Kim Jong-un would like to have babies… but doesn’t know how to go about it. Lately, the North Korean dictator has a new obsession: boosting the birth rate. Hence insistent efforts to convince his compatriots, reluctant to reproduce more. Thus International Women’s Day, March 8, was celebrated with great fanfare. “Love and affection for our women, flowers of the nation, society and the home, are growing stronger day by day,” chants the official organ. Rodong Sinmun (the Workers’ Journal). The emphasis, a bit outdated, recalls the tears shed in December by the supreme leader before the Fifth National Congress of Mothers. The “great sun of the 21st century” (one of his nicknames) then insisted on the growing importance “of the contribution of mothers to the strengthening of national power and the promotion of the revolution”. Understand: our glorious nation needs more children.
North of the 38th parallel, it is very difficult to know the reality of the demographics. Based on the 1993 and 2008 censuses and fertility estimates, the UN estimates the population at 26.2 million inhabitants, with a fertility rate of 1.8 children per woman. However, the North Korea research center of the Bank of Korea in Seoul places the fertility rate at 1.38 over the period 2010-2019: a historic low point.
According to Era Seo, a refugee who lives in the South and writes for the NK Insider site – dedicated to North Korea –, Pyongyang’s data is unreliable: “The central government is putting pressure on regional authorities to falsify.” What purpose ? “To get more help from the UN” and “to cover up army numbers.” According to Era Seo, the North Korean population does not exceed 18 million inhabitants. A dizzying fall. After the Korean War (1950-1953), in fact, the northern part of the peninsula experienced strong demographic growth. But in the 1970s and 1980s, birth control programs stopped this mechanism. And during the great famine of the 1990s – the number of victims was estimated to be between 600,000 and 1 million – the birth rate collapsed. Since then, the authorities have tried to relaunch it, without result. The situation has worsened during the Covid-19 pandemic.
© / The Express
Abortion prohibited
Pyongyang sees this decline as a vital risk. “North Korea, which lacks resources and advanced technologies, needs a sufficient workforce to revive and develop its industry”, underlines a report from the Hyundai Institute, based in Seoul. The observation is the same in the agricultural sector, little mechanized but essential in a country which aspires to food self-sufficiency. These two sectors generated 47.6% and 22.5% of the North’s GDP respectively in 2017.
The falling birth rate also threatens national security. With 1.3 million soldiers – double that of South Korea – the People’s Army is based on a ten-year military service for boys and seven years for girls. Besides military tasks, recruits are used in construction, agriculture and industry. In 2021, for example, “the genius of geniuses” – another nickname for the dictator – calls on the army to become a “driving force” in food production. Thousands of soldiers then found themselves in the fields, planting rice.
Challenged by the Malthusian behavior of his subjects, the president for life decided in 2015 to ban abortion, until then tolerated, and contraceptives. In 2021, new order: he orders the weekly distribution of dairy products to mothers of children under five years old. Finally, in 2023, families with three or more children will benefit from advantages: access to better housing and educational establishments; free food, medicine and household items. But none of this is enough to motivate North Koreans who are already reluctant to marry due to economic difficulties. The Daily NK website reports: “There is a popular expression in North Korea according to which a woman is condemned to forced labor from the moment she marries.” This shows that the Kim heir is far from having won his battle.
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