Mayor Kim (Hee-su),” said the Democratic Party’s chief spokesman, Park Soo-hyunquoted by the local news agency Yonhap after the council meeting in the National Assembly.

Park explained that the decision was made after considering that the comment, made last Wednesday during a live-streamed public forum, constituted a derogatory expression towards foreign women.

Kim, mayor of Jindo County, said that “young single girls would have to be imported from places like Sri Lanka o Vietnam” to marry men from rural areas to address the region’s demographic decline.

The Vietnamese Embassy subsequently sent a note of protest to provincial authorities, who responded with an official apology on Saturday, stating that the statement is not in line with the region’s values.

Kim, who remains in office despite expulsion of the ruling party, claimed over the weekend that he had no intention of denigrating any country or person and that it was a poor choice of words.

“I was wrong to refer to the arrival of foreign women using the word ‘import’,” he said, in an apology broadcast by regional media.

According to data from the Ministry of Justice, Vietnamese citizens represented about 23% of the more than 181,000 immigrants by marriage in South Korea in 2024.

The Asian country suffers from a chronically low birth rate, which in 2024 was the lowest in the world with just 0.75 children per woman.