Average Korean Women Live Longer than 80 Years

Korean women`s life expectancy surpassed 80 years for the first time. Meanwhile, Korean men turned out to live around 7 years shorter in average than women, recording 72.84 years.

National Statistics Office released the 2001 Life Table on September 17, which states that average life expectancy of Koreans as of 2001 was 76.53 and that it has been prolonged by 0.98 years compared to that of 1999.

Women were recorded to live 80.01 years in average, surpassing 80 years for the first time. Women`s life expectancy was recorded as 79.22 and 75.92 years in 1999 and 1991, respectively.

Men`s life expectancy was extended by 1.13 years compared to 1999 and 5.1 years compared to 1991, clearly showing that Korea is rapidly becoming an aging society.

When compared with the life expectancies of 30 OECD member countries, Korean men`s is below the 30 countries` average (74.4) by 1.6 years, whereas women`s is close to the average (80.4).

As of 2001, Japanese people lived the longest, recording 84.9 years by women and 78.1 years by men.

There were certain differences regarding the rate of mortality due to specific causes.

While men had a 25.4% chance of dying of cancer, including stomach cancer and lung cancer, women had 24.4% the possibility of dying of diseases in their circulatory organs.

Jin-Hup Song Ki-Jeong Ko jinhup@donga.com koh@donga.com