Crypto Could Help Fix South Korea’s Birth Rate Crisis
Erica Kang is the founder of Kryptoplanet, the leading blockchain community-building team in South Korea
Part of Decential Media’s celebration and recognition of Women’s History month
In South Korea, the country with the lowest birth rate in the world, women have to choose between having a career or a family. Despite the above-average level of females with tertiary education, South Korean women earn 65 percent of what men do.
Career breaks for maternity leave make the conditions hard to return and most women never do. With young people shut out of an over-inflated real estate market, cryptocurrency promises a new way to wealth – and, as an alternative career path.
Erica Kang got into the crypto world in 2017, right before the ICO boom. Being bilingual, Korean companies hired her as a CMO for their “ICO world tour.”
She quickly fell in love with the promise of the technology, and founded KryptoSeoul, an events and education company, to bring legit projects to South Korea.
Since 2018, Kang has hosted BUIDL Asia and ETHSeoul – with this year’s events taking place this week. Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, will be returning to BUIDL Asia 2024 after his keynote in 2022. Kang was the first to invite the Ethereum Foundation to South Korea in 2018, before technical conferences were a thing in Asia.
Discovering crypto during a career break when she had a newborn, Kang was primed for a new way of thinking about work and money, after years in the telecom and banking industries, and her previous studies.
She completed her bachelor’s degree at the famed female institution in Seoul, Ewha Womans University, followed by international policy studies at Stanford University.
“My focus was international political economy, where I explored past financial crises. It touched on the 1987 International Monetary Fund crisis in South Korea. I realized the current system we have isn’t sustainable and we have to find another alternative that aligns with innovative technologies,” Kang added.
Having spent her career in traditional companies, Korea Telecom (KT Corporation) and Hana Financial Group, Kang was exposed to fields where she felt the limitations of the current banking system.
Spearheading change, past stereotypes
Aware of the problem of South Korean mothers never returning to the workforce because of that system, Kang turned a career break into a career change.
She worked early mornings and late nights, traveled to the U.S. on 36-hour trips, and was active online. Kang says she’s faced many stressful stereotypes – being an Asian woman, being a woman in web3, being a working mom, and a CEO in the crypto space.
“Korean women are taught to be obedient, poised, and not too ambitious. Pioneering is not an attractive trait, and the sentiment is, how dare you go into unexplored territory? We’re told to follow what our peers are doing, or our seniors have done. Be smart, but not too smart,” Kang emphasized.
She admitted she’s disappointed that there aren’t more women leading in crypto in South Korea, and thought there would be by now. It’s partly why she’s adding a third Seoul-based event to her repertoire. The SheFi Seoul Summit, co-hosted with Maggie Love, takes place at her old college, Ewha Womans University, next month.
“We’re building a new society, and women have to be involved. It’s incomplete without women and ironic to think it has to be male-dominated. How are we going to talk about topics like education, raising children, and caring for future generations if we don’t have women voicing their needs and experiences? It’s important to have a balanced viewpoint in shaping how society should be run. What we’re doing right now is creating a more efficient society for our future generations, not just for us,” she stated.
Kang has seen, first-hand, web3 scaring off women, especially those who are non-technical and think they’re not competent enough. “We need to appreciate the power of marketing, communications, PR, BD, and HR. The focus is mainly on the technology, which is necessary, but we also need to emphasize a lot of these other practices that will sustain the space,” many of which women excel at.
Research shows countries with higher female employment also have higher fertility rates. The cryptocurrency industry and female founders like Kang present new possibilities and a potential lifeline for a country with a shrinking young population.