{"id":73335,"date":"2025-08-10T17:20:26","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T08:20:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/aug\/10\/south-korea-military-shrinks-by-20-per-cent-as-low-birthrate-hits-recruitment"},"modified":"2025-08-10T19:15:05","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T10:15:05","slug":"south-koreas-military-shrinks-by-20-as-low-birthrate-hits-recruitment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=73335","title":{"rendered":"South Korea\u2019s military shrinks by 20% as low birthrate hits recruitment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>World\u2019s lowest fertility rate leaves Seoul 50,000 troops short of maintaining defence readiness, report warns<\/p>\n<p>South Korea\u2019s military has shrunk by 20% in the past six years, largely due to a sharp decrease in the population of men of enlistment age for mandatory service in the country with the world\u2019s lowest birthrate, according to a report.<\/p>\n<p>The sharp decline in the pool of men available for military service is also causing a shortfall in the number of officers and could result in operational difficulties, the defence ministry said in the report.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/aug\/10\/south-korea-military-shrinks-by-20-per-cent-as-low-birthrate-hits-recruitment\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>World\u2019s lowest fertility rate leaves Seoul 50,000 troops short of maintaining defence readiness, report warnsSouth Korea\u2019s military has shrunk by 20% in the past six years, largely due to a sharp decrease in the population of men of enlistment age for &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":288,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,40,706,222,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-north-korea","category-population","category-south-korea","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/288"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73335"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73346,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73335\/revisions\/73346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}