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[00:00.45] While Christmas music played, 100 South Korean men and women gathered at a hotel near the capital of Seoul with their names written for others to see.

[00:15.15] They were hoping to find love.

[00:18.35] The government hopes they will make babies.

[00:22.63] The young men and women were at a blind dating event held by the city of Seongnam.

[00:30.91] Blind dating is when two people who do not know each other meet in hopes of forming a relationship.

[00:39.71] The local government is attempting to fight the falling birth rate in a country where the popularity of marriage and parenthood has fallen.

[00:51.71] Those who joined were in their 20s and 30s.

[00:56.00] They sat quietly next to one another until a relationship expert started the event with a game called rock-paper-scissors. People soon began to talk and laugh.

[01:12.04] The city appeared set on making a match.

[01:16.86] It prepared food and drinks like red wine and chocolate.

[01:22.73] There were also games, free beauty services, and even services to look into people’s backgrounds for the singles that joined.

[01:34.51] Lee Yu-mi is 36 and works for the city government.

[01:40.39] She said she registered to join three times before she was finally accepted to join the event.

[01:49.72] "I had no idea it would be this competitive," she said.

[01:55.87] After five such gatherings this year, 198 people among 460 left the event as “couples”, agreeing to exchange contact information, the city said.

[02:12.14] The South Korean capital Seoul had considered a similar event but put the plan on hold after facing criticism.

[02:22.58] Some said the event was a waste of taxpayers’ money and it failed to deal with the reasons people were choosing to not marry and have babies.

[02:34.27] Those reasons include the high costs of housing and education.

[02:40.68] Hwang Da-bin took part in a September event.

[02:45.22] He said it saved him the cost of joining other social events or signing up for professional match-making services.

[02:55.36] "We are facing a real demographic crisis and the government needs to do whatever it can.

[03:02.84] I don't understand people complaining over this," Hwang said.

[03:08.71] The average number of children born to each South Korean woman, called the fertility rate, fell to 0.78 last year.

[03:21.00] The country has the lowest fertility rate in the world.

[03:25.82] The number is far below 1.66 in the United States and 1.3 in Japan in 2021.

[03:35.96] The average rate among countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a group of 37 democracies with market economies, was 1.58 that same year.

[03:52.78] Jun Jae-hoon teaches social welfare at Seoul Women’s University.

[03:58.92] He said it was “nonsense” to expect these events to lead to higher birth rates.

[04:05.86] "You need to spend more money directly on supporting pregnancy, child delivery and parenting to call it a policy…” to increase birth rates, Jung said.

[04:19.72] But even with criticism, thousands of people have signed up for this year’s blind-dating events held by the Seongnam city.

[04:30.94] Seongnam Mayor Shin Sang-jin said spreading good views on marriage would at some point help raise the birth rates.

[04:47.77] He said that the blind-dating events are just one of many policies his city has created to deal with the falling rates.

[04:51.51] “Low birth rates cannot be resolved with a single policy,” Shin said.

[04:57.93] “It's also the city's job to create the environment for people who want to marry find their partners.”