Japan and Korea, over the past couple years, the world has fallen in love with their music, movies, and media. With a combined GDP of $6.6 trillion, both our powerhouses in this world's economy, together they have a combined population of 177 million people, representing 2.2% of the global population. But what if Japan and Korea were to somehow vanish? Today's video is sponsored by Boksu. What is Boksu? You know that Japan is great, but you know what also is great? Snacks from Japan. And if you're like me and you live in America, Japanese snacks aren't exactly selling on every street corner, but that's where Boksu comes in. Boksu is a subscription service that will send you delicious, yummy treats shipped straight from Japan. And what's cute is they come in monthly themed boxes, so I'm actually really excited that it's April because well, I got the best box. April is spring, so this Boksu is all cherry blossom themed. Boksu is great because every month you have a new box of treats, candies, and tea delivered straight to your door. So let me help you out. Get 10% off your own authentic Japanese snack box from Boksu and save up to $47 using my code and link in the description box. So this also supports my channel, so you're also helping me. Enjoy! For the first time in its history, South Korea's population has fallen, and Japan is already on its ninth straight year. Just last year, Japan's population dropped 487,000. Is it possible for a country to go extinct? First is the incredibly low birth rate. Korea leads the world with the lowest birth rate at 1.0, which would mean that the expected number of children born per woman in her childbearing years is only one child. Japan isn't far behind at 1.4. For comparison, the world's average is 2.4. Raising kids is expensive, especially in Japan and Korea. From childbirth until adulthood, estimates range from 250,000 to 500,000. And it's true that the single life is easy, at least monetarily. Why spend thousands of dollars a month on another human being when you can spend it on yourself? Sometimes you just gotta look out for number 1. With Japan being the eighth most expensive country in the world and South Korea being 16th, children just not viable options sometimes. In fact, about 15% of Japanese men said they don't want children, which is up 8% from 10 years ago. Additionally, to work environment makes it very stressful to find a partner. Japan and Korea are both notorious for hard work environments. Your job at a company basically becomes your life. South Korea ranked third among all countries for most hours worked. And if you're in the office all day working, how are you supposed to meet anyone? Kamuters are reason dating since they're so popular in Japan. Konichiwa, I'm David Kun. It's so nice to finally meet you. You look just like my wife who... Lastly, people just aren't dying. What I mean is that Japan and Korea are just getting older. Thanks to modern medicine, a clean diet, and healthy living by the two countries, the life expectancy is much higher than the rest of the world with Japan and Korea averaging 84 and 83 years respectively. Taking to number 1 and 3 spots. Next step in mortality? When I was first in Korea in the 60s and 70s, Korea was very, very big on small families, on ZPG. Zero population growth. And they had the slogans all over, have one child, have two, and raise them well. And that propaganda really worked well. Everybody thought, well, it's two children. Now they're saying they're encouraging people to have more children and it's not working so well. People aren't having more children. But I think the first phase of this was the population control in general, which worked out to be fairly effective, but now it's too effective. Well, long term, if Korea continues on this pace of not marrying, not having children, the economy can really decline. Economies are built on growing populations and if the economy starts to decline, it could be trouble for everyone. I think it's going to be a phase. I think, and I'm hopeful that in a short while, people will see that this is a dead end street and that really people, number one, are happier in family groups. And number two, it's better for society that they have children and the society can go on and prosper. So what needs to be done to ensure that Japan and Korea don't disappear? Japan has tried several government measures to increase their fertility rate, like building more nurseries and funding more childcare services. Japan even has plans to invest millions of dollars into a matchmaking project that uses AI. I'm guessing this is like some high tech government-funded Tinder or something. Well, for me, it's an easy fix. We just need to hire the casting director from crash lining on YouTube to oversee the whole program. All the single men and women would be married within 16 episodes. So what's going to happen to Japan and Korea after population continues to decline? And one needs to be done to fix this problem. Is it a problem? Maybe Thanos was