Image: Yonhap News
South Korea's declining birth rate problem has been underscored by new government data released Wednesday that showed the number of babies born in August dropped 7.8 percent from a year earlier.
According to Statistics Korea, 22,472 babies were born during the month.
It marks the lowest number of newborns for any August since the government started compiling related data in 1981.
In the January-August period, a total of 188,202 babies were born, down 9.5 percent on-year.
The country's total fertility rate, which refers to the average number of children a woman bears in her lifetime, came to 0.92 last year, hitting an all-time low and marking the second year in a row for the rate to fall below 1.
It's also far below the replacement level of 2.1 required to keep South Korea's population stable at 51 million.
Meanwhile, the number of deaths recorded in August was 25,284, an increase of 6.7 from a year ago -- another clear sign of the country's imminent population decline.
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