South Korean couple with quintuplets gets nearly £100k in childbirth grants

President Yoon Suk Yeol congratulates parents on birth of ‘Power Ranger’ quintuplets

A couple in South Korea have received 170m won (£95,757) in childbirth grants after giving birth to quintuplets in heartening news for a country grappling with the world’s lowest fertility rate.

The couple, Kim Joon-yeong and Sagong Hye-ran from Gyeonggi province, became parents to the quintuplets on 20 September, welcoming three boys and two girls.

It was the country’s first natural quintuplet birth, according to the Straits Times.

The previous quintuplet births were recorded in 1987 and 2021 where medical fertilisation was used.

Mr Kim, 31, said the couple used to call their unborn children the “PangPang Rangers”, a nickname borrowed from the children’s television show Power Rangers, according to Korea Joongang Daily.

The rare birth of the five children in the country drew congratulatory remarks from South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol who called them the “power rangers” and congratulated both parents and the medical staff. He also sent gifts to the couple, which included infant clothes in five colours – red, orange, yellow, green and blue – and naturally grown seaweed, a food that promotes postpartum recovery, the newspaper said.

The babies were born at the St Mary’s Hospital last Friday through a caesarean section delivery.

The East Asian country is battling a rapidly falling birth rate and has programmes to encourage people to have more children. The fertility rate declined to a historic low of 0.78 in 2022, the lowest globally and well below the replacement rate.

President Yeol has called the plummeting birth rate a “national emergency” and announced the creation of a “Ministry of Low Birth Rate Counterplanning”.

The city of Dongducheon, where the family lives, will provide 15m won in cash vouchers, redeemable at any store with annual sales of less than 1bn won. These vouchers are part of the city’s childbirth promotion package, which offers 1m won for the first child, 1.5m won for the second, 2.5m won for the third, and 5m won for the fourth and beyond.

The parents will also receive 3.5m won in postnatal care support.

Additionally, they will get a one-time payment of 14m won, called the “first meeting voucher”, along with monthly parental allowance payments totaling 85m won and a children’s allowance of 47.5m won, both spread over time.

South Korea’s demographic crisis is blamed on a number of factors, but frustration with the rising cost of living and declining quality of life is considered to be the primary reason.