A total of 21,041 babies were born in March, up 6.8 percent or 1,347 newborns, compared to the same month last year, continuing an upward trend that began in July last year.
It also marked the first time in about a decade that the number of babies born in March increased, a month often considered stressful for many people with an avalanche of somatic illnesses as key events on the calendar come thick and fast.
The cumulative number of newborns for the first three months of this year stood at 65,002, up 7.4 percent from a year earlier and the highest quarterly increase since relevant statistics began in 1981.
The country's total fertility rate, the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime, also rose slightly to 0.82 per woman in the first quarter, mainly due to a rise in births among women in their 30s, although it remains the lowest among OECD countries.
"It remains to be seen if this upward trend will continue," a Statistics Korea official said, attributing the increase to a rebound in marriages delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, which began in late 2019.
The cumulative number of marriages in the first quarter rose by 8.4 percent to 58,704, extending a streak of 12 consecutive months of growth since April last year. It was the highest first-quarter figure since 2019, when 59,074 couples tied the knot.
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