- You are here:
- Home
- › Travel & living abroad
- › Travel advice by country
- › Country profiles
- › Asia and Oceania
- › Korea, DPR (North Korea)
Asia and Oceania
Korea, DPR (North Korea) |
|
|
Last reviewed: 18 November 2011 |
Country information
Area: 121,555 sq km (75,364 square miles) (55% of the peninsula)
Population: 24,052,231 (UN-assisted DPRK census 2008)
Capital City: Pyongyang
People: Korean, with small Chinese minorities.
Language(s): Korean, although more formal and with less borrowed Western vocabulary than in the South.
Religion(s): Buddhism, Christianity and Chondo (a Korean syncretic religion) are officially recognised but not freely practiced.
Currency: North Korean Won (officially around 140 to the euro although market rates are much higher). Foreigners are required to use foreign currency, Euros, US dollars and Renminbi are most commonly accepted.
Major political parties: Workers' Party of Korea (WPK)
Government: Centralist one-party state led by Workers' Party of Korea with elected Supreme People's Assembly
President: Kim Il Sung is the Eternal President under the 1998 Constitution although he died in 1994. His son Kim Jong Il is in charge of political, military and economic affairs as Chairman of the National Defence Commission and General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea
Head of State: Kim Yong Nam represents the state as President of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly.
Foreign Minister: Pak Ui-Chun(since May 2007)
Membership of international groupings/organisations: Food and Agriculture Organisation, Group of 77, International Atomic Energy Agency, International Fund for Agricultural Development, International Maritime Organisation, International Telecommunications Union, Non-Aligned Movement, United Nations, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, United Nations Industrial Development Organisation, Universal Postal Union, World Health Organisation, World Intellectual Property Organisation, World Meteorological Organisation.
HEALTH
DPRK has an extensive, free medical care system. Medical personnel retain core primary healthcare skills but the quality of care and availability of resources has deteriorated markedly since the economic decline in the 1990s. Because of this, and persistent, chronic malnutrition, life expectancy has fallen sharply.