South Korea welcomes rare baby bump as population shrinks

SEOUL — Kim Su-jin and her husband have set aside their doubts and embraced parenthood, joining a small but notable wave of South Korean couples having children despite the country’s steep demographic decline. South Korea has one of the world’s lowest birth rates, and the government has spent billions of dollars trying to encourage citizens to have more babies and cushion the worst impacts of a shrinking population. The Asian nation is still nowhere near reversing the trend, but a modest baby bump has come after years of consistently low statistics — even as experts disagree on the underlying causes. […]...

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