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Korean Journal of Preventive Medicine 1969;2(1): 61-76.
Recent Mortality Trends in Korea.
Il Soon Kim, Dong Woo Lee
A review has been made of mortality trends in Korea from 1958 to 1907 analyzing the data by sex, age and cause of death. The crude death rates and age specific death rates were estimate6 by the model of N. Keyfitz life table which had teen developed by the data of the 1960's national census. The cause specific death rates shown in this article are based on the following: all deaths occurring in the death-registration are expressed as a numberator, while the denominator was estimated from the regular national census data by interpolation method. It is estimated that only an average of about 40% of deaths which occurred during a year were registered during 1958 to 1967. The validity and the reliability of the diagnosis of causes of death seem to be extremely poor in this country. Therefore the cause specific death rates in this article are aimed to reveal trends of causes of registered death and not for the actual level of death rates. For 10 years very interesting mortality trends were observed : 1. The trend in the crude death rates was downward slowly. 2. The estimated death rate for the infant in 1960 was still high up to 100 per 1,000. 3. The rates for mortality attributed to such infectious diseases as pneumonia, bronchitis, gastroenteritis and measles decreased an average 40-60%. 4. The death rates for over-all tuberculosis decreased only 9.8%. 50% of the decrease was contributed by those in the less-than-15 year age group. 5. The death rates for chronic diseases, such as vascular diseases affecting the central nervous system, malignant neoplasm, major heart diseases and all accidents rose about 40-60%. 6. The rank order of the 10 leading causes of death showed large changes over the years, except for pneumonia and tuberculosis which occupyed 1st and End places respectively. Vascular diseases affecting the central nervous system moved from 5th to 3rd place and malignant neoplasm from 6th to 4th palace. The major heart diseases moved from 10th to 6th place and all accidents from 10th to 7th place. On the other hand, gastroenteritis moved from 3rd to 5th place and influenza from 4th to 8th place.
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