hankyoreh

Feb. 9.

A copy of North Korea’s 2008 censes was obtained Tuesday by the Hankyoreh. Census figures show that on average, North Korean men are age 29.0 years and women 25.5 years at the time of their first marriage.

According to the census figures, both men and women in North Korea generally enter their first marriages in their mid to late twenties. Conversely, the average age at the time of their first marriage of individuals in South Korea is 31.38 years for men and 28.32 years for women as of 2008. These figures indicate that men and women marry 2.38 years and 2.82 years earlier in North Korea, respectively.

The 2008 census, which was carried out according to international standards recommended by the U.N. with assistance from groups such as the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), is effectively North Korea’s first census. While 1993 census figures were made by North Korea in January 1994, experts have questioned the credibility of these figures, as they were gathered by North Korean authorities and did not meet international standards. The 2008 census was carried out under the supervision of North Korea’s Central Statistics Bureau and cited as its standard time for data 12:01 a.m. on October 1, 2008. Between October 1 and 15, 2008, some 35 thousand census takers and 8 thousand supervisors were mobilized to carry out the survey in an interview format. The Central Statistics Bureau submitted a sealed copy of its final census report to the U.N. in December 2009, and the specific data have not been released to the public to date.

The census showed the total population of North Korea to be 24,052,231. The sex ratio showed an overall preponderance of women in the population, with the male population of 11,711,838 totaling 95.1 percent of the female population of 12,330,393. This stands in contrast with the slight preponderance of males in the North Korean population, amounting to 101 percent of the female population as of 2006. The population of those aged 65 or older in the overall North Korean population was around 8.8 percent, or 2,096,648 people, indicating a higher percentage of the elderly than in China (8 percent) or India (5 percent). Park Keong-suk, a Seoul National University professor who analyzed the 2008 census data, said that the percentage of those under the ages of 35 to 40 has shrunk. Park said, “It is not as rapid as in South Korea, but North Korea is also showing the pattern of an aging society.”

The census also shows North Korea had a total of 64 centenarians as of 2008, all of whom are female. As of the 2005 census in South Korea, there were 104 men and 856 women 100 years or older, for a total of 960 people. Hyun In-ae, vice president of North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity, a North Korean defectors’ group, explained, “In North Korea, there is a tendency for men to die earlier, since a lot of them go into the military and do a lot of difficult and dangerous work in their ordinary lives.”

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