According to data released by the Ministry of Data and Statistics on Wednesday, the number of newborns in August stood at 23,703, up 2,720 or 13 percent, from a year earlier and the highest figure for the month since 2019, marking the 26th consecutive month of increase since July 2024.
The total fertility rate, which gauges the average number of children a woman is expected to have over her lifetime, also rose to 0.87 in August, up from 0.78 a year earlier.
Despite the overall improvement, the rate remains far below the 2.1 needed to maintain a stable population without immigration.
The cumulative number of births in the first eight months of this year totaled 193,783, up 14.5 percent from the same period last year.
Despite the rise in births, South Korea's population continued to decline naturally, as deaths rose 4.9 percent year to 30,308 during the same period, outnumbering births by 6,605. The natural population decline has continued for 82 consecutive months since November 2019.
The number of marriages fell 1.2 percent to 19,218 in August. But the cumulative number of marriages in the first eight months of this year totaled 165,874, up 5.2 percent from the same period last year.
Meanwhile, divorces rose 4.4 percent to 7,510 for the month, while the cumulative total reached 59,202 in the first eight months of this year, up 2.1 percent from the same period last year.
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