Editing Demographics of North Korea (section)

===Male-female ratio===
[[File:Korean lady in Pyongyang.jpg|thumb|Korean woman walking in Pyongyang]]
The figures disclosed by the government reveal an unusually low proportion of males to females: in 1980 and 1987, the male-to-female ratios were 86.2 to 100, and 84.2 to 100, respectively.<ref name=":1" /> Low male-to-female ratios are usually the result of a war, but these figures were lower than the sex ratio of 88.3 males per 100 females recorded for 1953, the last year of the [[Korean War]].<ref name=":1" /> The male-to-female ratio would be expected to rise to a normal level with the passage of years, as happened between 1953 and 1970, when the figure was 95.1 males per 100 females.<ref name=":1" /> After 1970, however, the ratio declined. Eberstadt and Banister suggest that before 1970 male and female population figures included the whole population, yielding ratios in the ninetieth percentile, but that after that time the male military population was excluded from population figures.<ref name=":1" />

Based on the figures provided by the Central Statistics Bureau, Eberstadt and Banister estimate that the actual size of the "hidden" male North Korean military had reached 1.2 million by 1986 and that the actual male-to-female ratio was 97.1 males to 100 females in 1990.<ref name=":2">{{Harvnb|Savada|1994|p=57}}.</ref> If their estimates are correct, 6.1 percent of North Korea's total population was in [[Korean People's Army|the military]],<ref name=":2" /> numerically the world's [[List of countries by number of active troops|fourth largest active military force]] as of 2021.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Routley |first1=Nick |title=Mapped: All the World's Military Personnel |url=https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-all-the-worlds-military-personnel/ |website=Visual Capitalist |access-date=21 May 2022 |date=11 March 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Hackett |first1=James |title=The military balance 2021 |date=2021 |publisher=The International Institute for Strategic Studies |location=Abingdon, Oxon |isbn=978-1-032-01227-8}}</ref>

A survey in 2017 found that the famine had skewed North Korea's demography, impacting particularly on male infants. Women aged 20–24 made up 4% of the population, while men in the same age group made up only 2.5%.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-unicef/tackling-north-koreas-chronically-poor-sewage-not-rocket-science-u-n-idUSKBN1JG2Q4|title=Tackling North Korea's chronically poor sewage 'not rocket science': U.N.|first=Tom|last=Miles|work=[[Reuters]]|date=21 June 2018}}</ref>