[Current & Culture] The 2024 Grand Prophecy That Cannot Be Wrong

What if you could correctly predict whether the stock market would go up or down for just one month straight? Setting aside the exact magnitude, what if you could only get the direction right?whether it would rise or fall? You could turn a mere 1 million won into tens of billions. This is possible through the collaboration of compound interest and the power of exponential growth. Knowing the future, even with only a 50% probability, is such an extraordinary thing.

Let’s try to predict 2024 together. After one year, we can check how many we got right. The rule is to choose the side that seems more likely, not just wishful thinking. First, will the April general election result in a female minority and male majority or a female majority and male minority? I will bet on a female minority and male majority. Will the Ukraine war end within 2024? I will bet on no. Will swimmer Hwang Sun-woo win a gold medal at the Paris Olympics this summer? I think so. In November 2024, the U.S. will hold a presidential election. Will Trump be re-elected or not? I hope I’m wrong, but I think he will be re-elected. Will the KOSPI exceed 2600 by December 31, 2024? I expect it will. Will my year be better than last year? I am confident it will. Excluding the last question, I have made five predictions. Getting just three right would already demonstrate considerable insight.

Predicting the future is this difficult. People who assert certainty about the future are often scammers, politicians, or both. But there is one thing I can guarantee will happen this year: the number of children entering elementary school will decrease compared to last year. It will continue to decline next year and the year after. This is obvious. These children were born years ago, and the number of births has plummeted every year. When I was born, the number of births hovered around one million, but since the start of the 21st century, it has been halved. Ten years ago, it barely exceeded 400,000, and now even 200,000 is precarious. Without a war for 50 years, the number of babies born in one country has not just halved but dropped to one-fifth.

With the number of growing children sharply declining, the future is predictable. It is not a prediction or forecast but a predetermined future. Even if a miraculous rebound in birth rates occurs starting this year, over the decades it takes for those children to become adults and participate in society, our country will continue to age. There is even a forecast that reaching the age of 60 will be considered young in our country. Imagining what such a society would look like is frightening.

I am neither a demographer nor an administrator, but I have learned and understand the laws of nature. All animals produce fewer offspring as their survival environment becomes more competitive. Children in our country are thrust into competition from birth. Pre-study, English kindergartens, medical school prep classes for elementary students, and even height have become areas of competition, making growth clinics thrive. Excessive competition continues into adulthood. A culture that regards winners as superior and losers as dropouts ultimately exhausts both winners and losers. When love, marriage, and childbirth become too exhausting, people lose the desire to engage in them. Therefore, competition must be eased. Although there will be resistance and side effects, we must completely rethink and loosen things to an almost unthinkable degree. Any country is better than a disappearing country. I hope that in a year, we will hear even a slight rebound in the 2024 birth rate.

Ah, one last thing. Will I be able to meet readers here again this year? My prediction is…

Lee Jae-ik, Novelist

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.