Seoul: North Korea's estimated mortality rate for children under age 5 reached 18 per 1,000 live births in 2023, marking two consecutive years of increase during the COVID-19 pandemic, United Nations data showed Tuesday.
According to Yonhap News Agency, the 2023 rate marks an increase from an estimated 17.72 under-five mortality per 1,000 lives in 2022 and 17.44 in 2021. This information is based on data from the website of the U.N. Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (IGME).
North Korea's under-five mortality rate surged to 107.68 per 1,000 live births in 1995 as the country experienced a severe famine following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. However, the country had seen improvements since 2003, gradually reducing the rate to 17.7 in 2019 and 17.45 in 2020, reaching a low of 17.44 in 2021.
The website did not provide clear reasons for the increases from 2021 to 2023. However, they may be related to the country's pandemic-era border controls, which affected inoculation rates among North Korean children.
According to UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund), only 41 percent of children in North Korea received the first dose of the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP3) vaccine in 2023. In 2023, the U.N.-estimated infant mortality rate in North Korea reached 14.54 per 1,000 births, while the neonatal mortality rate stood at 9.63.
In contrast, the estimated under-five mortality rate in South Korea stood at 2.76 per 1,000 live births in the same year.