Too many rats, too little cage. Women all over the
world are responding to economic and population
pressures. Governments aren't happy and are behaving
like Muslims. Vance is typical of that thinking,
Coming to a country near you
...........
North and South Korea have adopted different approaches
to confronting their falling birth rates and looming
population decline.
North Korea's fertility rate, or the number of babies
expected per woman's lifetime, stands at 1.78 births
per woman, according to projections by the United
Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). South Korea's stands
at 0.72, the lowest in the world.
During a speech at the communist country's annual
National Congress of Mothers in December, North Korean
leader Kim Jong Un appealed to women to stop the trend
and raise children to "carry forward our revolution."
Children Play Game in Pyongyang, North Korea
Children play games at the Changgwang Kindergarten in
Pyongyang on June 1 to mark North Korea's Children's
Day. Kim Won Jin/AFP via Getty Images
North Korea does not regularly publish such figures, so
analysts rely on estimates based on past official birth
records, censuses and indirect surveys. These include
data from household births, age-specific fertility
rates, and birth histories from the 1993-2014 period.
"In the absence of additional, more recent empirical
data, figures afterward included in World Population
Prospects 2024 are projections based on levels and
trends for previous years," Patrick Gerland, chief of
the Population Estimates and Projection Section of the
UN Population Division, told Newsweek.
A survey of more than 13,000 households conducted by
North Korea's statistics bureau in 2014 revealed a
fertility rate of 1.78, continuing the downward trend
that has been ongoing since about 2008, when the
country's fertility rate was estimated to be 2.1—the
minimum needed to sustain a population.
Earlier this month, Radio Free Asia (RFA) cited
anonymous North Korean sources who shared examples of
authorities punishing doctors for performing secret
abortions in Ryanggang, a northern province bordering
China.
Merchants selling contraceptives have also reportedly
been swept up in a crackdown, with those discovered
dealing birth control drugs facing heavy fines and
lifetime bans from the marketplace.
North Korea, with a population of 26 million, is not
alone as it faces shifting demographics, and its
fertility rate is higher than Russia (1.4), Japan
(1.2), China (1.0), and South Korea, and much of the
developed world for that matter.
Yet international sanctions have deprived North Korea
of much advanced machinery, so the country depends more
on physical labor and is less prepared to offset a
dwindling workforce through automation, East Asia
analyst Khang Vu wrote in a May article for the Lowy
Institute.
Instead of implementing the sweeping economic reforms
necessary to improve living conditions and encourage
larger families, Kim's regime has "increasingly cracked
down on the black market and tightened state control to
root out 'anti-socialist' behavior."
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