Population Surpasses 50 Mil.
The government said Friday the population of South Korea has reached 50 million for the first time, but added this is the result of a change in the method of counting, not an increasing birth rate.
According to the Ministry of Public Administration and Security, the population was estimated at 50.062 million at the end of last month.
“This was the result of introducing a new counting method that added 289,000 people whose ID cards had expired due to their absence from their reported address for a long period of time,” an official said.
The country reached a population of 40 million in 1983.
But the increase rate of the population has slowed, it added. In 1976, the population increased at a rate of 3.28 percent on an annual basis, but had dropped to 0.32 percent by 2003.