North Korea fast tracks orphanage placement to address declining birth rate

North Korean authorities are accelerating the placement of orphaned children and children born to unmarried women into state-run nurseries and orphanages to combat a falling birth rate.

Residents told Radio Free Asia that the government is improving the supply of food, milk, clothing, and shoes to these facilities. These improvements follow the enactment of the Childcare Law of 2022 and the Law on Preferential Treatment for Multi-Child Families of 2025.

The country faces a total fertility rate of approximately 1.59 children per woman, which sits below the 2.1 replacement rate needed to maintain the population. Some reports from the Stimson Center’s 38 North project suggest the actual rate may be even lower. To address this, leader Kim Jong Un has urged the public to view raising many children as a patriotic duty.

The government is also cracking down on illegal abortions by making it harder for doctors to perform the procedure in secret. Social pressure and administrative hurdles make it difficult for unwed mothers to raise children because they cannot register a child without a father. This has led to some families using workarounds to place children in state care.

For example, a relative in the coastal city of Tanchon recently left a baby in a public alley to be found by a community center to avoid the social stigma of an out of wedlock birth.