Population and internal migration in North Korea since 2000

Abstract

The population and internal migration of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea were studied based on the data from the country’s latest census conducted in 2008. The population exhibited some features and patterns that are more similar to a developed than a developing economy: a high proportion of the population was urban (over 60 percent); there was nearly 100 percent school attendance and an extremely high adult literacy; fertility was at the replacement level; and there was a low dependency ratio. However, its severe lack of labor mobility is reflected by its extremely low intercounty migration rate and peculiar double minor peaks in place of a usual major labor force peak in the migration schedule. The mobility depression is largely due to the government’s strict control on migration through its household registration system, hoju, especially those to Pyongyang. Unlike that in many developing countries, interprovincial migration has little impact on urbanization but results in a relatively large gain in population for Pyongyang at the expense of a loss in a majority of other provinces. This reflects both the wide gap in development between Pyongyang and the rest of the country as well as the hoju privileges given to the residents of the capital city. Limited market reforms since 2002, such as the opening of Special Economic Zones (SEZs), were evident in the movements to Kangwon and other small provinces containing an SEZ.

Keywords:

• population
• hoju
• internal migration
• the DPRK

Acknowledgment

The Authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers as well as Prof Kao-lee Liaw, Prof Kam Wing Chan, and Prof Yun Kim for their valuable comments and suggestions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. It is worth noting that both county and province as geographic units are much larger in China than those in the DPRK. By distance, the interprovincial migration rate in the DPRK in 2008 was much less than one-fifth of that in China in the late 2000s.

2. Age in the migration schedule here refers to age five years prior or that at the beginning of the migration period (see details in Appendix 1).

Additional information

Funding

The work described in this paper was partially supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China [project number HKUST 642212].