|North Korea Table of Contents Estimating the size, growth rate,
sex ratio, and age structure of North Korea's population has
been extremely difficult. Until release of official data in
1989, the 1963 edition of the North Korea Central Yearbook was
the last official publication to disclose population figures
until 1989. After 1963 demographers used varying methods to
estimate the population. They either totaled the number of
delegates elected to the Supreme People's Assembly (each
delegate representing 50,000 people before 1962 and 30,000
people afterward) or relied on official statements that a
certain number of persons, or percentage of the population, was
engaged in a particular activity. Thus, on the basis of remarks
made by President Kim Il Sung in 1977 concerning school
attendance, the population that year was calculated at 17.2
million persons. During the 1980s, health statistics, including
life expectancy and causes of mortality, were gradually made
available to the outside world. In 1989 the Central