“Is Ewha Womans University the "Enemy of South Korea's Birth”?

Sook Mee Son

Chairperson, Gender Equality Committee,

Hansun Foundation

Edward Luttwak, a world-renowned strategist and geoeconomist, recently offered an assessment bordering on a caustic rebuke, aimed at a fatal weakness hidden behind Korea’s success. He warned that while Korea has been navigating the external waves of U.S.-China tensions relatively well, internally a massive "low birthrate" hole is sinking the country. One sentence he then threw out caused a major stir in Korean society: "Your country’s enemy is not outside. Your country’s enemy is Ewha Womans University.“

This provocative remark is not a denunciation of a particular educational institution. Rather, it is a chilling insight that asks why the success Korea achieved in women’s education has paradoxically led to a demographic disaster, and what the "basic conditions for national survival" are that we have overlooked.

1. The image of an autonomous woman symbolized by "Ewha Womans University“

Luttwak pointed to "Ewha Womans University" because it is a symbolic stronghold of the rapid rise in Korean women’s higher education and social status. Ewha traces its origins to Ewha Hakdang, founded in 1886 by the American missionary Mary Scranton, and it is Korea’s first women’s educational institution as well as the university where Korea’s first Women’s Studies major was established. For a long time, Ewha has been a cradle of Korea’s women’s movement and has served as a source from which feminist discourse radiated. The value this school has pursued is the realization of an "autonomous, independent, pioneering female leader" who does not become incorporated into a patriarchal order.

In the past, Ewha maintained for 57 years (from 1946 to 2003) a "ban on marriage" (geumhon) school regulation under which married women were not admitted, or were expelled if it became known during their enrollment that they had married. Many of its past presidents also remained single for a long time, personally embodying a model of "sacrificing private family life for scholarship and public life.“

In this atmosphere, among highly educated women who were educated within it, marriage and childbirth increasingly came to be regarded as constraints that hinder self-realization, or even as a form of "regression." From Luttwak’s perspective, the logic is that "the smarter and more independent women become, the engine of the nation’s demographic reproduction comes to a stop, and Ewha stands at its symbolic peak."

2. The paradox of family planning and the trap of cultural lag

One view is that a major driver behind the rapid rise in Korean women’s educational attainment in a short period was the government’s family-planning policy in the 1970s and 1980s. The slogan "Don’t distinguish between daughters and sons - have only two and raise them well" combined with Korean parents’ zeal for education. As the number of children fell, parents with greater economic means began to provide daughters with educational opportunities equal to those of sons, which led to women’s rapid move into higher education.

The problem lies in the "cultural lag" in which women’s consciousness and educational attainment are running at the cutting edge of the 21st century, while the caregiving structure within the home remains stuck in the 20th century. Our society demands from women both perfection in the workplace and the role of primary caregiver at home at the same time.

In the meantime, Korea has poured large budgets into measures for balancing work and family - maternity leave, parental leave, free childcare, expansion of after-school care classes, and more. With men’s gender-equality awareness increasing, the compatibility of work and family has also improved a great deal compared to the past. However, surveys show that half of employed women quit their jobs after childbirth. The imbalance in housework, a legacy of patriarchy, has not been resolved, and long working hours and a rigid corporate labor culture interpret pregnancy and childbirth as a signal of career interruption.

Smarter women began to refuse to participate in this irrational game and chose non-marriage as a survival strategy that, in one sense, appears rational. In the end, the main culprit behind the low birthrate is not Ewha Womans University, but rather an outdated social structure that is not prepared to accommodate Ewha graduates.

3. The Israel model

Luttwak uses Israel - like Korea, a country living under constant threats of war - as a comparison point. To overcome the national limitation of having a small population, Israel follows the principle of gender equality and has women as well perform mandatory military service.

What is noteworthy is that, despite a system under which Israeli women can be exempted from the military if they marry or become pregnant and give birth, about 50-60% of all women still enlist. Another notable fact is that more than 90% of women who complete military service go on to give birth, and Israel’s total fertility rate is close to an average of three children.

This is because the Israeli military is not a place that chews up young people’s time. Israeli military facilities are specialized in advanced IT education and the acquisition of information-warfare skills. Cybersecurity, drone operation, and data-analysis skills learned in the military naturally connect to employment and startups after discharge. The military functions not as a career interruption but as a career accelerator.

4. An unavoidable future called female conscription

If Korea’s low-birthrate trend becomes entrenched as it is now, then due to the depletion of military manpower resources, mandatory military service for women will no longer be a matter of choice but a matter of survival. If female conscription is implemented, our society is likely to face two changes.

First, women who judge the opportunity cost of childbirth to be lower than the pain of military service may choose early childbirth, as in Israel. Second, the military service program will be completely redesigned so that women who go to the military do not feel they are squandering the golden years of their lives - nearly two years.

As seen in the Russia-Ukraine war, the modern battlefield is dominated by drones and electronic warfare. The military must be transformed from a simple physical training camp into a state-certified drone-AI officer academy. Even for women, if they master drone operation along with basic coding and cybersecurity knowledge in the military, their value in the job market will increase.

5. The basic stamina for childcare created by "physical assets“

Korean women in their 20s and 30s today are slim with low body mass index, but their muscle strength and rate of practicing exercise rank among the lowest among adult age groups. According to Statistics Korea, as of 2023 the average age of childbirth for women in Korea is 33.6. That late-starting childcare feels particularly painful is partly due to the social environment, but it is also largely because of a lack of physical stamina to endure it.

A resilient body trained through military service becomes not only an enhancement of individual health but also a source of energy that makes it possible later to combine childcare and work. The military makes women’s bodies healthier, and that health in turn creates a virtuous cycle that leads back to national vitality.

Such a sweeping overhaul of the military and the construction of related infrastructure require an enormous budget. Budgets for so-called "ghost airports for drying red peppers," built to win local votes, or for unnecessary civil-engineering projects should be boldly redirected toward budgets for young people’s physical training and IT education.

Luttwak’s remark - "Your enemy is Ewha Womans University" - is ultimately a confession that our society has failed to create a "smart system" capable of accommodating "smarter women." Now we must awaken. In order not to disappear gradually through population extinction, we must achieve perfect compatibility between work and family, and remodel the space called the military into a training center for national survival so that both men and women are reborn as strong citizens equipped with healthy physical strength and advanced technology. This, he argues, is Korea’s last emergency exit to fill the "huge hole" Luttwak pointed out.

This article may differ from the views of the Hansun Foundation.

(※ It's a translation based on machine translation)