A Study on the Population Structure of Democratic People's Republic of Korea

Abstract

The re-unification of the two Koreas is seen as a potential solution to the aging problem and low fertility, along with the increase in the old population structure of the Republic of Korea. Population structure is an indicator of national competitiveness or growth, but little is known officially about the populations of Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). Understanding the population structure of the DPRK is important to prepare for re-unification and estimate the socio-economic costs of national welfare under a re-unified Korea. In this paper, we assess reliability of the two modern national censuses of DPRK and use the limited resources available to reconstruct the intercensal populations between these two censuses. Excess deaths from the 1995 famine are estimated at 489,972 to 574,306 and are close to the estimates of Goodkind et al. (2011) and the reconstructed populations in the of DPRK implies a big difference between two Koreas.