Where you could be born / Asia / Eastern Asia
Born in North Korea
About 1 in 386 people born in 2023 started life in North Korea. A boy can expect to live 72 years and a girl 76, up from 11 and 21 in 1950. Most people live in cities, and 94% have basic drinking water.
Life and health
Life lasts about 57 years longer than in 1950. Child deaths fell from 465 in every 1,000 births to 18.
GirlsBoys
Years a baby born that year could expect to live.
In every 1,000 births.
Family
Women had 5.0 children on average in 1950. Now it is 1.8, below the 2.1 it takes to keep a population steady.
Average over a lifetime.
Money and work
Daily life
The largest city is Pyongyang, with 3.2 million people.
Cities and regions
Every state, province and large city with a page.
Largest regions
Sourced: GeoNames Population of each state, province or region.
Large cities
- Pyongyang3.2 million
Sourced: GeoNames Cities with a page: a million people or more.
All 13 regions
- Pyongyang3.7 million
- South Hwanghae1.6 million
- South Pyongan1.6 million
- South Hamgyong1.5 million
- North Hamgyong1.3 million
- Chagang564,288
- North Hwanghae562,267
- Nampo455,000
- P'yŏngan-bukto435,683
- Kangwŏn-do427,560
- Yanggang-do342,351
- Kaesong338,155
- Rason120,886
People on the move
About 0.2% as many people born here live abroad as live here. The most common destinations are Japan, China, Argentina.
Events in the data
The game draws real events from these records, so a life lived here can meet them.
Now live it.
Born in North Korea, to a family drawn from these numbers. Every life replays exactly from its seed.
Elsewhere in Asia
How to read the sources. Every figure is sourced to a named dataset, shown beside it. A figure marked "Extrapolated" is estimated by a model because no survey covers the year. UN figures are for 2023, the latest year of UN estimates; other figures are the latest year their dataset has. Rank 1 is the highest figure among 230 countries and territories. All sources and licences