South Korea’s birth rate increased in 2025 for a second consecutive year, driven in part by younger millennials, or “echo boomers," according to data released Wednesday. Newsweek reached out to the South Korean Embassy in the U.S. via email for comment. Roughly two-thirds of the world’s population now lives in regions where total fertility rates—the number of births expected per woman—fall below the 2.1 threshold needed for natural population replacement, according to the United Nations. The