Elon Musk has once again raised concern about South Korea’s declining population. Musk sounded the latest alarm while replying to a post on social media platform X (earlier Twitter) that included a screenshot from an article discussing the population decline in South Korea. The latest message comes after the Tesla and SpaceX CEO shared a similar warning claiming many countries may disappear due to this problem last month. At that time, he also noted that immigration alone is not enough to make up for the population declines happening around the world.
The X post to which Musk replied includes a screenshot from an article where an highlighted portion reads: “In South Korea, where the total fertility rate is the lowest in the world at 0.68, every 200 fertile-age adults can expect to give life to 68 children; those children will produce 23 grandchildren, who will result in only eight great-grandchildren. That’s a 96 percent population decline over the course of three generations, and that’s if fertility stops decreasing and finally holds steady.”
While sharing this screenshot, the X user said: “This is such an insane thing to visualise”. Responding to this, Musk wrote: “Catastrophic population collapse.”
Elon Musk’s warning against global population decline
Last month, in response to a report on Japan’s population decline, Musk acknowledged that while immigration can temporarily alleviate workforce shortages in some countries, it is not a sustainable long-term solution to the global population crisis.
Musk said: “Many countries are disappearing. Immigration cannot solve billions in population collapse. It simply isn’t physically possible. More importantly, we should not lose entire, distinct cultures!”
He said this while responding to a report warning that Japan faces an existential threat due to its rapidly shrinking population. Demographer Hiroshi Yoshida predicts that by 2720, only one child under 14 could remain in the country.
Earlier, in January, Musk also warned that declining birth rates in Asia could lead to a population collapse, singling out Singapore as particularly vulnerable—even suggesting it might face extinction if trends continue.
He also noted concerns for South Korea and Japan, albeit with less severe predictions. In another X post, Musk even shared a graph depicting falling birth rates across several countries and claimed that population collapse is humanity’s greatest threat.
