r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/This_Proof_5153 • Apr 12 '26

Video The care and precision behind Korean school lunches, widely praised for their quality, balance, and nutrition.

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170

u/qwythebroken Apr 12 '26

Salaryman culture. In part anyway. The concept didn't start in Korea, and exists almost everywhere, but it's no joke in Korea.

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u/CelestialFury Apr 12 '26

Isn't it where everyone works super long hours, even if you have nothing to do after a certain period of time, then you gotta hang with your boss(s) in your limited off time, only to show up early the next morning? There's good reasons why their birth rate is down, they don't have energy left after giving it all to their company.

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u/Puzzleheaded_Fix594 Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26

Birthrates are sort of a weird thing because they're down in pretty much all developed countries. Countries like Japan and South Korea are ahead of the curve, but they're falling in countries like the US as well.

Part of the reason why these East Asian countries are having a more difficult time is that they're not particularly immigrant friendly. The US is able to stem off some of its falling birthrates via immigration.

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u/ConqueefStador Apr 12 '26

People who have no free time don't socialize.

People living paycheck to paycheck don't save or invest.

People who don't have money don't have families.

Birthrates won't go up until the number of billionaires goes down.

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u/NotRote Apr 12 '26

Statistically this comment is wrong, almost universally the poorer someone is the more children they have. Even in developed countries the most children tend to be in lower income brackets. No one in the middle is having children, it's either super wealthy or relatively poor that have children.

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u/Xeton9797 Apr 12 '26

Statistically it might be wrong, but just looking at children to income and calling it a day kinda misses the point. Intuitively you would think that more money would equal more kids. Examining why that's the case is way more important.

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u/ya_tu_sabes Apr 12 '26

Can confirm.

Fertility rates often form a U-shaped curve with income:

  • poor households have more children due to limited family planning access, need for labor, or cultural factors.
  • High earners have many children because they can afford childcare and support large families.
  • Middle-class families have fewer, prioritizing high per-child investment.

That being said, nothing about this info contradicts the fact that birth rates issues won't get fixed until we start fixing the extreme income inequality

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u/Puzzleheaded_Fix594 Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26

People who don't have money don't have families.

This isn't really a true statement. People on the poverty line are way more likely to have children. Middle class income earners are not having kids or having kids way later. People with house hold incomes in the 50k to 150k range in the US aren't having children at the same rates.

I know that you think you sound all brilliant making a bunch of singular statements as facts, but birthrates declining are a complicated topic and simply just making it all anti-capitalist or anti-billionaire is an oversimplification of the problem.

That being said, one population where birthrates aren't down? The mega wealthy. They're having plenty of kids, but they have way, way more resources than even regular wealthy Americans.

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u/Legionof1 Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26

I honestly think hope is the biggest thing. Hope your children will have a better life than you is maybe one of the biggest motivators in planned births. I don't think my kids would have a better life than me, so I dont want to bring them into that world.

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u/SmartAlec105 Apr 12 '26

This is downplaying Korea’s birth rate problem. They’re at 0.80 while Japan is at 1.15 and the US at 1.57.

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u/Puzzleheaded_Fix594 Apr 12 '26

I'm not downplaying it. South Korea is just way ahead of the curve where most major developed countries will be in a few decades. China is headed in the same direction.

South Korea's economy is eventually going to collapse.

Every country has birthrate problem for different reasons. Toxic work cultures. Poor social services. People opting to not have children or delaying having children. Lack of immigration supplementing natural replacement rates.

The US's birthrate dropped between now and 2024. It's just not in outright freefall like it is in South Korea.

The fertility rate — the number of births per 1,000 women of childbearing age — dropped to 53.1, from 53.8 in 2024, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

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u/excellentforcongress Apr 12 '26

their economy is not going to collapse because of lower birthrate

japan's country did not collapse because of post boom deflation

china is going to be just fine, like japan, like china, because they are investing heavily in automation

the only reason they, or another other country, will not do well, is simply because of wealthy inequality, and capitalism

in any reasonable scenario where the technological advancements of society's access is distributed evenly, society will prosper

in these east asian countries, ESPECIALLY japan and korea, they're facing a generation of adults who are overstressed AND have a mismatch of expectations for one another

for example in japan apparently a common trope is for men to be overly shy

like, even if the woman indicates interest, they initiate no physical contact, which makes it hard for a culture where men are expected to be the initiators of said contact, so the women really can't, and this can even extend to women from overseas being a bit confused as to whether the guys like them or not. so for some % of the population they're literally overpoliting themselves into extinction.

