Archive for the ‘Demographics’ Category

Cost of defetion

Wednesday, July 6th, 2011

According to a recent article in the BBC:

Mrs Kwon says she makes $2,000-$3,000 (£1,250-£1,875) a month, helping people escape. And she says that is nothing to be ashamed of.

“Nowadays, they’re asking for 3.5m won per person to bring someone out of North Korea to China,” she says.

“That’s about $3,500. And from China to South Korea would cost another $2,500. I don’t have that kind of money, so I had to say ‘No’. The cost is rising because it’s getting more difficult to get people out.”

Recent reports – which are very difficult to verify – say North Korea is tightening security along its border with China; the main route for defectors trying to leave. As the risks increase, so does the price.

Additional Information:
1. Story citation: Shadowy world of Korea’s people smugglers, BBC, Lucy Williamson, 2011-7-6

2. Previous posts on emigration from the DPRK to the ROK.

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Two new DPRK publications

Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

First: Joe Bermudez has published the latest version of KPA Journal (Vol. 2, No. 2, March 2011).

Articles in this issue include: KPN Deploys New Version of sang-o Class Coastal Submarine, The Korean People’s Air Force in 1953, The Hydrometeorological Service, Han-gang Bridges.

Download the latest issue here (PDF).

 

Second: Democratic People’s Republic of Korea: Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2009
Final Report December 2010

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPR Korea) Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) was carried out in 2009 by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) in collaboration with the Institute of Children’s Nutrition. Financial and technical support was provided by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

MICS is an international household survey programme developed by UNICEF. The DPR Korea MICS was conducted as part of the fourth global round of MICS (MICS4). MICS provides up-to-date information on the situation of children and women and measures key indicators that allow countries to monitor progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and other internationally agreed-upon commitments. Additional information on the global MICS project may be obtained from www.childinfo.org.

DPR Korea Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2009, Final Report, CBS, Pyongyang, DPR Korea, 2010.

Download the report here (PDF). It has been added to my “Economic Statistics Page“.

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Statistics Korea: DPRK population tops 24.1m in 2010

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

According to Yonhap (3/22/2011):

North Korea’s population is estimated to have increased slightly in 2010 from a year earlier, despite its hardships stemming from a chronic food shortage, a report said Tuesday.

The communist country’s population came to an estimated 24.19 million last year, compared with 24.06 million the previous year, according to the report by Statistics Korea, South Korea’s statistical agency. The estimate is based on an analysis of the results of North Korea’s census.

The agency said overall living conditions in North Korea don’t seem to have improved in the past decade with the average life expectancy remaining below the level in the early 1990s.

According to the report, the average North Korean man and woman had a life expectancy of 64.1 years and 71.0 years, respectively, in 2008. Comparable figures were 67.0 years and 74.1 years each in 1993.

About 70 percent of the population over 16 or 12.19 million people were engaged in economic activities, with 36.0 percent working in the agricultural sector. This was followed by 23.7 percent engaged in manufacturing and 20.3 percent in public service areas.

Despite a relatively high percentage of population engaged in economic activities, only 7.3 percent of people over 60 worked, a sign that most North Koreans retire early.

Of the population, 60.6 percent lived in cities in 2008, up from just 40.6 percent in 1960, with the average man and woman getting married at 29.0 years and 25.5 years each.

Despite more people living in urban areas, coal and wood remained the main sources of heating, the report said.

Here is the Statistics Korea web page.  If anyone can provide a link to the original report, I would appreciate it.

The DPRK conducted censuses in 1993 and 2008 with funding from the UN.  Information on the 2008 census can be found here and here.

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DPRK-ROK urbanization

Sunday, January 2nd, 2011

According to Yonhap:

South Korea’s level of urbanization first exceeded that of North Korea in the 1980s, and the gap may widen to 24 percentage points by 2015, data by the South Korean statistical office and the United Nations showed Sunday.

The South’s urbanization rate reached 83 percent as of 2010 while the corresponding figure for the communist North stood at 60.2 percent, giving South Korea a 22.8 percentage point lead, reports of global urbanization forecast by Statistics Korea and the U.N. showed.

The urbanization rate calculates the proportion of a country’s total population living in city areas and indicates its level of modernization or industrialization, which encourages more movement of population to cities.

