> A close family friend was only able to marry an American on condition of them not having kids.

Koreans aren't having kids to begin with, maybe they don't want to break the trend.

It seems South Koreans in aren't comfortable with having kids in general. It's much better to dedicate your life to making shareholders of Samsung, or some other soulless megacorporation richer. That's how you get one of the world's lowest birth rates.

In contrast with Thailand, where a surprising number of their leading movie and TV actors (and actresses... have we fully retired that word yet?) are biracial. My extended family in Bangkok keep complimenting my three half-Thai kids on the bridges of their noses being high enough to keep designer sunglasses up off of their cheek bones. (Edit: at first, I was confused about "big nose" being a compliment. Most Western fashion brands don't account for/have special models for East Asians typically having higher cheek bones and smaller noses, resulting in sunglasses that never quite fit and hover above the nose.)

I think part of it is economic, but I like to think a good part of it is that Thailand has been a meeting ground for centuries. First, it was a meeting place between Chinese and Middle Eastern merchants, and later Europeans when they started to cut out the Middle Eastern middlemen. Still later, Thailand was a neutral buffer state between British (Burma/Myanmar) and French (Vietnam) empires. Neither Britain nor France attempted to take over the buffer state, as it would have caused the other empire to immediately invade. Thailand was never strong enough to have full control over its affairs, but managed to turn that into its niche as a neutral middle ground.

With Korea having one of the worst population pyramids of all the countries in the world, this problem will solve itself one way or another eventually.

> Koreans aren’t super cool with marrying foreigners. A close family friend was only able to marry an American on condition of them not having kids.

This was a family request? Or government?

I think your view of Korean culture is outdated, probably because your Korean friend is second or third generation Korean American. (Many of those people tend to keep facets of Korean culture from when they emigrated. Considering that Korea in the 1950s was little better than Afghanistan now, the difference can be huge.)

In 2022, 8.7% of all marriages in Korea were between a Korean and a foreigner. Modern Koreans are not strangers to the idea of marrying foreigners.

* Also, if I were you, I'd advise your friend to tell their family to get lost. I did see parents objecting to their kids' marriages, but telling them not to have kids is a weekend K-drama level of shitty behavior.

> A close family friend was only able to marry an American on condition of them not having kids

Wow. To me this sounds worse than not being allowed to marry at all.

But almost no kids to join with 0.70 births per woman. They should think of a foreign legion visa. Or maybe the digital nomads could be made to join.