Matchmaking Festival in Korean City

100 Korean men and women dressed in beautiful clothes and carefully made up attended the matchmaking festival organized by the Seongnam city government.

The attendees, in their 20s and 30s, sat quietly together until the host started the event with a game of rock, paper, scissors at a hotel near Seoul on Nov. 19. The room quickly filled with laughter and conversation.

The matchmaking festival, organized by the Seongnam government in the hope of improving the birth rate in a country where young people are indifferent to marriage and parenthood, offers free red wine, chocolate, makeup and even background checks to ensure participants are single.

Lee Yu-mi, 36, a city employee, said she had to apply three times to get a ticket to the event. "I didn't expect the competition to be this strong," she said.

Lee Yu-mi, 36, attends a matchmaking event organized by the Seongnam government on November 19. Photo: Reuters

The Seongnam government said that after five days of this year's festival, 198 out of 460 people were matched. Seoul City considered holding a similar event but was forced to scrap it after facing criticism that it was wasting taxpayer money. Critics say officials should focus on addressing the main reasons people don't marry and have children: housing and education costs.

Hwang Da-bin, who attended the matchmaking fair in September, said the event helped him save on costs of attending other social events or registration fees with professional matchmaking companies.

"We are really facing a demographic crisis and the government needs to do whatever it can. I don't understand why people are complaining," Hwang said.

South Korea's fertility rate fell to a record low of 0.78 in 2022. This is much lower than 1.66 in the US and 1.3 in Japan. The average fertility rate for countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2022 was 1.58.

Jung Jae-hoon, a professor at Seoul Women's University's department of social welfare, said it was "nonsense" to expect these matchmaking events to boost the birth rate.

“More direct spending on supporting pregnancy, childbirth and child-rearing is needed to be called a birth-promoting policy,” Jung said.

Participants of the matchmaking event performed games as requested by the organizers. Photo: Reuters

Despite the criticism, thousands of people signed up for this year’s matchmaking event hosted by Seongnam. Mayor Shin Sang-jin said spreading a positive view of marriage would help boost the birth rate, stressing that the matchmaking event was just one of many policies the city was implementing.

"The low birth rate cannot be solved by just one policy," he said. "The city's task is to create an environment where people who want to start a family can find a partner."

Hong Hanh (According to Reuters )

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