North Korea showed a higher level of urbanization in 1975 with 56.7 percent, compared with the South’s 48 percent, but the difference has started to narrow since then, the reports showed. The South eclipsed the communist country in the 1980s.

The urbanization rate is forecast to reach 84.4 percent for South Korea by 2015 while the ratio for the North may only inch up to 61 percent, expanding the difference to 23.4 percentage points five years from now, according to the reports.

The growing urbanization gap is attributable to the two separated countries’ differing fates. While the South pushed for aggressive industrialization and export-led growth, the North remained closed to the global market and stayed underdeveloped.

The U.N. report also forecast the population of the South’s two major cities — Seoul and Busan — to reach 10,007,000 and 3,322,000, respectively, while the population of Pyongyang and Nampho, two main cities of the North, are expected to stand at only 2,859,000 and 1,187,000, respectively.

The two countries have technically remained at war since their 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

Read the full story here:
Two Koreas’ urbanization gap likely to widen further by 2015: reports
Yonhap
1/2/2010

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Korea-Germany comparisons

Thursday, December 30th, 2010

This chart comes from a recent article in The Economist:

Read the full article here:
Parallel economies
The Economist
12/29/2010

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Recent papers on DPRK topics

Friday, December 17th, 2010

Forgotten People:  The Koreans of the Sakhalin Island in 1945-1991
Download here (PDF)
Andrei Lankov
December 2010

North Korea: Migration Patterns and Prospects
Download here (PDF)
Courtland Robinson, Center for Refugee and Disaster Response, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University
August, 2010

North Korea’s 2009 Nuclear Test: Containment, Monitoring, Implications
Download here (PDF)
Jonathan Medalia, Congressional Research Service
November 24, 2010

North Korea: US Relations, Nuclear Diplomacy, and Internal Situation
Download here (PDF)
Emma Chanlett-Avery, Congressional Research Service
Mi Ae-Taylor, Congressional Research Service
November 10, 2010

‘Mostly Propaganda in Nature:’ Kim Il Sung, the Juche Ideology, and the Second Korean War
Download here (PDF)
Wilson Center NKIDP
Mitchell Lerner

Drug Trafficking from North Korea: Implications for Chinese Policy
Read here at the Brookings Institution web page
Yong-an Zhang, Visiting Fellow, Foreign Policy, Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies
December 3, 2010

Additional DPRK-focused CRS reports can be found here.

The Wilson Center’s previous NKIDP Working Papers found here.

I also have many papers and publications on my DPRK Economic Statistics Page.

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Arduous March continues to take toll on DPRK population

Monday, December 6th, 2010

According to the Choson Ilbo:

The demographic graph of a normal country has a pyramid or bell shape. But that of North Korea reportedly has an abnormal gourd-shaped curve. The narrow part in the middle of the curve accounts for the key age group between 20 and 34 of the economically active population in the North. It is believed that is because many of those born in the 1990s in the midst of economic difficulties and food shortages died of malnutrition or diseases when they grow up.

This was revealed on Monday by Hwang Na-mi, a researcher at the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, in the outcome of her analysis of a 2008 census report the North’s Central Statistics Bureau submitted to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). The North’s demographic graph shows that the “population between 20 and 34 years of age remarkably dwindled compared to teens or those in their 40s,” she said.

Lee Ae-ran, a professor of food, nutrition and cuisine at Kyungin Women’s College, said, “As economic problems worsened in the 1990s, many young North Koreans avoided marriage and childbirth and illegal abortions were rampant. Especially in the late 90s, many children and youths starved to death in urban areas, as well as in rural regions.” She is the first female North Korean defector to obtain a doctoral degree in the South.

The North’s 2008 census was conducted according to international standards with the help of the UNFPA, and thus it is regarded as reliable statistics on the status of North Korean population.

The North conducted its first-ever census in December 1993. But the categories did not conform to international standards, nor were the results consistent.

The North’s infant mortality rate, which is considered a yardstick for gauging a country’s socio-economic level and health, was 19.3 per 1,000 infants younger than 1 year, up 5.2 from 14.1 in 1993. However, some experts speculate that such a rate in the North is not as serious as it has been known so far.

According to the “2010 World Population Report” published by the UNFPA last month, the North’s infant mortality rate is 47 per 1,000, pushing the country to 51st place among 181 countries.

