By Andrei Lankov

Recent statistics on North Korea leave little doubt: in addition to being some 15-20 times poorer than its southern neighbor, North Korea has a similar population structure and increasingly suffers from problems we usually associate with more developed societies – low birth rates and an aging population.

Demographics is one of only a small handful of fields where North Korea watchers can rely on reasonably good information. The local government releases virtually no usable data or statistics on anything else to the public. It is useful to remember that most of the data related to the North Korean economy, for example trade volume with China or per capita GDP, is pure guesswork of varying degrees of plausibility. However, demographics are different: due to unknown reasons, North Korean authorities systematically publish their census data, and they have even provided foreign experts with access to their internal population statistics.

Skeptics may understandably believe the data to be inaccurate, doctored, or a mix of the two. However, the demographic data put out year after year is remarkably coherent and consistent, falling within the scope of external estimates. Moreover, falsifying such data is not so easy. North Korea does indeed try to falsify and embellish other numbers, to be sure, in vain hopes to conceal the size of their military and the impact of the 1996-99 famine, or to project a larger nuclear or missile arsenal than is really there. But experts have sorted out these efforts with little difficulty.

Thus, we can take North Korea's own demographic data more or less at face value. And the picture it paints is rather ominous. North Korea's estimates its total fertility rate (roughly speaking, the number of live births per every woman of childbearing age) to be below the 2.0 mark, 1.96 births per woman. This is below a sustainable population reproduction level and this, to put it simply, means that North Korea's population will eventually start declining while also getting older.

One should keep in mind that, contrary to widespread misperception, the country has overcome the consequences of the 1990s famine. Its population, while still often malnourished, is not starving as it once was. The economy has recovered and life expectancy has risen to 70.4 years, well below their southern neighbors, but still quite good if we compare North Korea with countries of the same income level. One could look at, say, Haiti, where life expectancy is a mere 63.8 years, or Myanmar at 66.6. In both countries the per capita income is higher than in the North.

This is something North Korean can be proud of, but this success (like the much more spectacular success of South Korea) comes with a price: a combination of declining birth rates and increasing life expectancy means that the country is aging. Indeed, people aged 65 or older now constitute some 9.9% of North Korea's population.

This combination of poverty, low birth rates and reasonable life expectancy may look unusual, but is in fact very "North Korean." Generally, as statistics indicate, the country combines very low economic achievement with far more advanced social development. North Koreans are better educated and more modern in their behavior than one would expect in a country with such low income – or, to put it another way, the North Koreans have a remarkably low income for people with above satisfactory education and advanced social mindset.

The country's current situation reminds one of the words of Nicholas Eberstadt, the preeminent social demographer, who once noted about China that "[it] is the first country which will become old before it will become rich". The same can be said of North Korea. Even if recent economic improvements continue without major disruption (a big if, given the level of international pressure), North Korea will not get to the level of income which would allow it to cope with its age problem in the foreseeable future.

Aging is particularly bad news for middle aged North Koreans halfway to retirement (assuming, of course, that North Korean state will still exist as a separate entity when they reach that old age). While on paper North Korea has a rather comprehensive, if modest, system of senior welfare, in practice this system collapsed some 25 years ago, and exists only in theory. Pensions are not paid and subsidized food rations are not delivered, save for a small privileged minority.

This situation also does not bode well for the North-South unification (well, nearly all economic indicators do not bode well for this supposed "great dream of all Koreans.") It means that unification will not help South Korea find an abundant supply of cheap labor, but will instead intensify the ongoing struggle to meet increasing welfare obligations.

Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. Reach him at anlankov@yahoo.com.