An increasing number of South Korean women are choosing not to marry, not to have children, and not even to have relationships with men. With the lowest fertility rate in the world, the country's population will start shrinking unless something changes. "I have no plans to have children, ever," says 24-year-old Jang Yun-hwa, as we chat in a hipsterish cafe in the middle of Seoul.

As a young child in the capital of North Korea, Sungju Lee lived a pampered life. But by the time he was a teenager, he was starving and fighting for survival in a street gang. It was one of many twists of fate on a journey that has led him to postgraduate studies at a British university. In the early 1990s, Sungju Lee was living comfortably with his parents in a three-bedroom apartment in Pyongya

A member of the Seoul squad that checks women's toilets for hidden cameras Pornography exists the world over, but do men go to greater lengths in Korea than elsewhere to take secret photographs of women? The BBC's Seoul correspondent, Stephen Evans, investigates. The other day I just typed into the search box the word for a very obscure term in music. I'm learning the guitar and I wanted to know w

In South Korea's capital, most people aren't too worried by Kim Jong-un's blood-curdling warnings - they're too busy dodging traffic. There can't be many places where a stranger comes up to you in the rain and gives you an umbrella. Or where a woman alongside you at a crossing leans over to put her umbrella over your bare head. This kindness of strangers has been bestowed on me twice now. I've bee

Photos from inside North Korea reveal how the ecology of the secretive Asian country is preventing the extinction of several once plentiful species of migratory birds. Despite being closed to most foreigner visitors, North Korea may ironically be the saviour of one of the world's greatest international migration routes - the avian East Asian Australasian Flyway. Fifty million birds, from cranes to

The BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes was last week expelled from North Korea and forced to apologise for his reporting. He was held incommunicado for 10 hours and interrogated. Here he gives his first account of what happened. After a week in North Korea I was more than ready to go home. The trip, to cover a visit to Pyongyang by a delegation of three Nobel laureates, had been exhausting and stressful

In the past week, the remains of Chinese soldiers who fought in the Korean War have been returned home - the bodies had lain in South Korea for more than 60 years. The repatriation is a sign of how close the two countries have become, so is Beijing turning its back on North Korea in favour of its wealthier neighbour? The dead can tell you much about the living. There is nothing, I find, quite like

North Korea doesn't have much the world wants to buy, but one very successful export has been its art. The BBC's Lawrence Pollard looks at an unlikely story of North Korean cultural influence, and its success in Africa in particular. It may surprise you to know that North Korea would love to carry out your artistic commissions. How about a mural, a tapestry, or a "jewel painting" coloured with pow

A section of the Berlin Wall on display in Seoul acts as a reminder of South Korea's fractured relationship with the North. But thoughts of reunification are never far away and there's a whole government department dedicated to the idea, although its staff don't seem very busy, writes Stephen Evans. There is now a bit of the Berlin Wall in the middle of the South Korean capital. A concrete section

All over the world, people flee in their millions from tyrannous regimes, but how often do they find the better life they were hoping for? In South Korea, statistics indicate that a startling number of defectors from the North end up taking their own lives. You always hear of the celebrity defectors. They write best-selling books and appear on television. They can earn tens of thousands of dollars

How do you fancy eating your dinner at home in front of a webcam and letting thousands of people watch? If they like the way you eat, they will pay you money - maybe a few hundred dollars a night... a good salary for doing what you would do anyway. This is happening now in South Korea. It's often said that if you want to see the future look at how technology is emerging in perhaps the most connect

You can't avoid the adverts. Everywhere you go in Seoul, you are urged to change your shape through plastic surgery. In affluent Gangnam, every wall seems to have a sign pointing to a surgery. On the train and in the street, you're told you can "bring your face to life". "Facial contouring" is on offer - "breast surgery", "anti-ageing", "eyeplasty", "body contouring". There is "square jaw reductio

More than 120 former prostitutes who worked near a US military base in South Korea are going to court to seek compensation from the Korean government. They say the authorities actively facilitated their work - and that the system has left them in poverty now that they are old. For as long as armies have gathered in garrisons, ramshackle "camp-towns" have grown up around them. In South Korea, they