In any country, it is important to have a balanced population. Young people are important for strengthening the economy and fostering innovation. Older people are important for leading society with their experience and expertise. In the past decade or so, East Asian countries have seen a disturbance to this much-needed balance, and it is projected that this imbalance is going to get worse over time.
Recent shifts in South Korea's population are largely due to people having fewer children and life expectancies also increasing. It may not seem like such a dire problem at first, but the increase in the elderly population has many effects on society. One is that fewer people in the population can work. Not only does this mean that the economy will generate less money, but different industries won't have enough people to come up with ideas, execute those ideas and improve the world as we know it. Another impact of an aging society is needing more public resources and funds. When people get too old to work, many of them rely on funding from the government to survive: buying food, paying rent, etc. When the government spends too much money on one sector, other sectors lose funding. There are many other effects that an aging population has on society, but these two alone demonstrate the major consequences that this can have on communities.
