Mick Hartley

Some Korean statistics:

According to the UN Population Fund on World Population Day on Sunday, people over 65 make up 9.6 percent of the North Korean population, surpassing the seven-percent threshold of an aging society.

The North's total fertility rate is 1.9, far lower than the world average of 2.4. The rate refers to the number of children who would be born per woman over her lifetime.

Its annual average population growth rate was 0.5 percent for 2015 to 2020, which is also far lower than the world average of 1.1 percent. Some 58 percent of childbearing women aged 15-49 take contraceptives.

The life expectancy for North Korean men is 69 years and that for women is 76 years this year, much lower than 80 years for men and 86 years for women in South Korea.

But the main reason the North's population is aging could be scarcity and despair of a better future for people's children. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the mortality rate for infants under five in North Korea is a staggering 27.9 percent or almost one-third of all small children, about eight times higher than South Korea's 3.5 percent.

North Korea's total population stands at 25.9 million, about half of South Korea's.

Meanwhile in South Korea, the population over 65s accounts for a whopping 16.6 percent of the total population, which means the country is now officially an aged society. It also has the lowest fertility rate in the world of 1.1, while its annual average population growth rate was a mere 0.2 percent in the past five years and the population started shrinking last year.

Of course as always with North Korea the stats are going to be dubious, but a mortality rate of almost one in three for infants under five is astonishing. Eight times higher than South Korea. And with the current desperate food shortages, it's not about to get better any time soon.

Update: see comments. These infant mortality figures are very likely nonsense.