Impoverished North Korea facing aging society

By Cho Jin-seo

North Korea is facing the problems associated with an aging society, although its pace is slower than that of South Korea.

The North Korean population is six years younger on average than South Koreans because their life expectancy is much shorter, but still it is apparent that the citizens of one of the world’s most cloistered societies are aging fast and they will start to see a declining population in around 2037, Statistics Korea said in a report Monday.

“Aging of the North Korean population has been going on for some time,” the report said. “The proportion of people older than 65 in North Korea was 9 percent in 2010, which is smaller than that of advanced nations or South Korea, but is larger than China’s or the average of developing nations.”

It is unusual for a country with poor economic status like North Korea to have a demographic composition of an advanced economy. The report explains that it is a combined result of communist-style gender equality policies, along with natural and man-made disasters.

The report said North Korean women are expected to have 2.02 babies throughout their lives on average, which is barely enough to sustain the population. The figure is only 1.26 in South Korea — one of the lowest in the world.

“In the 1970s, North Korean women’s participation in economic activities had increased in conjunction with their social status and educational level. But this had a negative effect on the fertility rate,” the report said. “The fertility rate continued to decline until it hit bottom in 1997 and 1998 when they suffered food shortages.”

The 1950-53 Korean War and the disastrous famine in the late 1990s discouraged North Korean couples from having babies. This resulted in two tight bottlenecks in its demographic bell curve.

The country suffered a loss of more than 300,000 lives during the “Arduous March” food crisis of the late 1990s.