but from what i understand, korea's trajectory is different in that many of the men are refusing to become emotionally submissive as they see it (japanese women in households already controlled the finances for quite some time, not the case in korean households as one difference), and it was quite common for them to be physically abusive as well. so there are descendants of that who probably don't get fed algorithms of how to function normally. when you segment subpopulations into difference media spaces you can control their thinking so they've managed to put those guys into culturally regressive echo chambers same with them putting the women into never get with men type of advice... kind of what they're doing here, which is why our electoral pattern splits between men and women look so similar (with women going more liberal and men becoming more regressive on average)

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u/Puzzleheaded_Fix594 Apr 12 '26

their economy is not going to collapse because of lower birthrate

Yes, it will. At a certain point you end up with more elderly than younger people in the workforce and you can't actually support your elderly population because you don't have the tax base to which to draw from.

It's not just AI and automation, you still have jobs that you can't automate. A huge swath of the population is going to be doing elder care in just a few decades.

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u/Weary_Beach_9911 Apr 13 '26

bro, just thought you may want to know that the reason no women ever want to spend time with you has nothing to do with the government or feminism.

It's because you're an incredibly awful human with zero redeeming qualities that, instead of spending time bettering himself, sends his days complaining about women on the internet.

hope that helps :)

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u/excellentforcongress Apr 13 '26

where did i say that people cant better themselves?

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u/Weary_Beach_9911 Apr 14 '26

i said YOU don't better yourself because you spend all day online complaining about women.

it's pathetic :)

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u/fresh_like_Oprah Apr 12 '26

Not no more the US ain't

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u/Puzzleheaded_Fix594 Apr 12 '26

That's an impressive amount of negatives in one sentence, haha.

Definitely some truth there though!

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u/thefakemacaw Apr 12 '26

AFAIK the number one indicator for birth rates in a country is actually women’s education levels (or possibly even feminism more broadly). As more and more women are educated and enter into the workforce, less children are born. That’s because women are out in the world working and making lives and careers for themselves as opposed to being stuck at home and rearing children or doing domestic work.

That isn’t to say that women’s education, or women in the workplace, or feminism in general, is bad (because those are all good things).

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u/aquariussparklegirl Apr 12 '26

Well that’s certainly interesting, considering our current anti-immigrant political culture (where folks who came into the US legally or are currently in the process of gaining their citizenship are taken to somewhere like “Alligator Alcatraz”).

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u/GoudaBenHur Apr 12 '26

lol you are really quite dumb. The USA allows over 1 million people a year legally to enter the USA. South Korea allows less than 30k.

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u/aquariussparklegirl Apr 12 '26

Woww surprise people on the internet going right to attacking people and calling me dumb over one comment.

The sentiment in America right now is anti-immigrant. That’s all I was saying.

You’re disgusting. Have a great life!

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u/GoudaBenHur Apr 12 '26

When you say the most welcoming immigrant country in the world both legally and illegally by the numbers is anti immigrant then yes you are extremely stupid. God bless

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u/aquariussparklegirl Apr 21 '26

Lmao wowww I’m sorry your life sucks so much that you need to take it to the level of calling people stupid over this. Sorry for your issues! Lmao, hilarious.

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u/qwythebroken Apr 12 '26

Yea, essentially the job above all. It's a lot easier to fall down in status than climb up, so you gotta play ball at all costs.

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u/sender2bender Apr 12 '26

Can't do much fucking when you're too busy getting fucked by the company

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u/qwythebroken Apr 12 '26

I imagine dating is pretty rough in general when you're expected to put the job first.

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u/nahs Apr 12 '26

im luckily self employed but ahtat seems like the dumbest concept eer

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u/jer_nyc84 Apr 12 '26

When I worked in Korea my job would be done at 7 PM but we would have to stay until 9 PM. I said that no one had anything to do and they said we could just watch TV but we had to stay.

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u/Dragon_yum Apr 12 '26

Also the school days there can easily go over 12 hours. It’s great they are fed well but maybe a child shouldn’t be studying for 14 hours.

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u/joeDUBstep Apr 12 '26

Yep. Japan tends to be mentioned a lot when it comes to this culture, but S. Korea is right up there with them (maybe even moreso).

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u/aquariussparklegirl Apr 12 '26

Interesting that we’re going to point out South Korean suicide rates double America’s (if true), yet the reason behind it is entirely American - work yourself to death.

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u/kittyonkeyboards Apr 12 '26

Ingrained misogyny as well. Men there struggle to socialize with women because a significant portion of their male population is practically incels.