SEOUL - South Korea's births grew for the 12th straight month amid higher marriages, statistical office data showed Wednesday.

The number of newborn babies gained 9.4 percent from a year earlier to 19,953 in June, continuing to go up since July last year, according to Statistics Korea.

The total fertility rate, or the number of children a woman is expected to bear during life, added 0.06 to 0.76 in the cited month, but it stayed far below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman to maintain a stable population.

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The number of marriages advanced 9.1 percent to 18,487 in June on a yearly basis, but the number of divorces fell 6.0 percent to 6,777.

Concerns remained about the younger generation who delayed or gave up on having children owing to economic difficulties such as high housing prices and stubborn unemployment.

The still low birth rate fueled worry about a demographic cliff, which refers to a sharp fall in the heads of households eventually leading to a consumption cliff.

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The number of deaths added 1.5 percent to 27,270 in June compared to the same month of last year.

Affected by the high deaths and the relatively low births, the natural population decline reached 7,317 in the cited month.