[WHY] 'Do this to conceive a daughter': Korea’s newfound obsession with baby girls

About this episode

The episode discusses Korea's increasing preference for baby girls and the cultural shift from a historical preference for sons.

This article is by Sarah Chea and read by an artificial voice. Kim Chae-min, a 34-year-old newlywed trying to conceive, has made meat and fish staples of her diet while putting her husband on a decidedly greener regimen. Believe it or not, even sex is scheduled with precision. Their goal? Having a baby, and it "has to be a girl," in Kim's words. Lists promising ways to conceive baby girls are now ubiquitous across Korean social media, with Korean couples increasingly favoring daughters, a sharp cultural turn in a country once known for its deeply entrenched preference for sons. Doctors and practitioners of traditional Korean medicine have even introduced supposedly "scientific" tactics to encourage conceiving daughters, such as placing smartphones near the man's body. In fact, Korea ranked as the No. 1 country in daughter preference in a survey by Gallup International of roughly 45,000 people across 44 countries at the end of 2024, which asked whether respondents would prefer a boy, a girl, or no preference if they could have only one child. Some 28 percent of Koreans said they preferred to have a daughter, ahead of Japan, Spain and the Philippines at 26 percent and Bangladesh at…

Topics covered

• baby gender preference
• cultural shift
• Korean society
• family planning
• gender studies

Keywords

• baby girls
• gender preference
• Korea
• cultural change
• family
• conceiving daughters
• traditional medicine

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Gallup International

Places: Korea, Japan, Spain, Philippines, Bangladesh

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