North Korean Economy Watch

UPDATE 2: The Wall Street Journal’s Evan Ramstad published some analysis of the DPRK’s 2008 census data.  According to the article:

North Korea is getting bigger, older and less healthy, according to data from the country’s latest census, and its fabled million-man army might have fewer than 700,000 people.

The authoritarian government in December released results of the census conducted in 2008, saying its population had climbed to 24 million people from 21.2 million in the previous census in 1993.

More details have been published by the United Nations Population Fund, which helped North Korea conduct the census and sent five teams of observers to monitor it.

Even so, it’s difficult for outsiders, with so little access to the country, to be certain of the precision of North Korea’s data. For decades, the government has cut off the dissemination of most information about the country. The new census numbers provide a rare glimpse of official statistics.

The census reported that North Korea’s population grew at an annual average rate of 0.85% for the 15-year period, a time that included a devastating multiyear famine that analysts and foreign aid agencies estimate killed between one million and two million people.

A separate U.N. report published last year found that North Korea’s population has grown more slowly since 2005, at an annual rate of 0.4%. The global population has grown 1.2% annually since 2005, the U.N. report said.

North Korea’s census said the country’s population has proportionately fewer children and more middle-aged people than it did in 1993.

It also reported that people are less healthy.

Babies are more likely to die: The infant mortality rate climbed to 19.3 per 1,000 children in 2008 from 14.1 in 1993, though North Korea’s rate is still well below the world average, which a 2009 report by the U.N. agency put at 46 per 1,000 children.

North Koreans are living shorter lives—average life expectancy has fallen to 69.3 years from 72.7 in 1993.

As in many places, women live longer than men, with a gap of about seven years, compared with the world average of 4.4 years.

North Korea has 5.9 million households, with an average of 3.9 people in each, according to the census.

The typical home is 50 to 75 square meters in size (540 to 800 square feet). About 85% of homes have access to running water and about 55% have a flush toilet.

The census provided only a glimpse of the country’s economic structure, but even that produced some surprises. The occupation that provides the most employment—farming—has more women, 1.9 million, than men, 1.5 million.

The second-biggest occupation, working for the government or the military, employs 699,000 people. The census doesn’t break that group down further, but the figure suggests North Korea’s military isn’t as large as had been thought.

The military is often portrayed by outside military analysts and media as a force of one million people, mostly conscripts who are required to serve 10 years.

The third-largest employment sector by number of workers is education, followed by machinery manufacturing, textiles and coal mining. About 40,000 people work in computer, electronic or optical-product manufacturing.

North Korea hasn’t shared meaningful information about its economy or its financial system with the outside world since the early 1960s.

Outside estimates of its economic performance, most prominently an annual estimate by the South Korean central bank, the Bank of Korea, are filled with assumptions that even their authors say render them almost meaningless.

Read the full article here:
Pyongyang Reports an Aging, Less Healthy Population
Wall Street Journal
Evan Ramstad
2/20/2010

UPDATE 1: Oikono did some good work analyzing the census data here.  

ORIGINAL POST: Thanks to a responsive employee at the UNFPA, I obtained a summary of the DPRK’s census findings.  You can download the summary here.

Thanks to a reader I was able to obtain a copy of the entire census.  You can download it here.

Both documents have been added to the “DPRK Economic Statistics” Page.

Happy reading.

(h/t to H. Williams) Preliminary numbers from the UN-funded and administered DPRK census have been published.  According to the UN, the DPRK’s population as of October 2008 breaks down as follows:

Click on image for larger version, or better yet, see the results in the original PDF here.

Here is some more information from the Choson Ilbo:

The United Nations Population Fund announced a few days ago that a two-week census study conducted on North Korea in October of last year showed the country’s population as being 24.05 million people. That finding went against the forecasts of experts that North Korea’s population would have dropped from 21.21 million in 1993 to less than 18 million, due to a prolonged economic slump. Until 1993, North Korea had suppressed childbirth. But starting in 1996, when more and more people began starving to death, North Korea has been promoting childbirth by prohibiting abortions and offering special support payments to families that have many children.

North Korea also suffered from a concentration of its population, with 40 percent of its total population living in the Pyongan provinces. More than 4 million people live in South Pyongan Province, 3.26 million in the capital Pyongyang, and 2.73 million in North Pyongan Province. Unlike South Korea, there were 600,000 more women than men. But North Korea is said to have requested the UNFPA to keep the data under wraps. That was because of the breadth of the information contained the latest study, from details on individuals to data on incomes, the items owned by households, and even the availability of bathrooms, heating, tap water and sewage processing facilities.

