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.
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, according to the website of the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation.
North Korea's under-five mortality rate surged to 107.68 per 1,000 live births in 1995 as the country fell into a severe famine following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
The country had seen significant 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, but they may be related to the country's pandemic-era border controls, which affected inoculation rates among North Korean children.
According to UNICEF, only 41 percent of children in North Korea received the first dose of the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine in 2023.
In 2023, the UN-estimated infant mortality rate in North Korea reached 14.54 per 1,000 births, while the neonatal mortality rate stood at 9.63.
The same year, the estimated under-five mortality rate in South Korea stood at 2.76 per 1,000 live births. (Yonhap)
