In an effort to combat the country's alarmingly low birth rate, a South Korean company is stepping up by offering millions of dollars to its employees for having children.
The Booyoung Group, a construction company based in Seoul, plans to pay its employees 100 million won ($75,000) each time they have a baby. Moreover, the company will also distribute a total of 7 billion Korean won ($5.25 million) to employees who have had children since 2021, totaling 70.
The incentive is available to both women and men, a company spokesperson told CNN.
Employees with three children can receive 300 million Korean won ($225,000) or be provided with housing if the government allocates land for the company to build properties for this purpose.
South Korea has the world's lowest fertility rate, with the average woman expected to have just 0.78 children during her lifetime in 2022. This rate is projected to decline further to 0.65 by 2025, according to official forecasts by the Korean Statistical Service.
Founded in 1983, the Booyoung Group has constructed over 270,000 homes, as per its website.
The South Korean government and other private companies already offer financial incentives to encourage people to have more children, but none on the scale of the Booyoung Group's benefits. Similar programs are also found in China, where the population has been declining for two consecutive years.
Last year, China's Trip.com, one of the world's largest online travel agencies, announced that employees working for the company for at least three years would receive an annual bonus of 10,000 yuan ($1,376) for each child they have, up until the child turns five.
