Korean Companies Pay Employees Huge Sums to Have More Kids
The country’s powerful boardrooms are adding their own incentives on top of existing government efforts to avert a demographic collapse.
A rooftop play area at Krafton’s daycare center in Seoul.
Photographer: Tim Franco for Bloomberg Businessweek
It was February 2024, and the cavernous auditorium at Booyoung Co.’s Seoul headquarters was packed with hundreds of employees listening to their founder deliver what’s typically a solemn New Year’s address. But this time, Lee Joong-keun, the 84-year-old billionaire behind one of South Korea’s biggest construction companies, dropped a bombshell: Booyoung would begin offering 100 million won ($72,000) for every baby born to an employee. And, he added, the offer applied retroactively to the past three years. The room went silent for a beat, as if everyone had misheard. Then came the applause.
“I was speechless,” says Hong Ki, a 37-year-old communications manager who at the time had a 3-year-old daughter. “It was so absurd that I couldn’t even sleep, wondering if it was for real.” It was. So after Hong and his wife, who also works at Booyoung, processed the news, they did what many would do when offered a potentially life-altering pile of cash to expand their family: They had another child.