South Korea looks like a success story from the outside, but its birth rate has collapsed to the lowest in the world and its economy leaves most young people locked out — bad news for Koreans and a warning for other rich countries.

• The birth rate has fallen below one child per woman, and at that pace the population could shrink by 90% in two generations.
• A handful of giant family-run companies like Samsung and Hyundai make up 60% of the economy but employ only 7% of workers, so everyone else is stuck in low-paid, insecure jobs.
• That split dates back to the 1997 bailout, when the country deregulated and cut jobs to get IMF money and the middle class almost halved in a year.
• Kids study 12 to 16 hours a day to fight for those few good jobs, and families give up a fifth of their income on private cram schools.
• A home in Seoul costs 26 years of a full salary, so marriage and children have become luxuries most people skip.

Outlook: The government has spent $280 billion trying to lift births with cash and childcare subsidies and it has not worked, so the decline is likely to keep accelerating.