The reason why North Korea had no choice but to agree to the information being unveiled was because South Korean capital and know-how was used to conduct the survey. According to a request by the UNFPA, South Korea footed $4 million of the $7 million spent to conduct the census, while the South’s National Statistical Office offered the method and technique used to conduct the census. As a result, the UNFPA mobilized 35,200 North Korean census takers and conducted house-to-house surveys on 5.89 million homes.

The UNFPA considered it “interesting” that North Korea had unveiled the results of the census to the world. Sultan Aziz, head of the UNFPA’s Asia-Pacific division, appeared on Voice of America and said North Korea unveiled itself to the world because it knew that it must first take a close look at itself in order to develop its own economy. That is why there are forecasts that North Korea will soon turn to the international community for help. The results of a detailed census, including the infant mortality rate and average life expectancy, due out in the first half of this year, will deliver more of a shock to North Korea than anyone else.

According to Fox News:

A spokesman for the World Food program has confirmed to FOX News that on July 3, the emergency relief organization was ordered to limit food deliveries to 57 of the 131 North Korean counties it previously served. At the same time, the agency was told that it must give seven days’ notice of visits to oversee food deliveries at all of its relief sites — a sharp change from the one-day notice previously required under a deal to retain U.S. support for North Korean relief efforts. As a result, the spokesman said, WFP is “reviewing the current terms and conditions for our work” in North Korea, “to ensure that our work and our accountability is not compromised.”

Additional constraints were also slapped on the child relief organization UNICEF in June, according to a spokesman, Chris de Bono. He told FOX News that the regime banned UNICEF from operating in its northerly Ryanggan province, which borders China, and is one of the impoverished country’s poorest areas. UNICEF still operates in 56 other counties across North Korea.

The restrictions make even more dire the food situation in a country where starvation and malnutrition are widespread, even as the Kim regime continues to set off atomic blasts and fire missiles in the direction of Japan and Hawaii.

Furthermore, they once again raise questions about the U.N.’s ability to monitor whatever relief activities that remain in the country. UNICEF’s spokesman told FOX News that only WFP had won the right to 24-hour notification for inspection visits, and that all other U.N. institutions in North Korea have operated with the one-week request limit as a matter of course.

UNICEF has ten international staff and 20 local staffers in North Korea. None of the international staff speak Korean. The agency is budgeted to spend $13 million a year on North Korean operations, principally on food for infants, children and pregnant women, along with emergency vaccination programs, essential medicines and clean water supplies.

But nowhere near that amount of money from international donors is currently available. According to its Web site, UNICEF has received only 10 percent of the total, or about $1.3 million, undoubtedly a result of the North Korean regime’s aggressive pursuit of nuclear weapons. Unless more money is received soon, the UNICEF spokesman said, “it will be difficult to maintain the current level of operations and this will have serious negative consequences for children and other vulnerable people.”

The same funding shortfall applies to the World Food Program, which told FOX News a month ago that donor nations had provided only $75.4 million toward a 2009 goal of $503 million for North Korea, with more than half of that amount — $38.8 million — food aid that was not delivered in 2008.

The only other U.N. agency that has significant operations in North Korea, the United Nations Population Fund, reports that it has received no curtailment in its activities, but it only operates in 11 North Korean counties. It was slated to spend roughly $8.3 million in North Korea between 2007 and 2009, chiefly for birth control and other forms of “reproductive health” and for helping the regime collect population statistics.

Nonetheless, a big question mark still hangs over the North Korean operations of the United Nations Development Program, the U.N.’s major anti-poverty agency, which suspended operations in North Korea in 2007 in the wake of revelations from an independent inquiry that it had wrongfully provided millions in hard currency to the North Korean regime, ignored U.N. Security Council sanctions in passing on dual-use equipment that could conceivably be used in the country’s nuclear program, and allowed North Korean government employees to fill key positions.

Read the full story below:
North Korea Cuts Off More U.N. Relief as Nation Starves
Fox News
George Russell
7/7/2009

According to the Korea Times, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) is preparing to launch the first census taken in the DPRK since 1993.

According to the artilce:

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) said it has conducted data-collecting education to North Koreans and has been inspecting regional-level education for a population census in which as many as 35,200 field researchers and 7,500 inspectors will be dispatched

The census will take place between October 1-15.

Yonhap
Shim Sun-ah
1/28/2008 

North Korea will conduct its first national census in 14 years this fall with help from a U.N. agency, the Unification Ministry said Monday.

“South Korea signed a memorandum of understanding with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) on Dec. 11 to finance part of the cost of the national census in North Korea,” the ministry said in a statement.

The project will be launched in October. A pilot census already began last year, according to the statement.