The North’s maternal mortality rate, the rate of mothers who die during pregnancy or childbirth, was 77.2 per 100,000, far up from 54 in 1993. The Stalinist country’s average life expectancy was 69.3 years in 2008, down from 72.7 years in 1993.

Past stories about the DPRK’s 2008 census can be found here, here, here, and here.

The officially published data can be found here.  Summaries can be found here.

Read the full story here:
N.Korea’s Youth Population Dwindles Due to Food Shortage
Choson Ilbo
12/6/2010

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DPRK lifespans lag RoK’s

Monday, November 22nd, 2010

According to Yonhap:

North Koreans are expected to live 11 years less than the average South Korean due mainly to malnutrition that adversely affects births and causes more people to die earlier than normal, a government report showed Monday.

The Statistics Korea report, based on data released by the United Nations and Pyongyang, showed the life expectancy for an average North Korean at 69 years, lower than numbers reached in the communist country in the early 1990s before it was hit by devastating famine.

The life expectancy for men reached 64.9 while that for women was 71.7 years. This is 11.3 years and 11.2 years less than this year’s life expectancy of South Korean men and women, respectively.

“Generally, the population has not fully recovered from the famine and hardship, although conditions have improved in the past few years,” a statistics official said.

He said estimates revealed that there may have been a “population loss” of around 610,000 for a decade after the mid-1990s, caused by a higher number of deaths and people shying away from having babies.

The official said up to 480,000 more people may have died compared to what was normal during the 1994-2005 “slow-motion famine” period when the country could not properly feed its people.

Newborn baby numbers fell by an estimated 130,000 vis-a-vis natural increase rates in the 1995-2004 time frame, as fewer people married and couples put off giving birth during hard times, he said.

The latest statistical report, however, said that despite chronic food shortages, North Korea’s population managed to post steady growth in the last two decades.

As of this year, the population is estimated to be 24.19 million, up 0.5 percent from a year earlier. Before 1997, the population grew more than 1 percent on-year, but gains have become stagnant since 1998, staying under the 1 percent mark.

This year’s numbers make North Korea the 49th most populous country in the world, compared with 26th-ranked South Korea, whose population reached 48.88 million.

The statistical report, meanwhile, showed the number of economically active people in the North between the ages of 15 and 64 reaching 16.58 million this year, with the number of men being smaller than women.

The median age of the population stood at 30.1 years for men and 33.7 for women, five or six years younger than numbers for South Korea. The country effectively became an “aging society” in 2003 with the number of people over 65 hitting 7.2 percent of the total population and should be an “aged society” in 2033 with 14.5 percent of the population over 65 years old.

The report predicted that North Korea’s population will peak at 26.54 million in 2037, compared to South Korea’s peak population that is expected to be reached in 2018, when there may be some 49.34 million people living in the country.

If both South and North Korean populations are combined, the number would hit its peak in 2027 with 75.06 million people living on the peninsula, the report said.

Read the full story here:
N. Koreans expected to live 11 years less than S. Koreans: report
Yonhap
11/22/2010

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Crack in Orwellian paradise

Sunday, November 21st, 2010

Lankov writes in the Korea Times:

One of the most important peculiarities of North Korean life is the degree of isolation of North Koreans from entire world. The government does not want them to be aware of some facts which contradict the officially approved picture of the world and their own country. To make sure that propaganda has no competition, the North Korean authorities eliminate all possible sources of alternative information.

Few if any Communist countries were as efficient as North Korea in cutting their population off from the unwanted and unauthorized knowledge about the world beyond the nation’s boundaries.

Few North Koreans are ever allowed to leave their country. The only statistically large but non-privileged group of people with overseas experience was the Siberian loggers who were sent to the wilderness of Southern Siberia from the late 1960s onwards. However, that part of the world is not famous for a high density population, so their contact with the locals was kept at a bare minimum (and North Korean authorities saw to this).

All other groups of North Koreans who were allowed to travel overseas formed the upper crust of society and by definition were carefully chosen for their supposed political reliability. These privileged few were diplomats, crews of the North Korean ships and planes as well as a handful of the people who were allowed to participate in international exchanges, largely of academic nature. These people had a lot to lose, and they also knew that their families would pay a high price for any wrongdoing they committed, thus they seldom caused trouble. They are least likely to talk much about overseas life.

There were students, of course, but their numbers were very small ― perhaps, less than 10,000 North Koreans ever graduated from foreign universities (just for comparison: some 240,000 South Koreans are studying overseas right now).

