Asia and Oceania

Korea, DPR (North Korea)
Last reviewed: 25 June 2009

Country information

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Map of North Korea

Area: 121,555 sq km (75,364 square miles) (55% of the peninsula)
Population: 22, 664,000 (2003 UN estimate) or 23,612,000 (2004 DPRK figure)
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 209 to the euro although market rates are much higher). Foreigners are required to use euros (1.12 to the pound as of May 2009).
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 ('Great Leader') is the Eternal President under the 1998 Constitution although he died in 1994. His son Kim Jong Il ('Dear Leader') 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
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 with the economic decline in the 1990s. Because of this, and persistent, chronic malnutrition, life expectancy has fallen sharply.