The project will cost around US$5.6 million, of which South Korea will provide $4 million, the ministry said, adding the remaining funds will come from the UNFPA’s own fund and donations from other countries. No complete census has taken place in North Korea since 1994 when the UNFPA helped the communist state conduct a national census. Pyongyang announced after the survey that its population was 21.21 million people as of 1993.

According to an almanac released Sunday by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, North Korea’s population increased gradually to 23.6 million in 2004 despite the chronic economic plight of the isolated communist state.

The World Factbook released by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency last year put the North Korean population at 22.6 million in 2004.

“We decided to finance the census from the inter-Korean cooperation fund considering that the census will help us understand North Korea’s overall social situation and the lifestyle of the country’s people,” the statement said.

“The population data can also be used to establish comprehensive measures to deal with the North, including inter-Korean economic cooperation projects,” it added.

Wall Street Journal
6/4/2007

North Korea will not extend “cooperation” to any U.N. review.

The case of U.N. hard currency for Kim Jong Il took its latest turn Friday with the release of the much-awaited audit on United Nations operations in North Korea. The investigation confirms and elaborates on irregularities in United Nations Development Program’s activities in North Korea, first reported on these pages in January. It fails, however, to examine the central question of this scandal: Whether U.S. cash in North Korea was diverted from its intended recipients and instead used to prop up Kim’s totalitarian regime?

Let us stipulate that any investigation having to do with North Korea is bound to have its share of, shall we say, frustrations. Just ask the U.S. State Department, which, nearly two months after the first nuclear-disarmament deadline, still can’t get Pyongyang to live up to the initial round of its commitments no matter how many times it sweetens the deal.

The first thing to know about the U.N. probe is that it was an internal affair–conducted by the organization’s own Board of Auditors, a monitoring group that in U.N. doublespeak is said to conduct “external” inquiries. The second salient point is that it was conducted entirely in New York City. The longest journey the auditors undertook was to cross First Avenue from the U.N. Secretariat to the offices of the UNDP. To their credit, they tried to go to North Korea but were rebuffed.

In refusing to let the auditors into North Korea, Kim Jong Il displayed his disrespect for Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon. The Board of Auditors had asked Mr. Ban’s office to intercede on its behalf with help on travel arrangements. “In an email dated 11 April 2007,” the audit report reads, “the Board was informed that on 20 March 2007, the Deputy Permanent Representative of DPRK [North Korea] advised [Mr. Ban’s chief of staff] that his government was not going to extend any cooperation to UNDP’s audit.”

Even given the limited scope of their investigations, however, the auditors were able to confirm the massive irregularities in the UNDP’s operations in North Korea. The auditors also found violations at three other agencies–Unicef, the U.N. Population Fund and the U.N. Office for Project Services. The infractions covered three areas:

Staffing: In violation of U.N. rules, local staffers were hand-picked by the North Korean government and allowed to work in “general service” jobs that, for example, allowed them access to the UNDP checkbook and other sensitive documents. Salaries were paid in euros directly to the government, and the auditors could not confirm whether the staffers actually received their pay.

Foreign-currency transactions: Also in violation of regulations, U.N. agencies in North Korea made large-scale disbursements in foreign currency, including payments for salaries, allowances and rent. The auditors could not verify controls over the disbursements. UNDP, Unicef and the U.N. Population Fund spent a total of $72.5 million on programs between 2002 and 2006, though the auditors caution that “the information supplied was not verified and no source documents were examined.”

Program oversight: Visits to U.N. projects, while permitted, were controlled by the North Korean government. Authorization took a week, and government officials accompanied the U.N. inspectors. Most revealing of all, it’s unclear whether the inspectors were international officials or the North Korean government officials on loan to the U.N. organizations whose first loyalty, it’s safe to say, would have been to Pyongyang.

UNDP says it provided evidence to the auditors of 38 field visits during 2002-2006. According to the auditors’ report, UNDP had a total of 172 projects over that five-year period. Do the arithmetic and it seems that only one in five UNDP projects was visited annually. Some “oversight”–especially if the inspectors were government factotums.

The auditors say that this is a “preliminary review.” That’s an understatement. Most glaringly, they failed to investigate the broader role UNDP is said to have had as a kind of money manager for other U.N. programs and, possibly, for countries sending aid to the North. UNDP is trumpeting the auditors’ finding that it spent only an average of $2.6 million a year during 2002-2006. But if it was making disbursements on behalf of other entities, the actual sums under its control–which presumably were subject to the same shoddy financial controls criticized by the auditors–could be far higher.

The UNDP suspended operations in North Korea in March when Pyongyang refused to abide by conditions laid down by the UNDP executive board after the irregularities came to light (but years after the UNDP itself knew but ignored them). To the extent that it sheds light on the corruption, the just-released audit is a useful exercise. But there’s a long way to go before we get to the bottom of the Cash for Kim scandal.