북한 기대수명 남 66.3•여 73.1세...남북 경제격차도 커져
Data released by Statistics Korea show Seoul and Pyeongyang have huge differences in certain areas including the economy.
The report indicates the gap in life expectancy was especially high last year.
Park Hee-jun help us look beyond the digits. The life expectancy of North Koreans remains considerably lower than that of South Koreans.
According to a report released by Statistics Korea on Wednesday,... North Korean men had a life expectancy of 66-point-3 years while North Korean women had 73-point-1.
That's more than ten years below that of South Korean men who live an average of 79-point-5 years, and women who live 85-point-6 years.
The gap has been clearly growing since the late 1990s,... and in 2017, the difference in life expectancy for South and North Korean men was the biggest it's ever been at 13-point-2 years.
Data also show that North Korea's population is less than half of that of South Korea.
It also indicates that the total population of the Korean Peninsula stood at 76-point-4 million.
The biggest gap of all is evident in the two Koreas' economies.
According to the report, North Korea's total gross national income per capita was just 13-hundred dollars,... while South Korea had 23 times that number at 30-thousand.
The gap was especially big since the North's economy shrank last year by 3-and-a-half percent -- its worst performance in 20 years.
South Korea, on the other hand, saw 3-point-1-percent growth.
And the North's poor economic performance was also reflected in its trade.
The country's total trade volume in 2017 was around 5-point-5 billion dollars,... and over 90 percent of that was trade with China.
That's 982 million dollars less than the previous year,... and a whopping 190 times smaller than South Korea's trade volume of more than 1 trillion dollars.
Park Hee-jun, Arirang News.