The North Koreans cannot buy or read books published overseas ― no exception is made even for books from other Communist countries. All non-technical foreign publications are kept in special departments of libraries and one needs a security clearance to access them. In these departments the subversive material could be read only by the trustworthy people who obtained special permission from security police.

Of course, radio was the major source of worries for the Pyongyang leaders. So, North Korea is the only country which outlaws the use of the radio sets with free tuning. All radio sets are permanently fixed on the wavelength of the official Pyongyang broadcast, and police conduct random house checks to ensure that technically savvy owners have not re-modeled their sets.

In a clearly Orwellian twist, the government does its best to keep the populace cut off from the past as well. All periodicals and most books more than ten years old are to be sent to the same special departments with access being limited to the people with proper security clearance. Even speeches of the Great Leader are edited (rewritten) from time to time to meet the demands of the ever changing political situation.

Why did they do it? The answer seems to be obvious: the governments know that they have to hide the huge difference in economic performance between North Korean and its neighbors, and above all ― between North and South Korea. Currently, the ratio of per capita income between two Korean states is estimated to be at 1:15 at best and 1:50 at worst. This is the largest gap which exists worldwide between two countries which share a land border, and this gap is powerful proof of North Korea’s economic inefficiency. The government understands that once the populace learns about the gap, the situation might get out of control. To prevent it, they work hard to keep people ignorant about the outside world.

Until 2000 or so, they have been generally successful, even though some snippets of dangerous information found their way to North Korea. Things began to change in the late 1990s when North Koreans began to move across the porous border with China. Most of the refugees did not stay in China, but eventually returned to North Korea. They brought back stories of Chinese prosperity, DVDs with South Korean TV shows and small, easy-to-hide transistor radios with free tuning.

Since then, things began to change, and the information self-isolation system began to fall apart. However, it might be premature to believe that it has been damaged beyond repair. Yes, people in the borderland area are aware that they live in a poor and underdeveloped society. Many people in Pyongyang also came to realize this. But it seems that in more remote parts of the country the isolation still works reasonably well.

Sometimes I wonder how shocked North Koreans will be when exposed to the outside world for the very first time. We can be sure that their surprise will be huge ― and perhaps, their disappointment about their country’s past will be huge, too.

Read the full story here:
Crack in Orwellian paradise
Korea Times
Andrei Lankov
11/21/2010

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The DPRK’s 2008 census: results and analysis

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

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 data set.  You can download it here.

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

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UPDATE 1: 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.

Word of the availability of the North Korea census data was disseminated last week on North Korea Economy Watch, a Web site run by Curtis Melvin, a Virginia-based graduate student in economics and a specialist in North Korea.

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

UPDATE 2 (1/12/2011): According to the Choson Ilbo:

Each year, Statistics Korea publishes population figures for North Korea in a booklet based on surveys conducted by international organizations like the UN and data released by the Education Center for Unification under the Unification Ministry.

Most of these statistics were compiled based on a census the North took in 2008 with the UN’s help.

North Korea’s only previous census was in 1993, which established that the population is 21.21 million. Although rumor has it that several millions of people starved to death during the famine of the 1990s, nobody knows how many exactly died.

The second census in 2008 was taken with funds provided by the UN Population Fund to obtain basic data for humanitarian aid to the North. The North accepted the offer, presumably because it wanted a good grasp of the reality to develop its own economy.

The census lasted for 15 days, from Oct. 1 to 15, 2008. The North’s Central Statistics Bureau surveyed 5,587,767 households nationwide by mobilizing a total of 35,000 census takers through municipal and provincial statistics offices. The questionnaire consisted of 53 questions about income, furniture, electronic home appliances, toilets, heating system, and tap water and sewage facilities, as well as basic personal information such as age and gender.

Like in South Korea, the North Korean census takers visited homes to ask the questions face to face. Statistics Korea officials flew to China, where they taught North Korean officials census methodology and techniques, and the South gave the North as much as US$4 million for the census from the Inter-Korean Cooperation Fund.

According to the census, the North’s population was 24,062,000, up 2.85 million from 1993. Average life expectancy was 69.3 years, and infant mortality was 19.3 per 1,000. But these data are quite different from UN estimates, which put life expectancy at 67.3 years and infant mortality at 48 per 1,000. The credibility of the North’s census data has not been verified.

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