SEOUL, Sept. 10 (Yonhap) — North Korea’s child mortality rate in 2019 was nearly six times higher than that of South Korea, a recent United Nations report showed.
According to the report from the U.N. Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (IGME), North Korea’s child mortality was estimated at 17 per 1,000 births in 2019, greatly reduced from 43 deaths in 1990, but still significantly higher than that of South Korea.
South Korea’s child mortality rate was 3 deaths per 1,000 births in 2019, according to the report.
Child mortality rate refers to the number of deaths of children under the age of five per 1,000 births.
The reclusive North suffered famine in the mid-1990s, which killed hundreds of thousands, and still grapples with chronic food shortage and malnutrition.
julesyi@yna.co.kr
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