• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.58-75
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• 1988

1.Objectives of the Study It is a well known fact that a prompt and reliable data on demographic information is essential in a proper planning and evaluation of any program of national or community level. Especially vital statistics are an important demographic component among demographic information. Realizing the importance of vital statistics, the government has made some efforts for years to improve the vital registration system which has a close relationship with the production of vital statistics. However, it is still observed that there are some limitations in utilizing vital registration data due to considerable amount of vital events which are never registered and registered but not in time or inaccurately, even though vital registration system in Korea has sound legal basis. In this connection, the objectives of the study is as follows :(1) To examine some problems of the vital registration system in various aspects, (2) To make improvement programme of continuous Demographic Survey as a supplementary source of vital statistics, and (3) To find out some alternatives for making it possible to produce and utilize the reliable vital statistics by developing analytical methodologies on that. 2. Current Situation of Vital Registration System All the vital events, i.e. births, deaths, marriages and divorces, are to be registered in time under the Civil Registration Law, Statistics Law and Regulation on Vital Statstics as a duty of people. Some recent tendencies in each of recent registration are summarized as below: (1) The completeness of vital registration .Out of all births which are occurred during a year, around 75% of those compared to the estimates are registered in the year of occurrence. .In case of death registration, the percentage of registration in the year of occurrene has been gradually increased from 86.2% in the year of 1980, but it is still below the level of 90% compared to the estimates. .The percentage of registration for marriages and divorces in the year of occurrence out of total registered numbers was revealed to be 69% and 73% respectively in 1985. (2) Continuous Demographic Survey .It is a kind of sample survey for the purpose of producing reliable vital statistics which could not be provided by the vital registration. .It covers about 17, 000 sample households at national level and important information for vital events are collected in every month by 323 expertized enumerators who are regular staff of the government. .Although the result of the survey seems to be more reliable than of vital registration, the reliability of the data is still bellow the acceptable level if compared with relevant information from other sources such as population census or special surveys. 3. Problems of Vital Registration System There are four major obstacles in improving vital registration system in Korea; (1) In general, policy priority is not given on any programme of improving vital registration system. It is, therefore, very difficult to formulate comprehensive programme through having cooperation from related authorities and sufficient financial assistance. (2) In all the laws related and system itself, there is substantial degree of overlap and irrationality. Registration of each vital event is maintained according to several laws and regulation such as Civil Registration Law, Statistics Law, Resident Registration Law and Regulation on Vital Statistics. However they are mutually overlapped and overall supervision can not be done systematically due to lack of co-operation among the authorities concerned. (3) The administration of vital registration system seems to be working inefficiently, because of most of civil servants who are in charge of vital registration are lacking of conception on vital statistics and also there is a certain extent of regidity in handling the works. Therefore, they are doing their jobs in a passive way. (4) A substantial proportion of vital events occurred is not registered within the legal time limit (i.e. within one month after the occurrence in case of birth and death) or not registered forever. Some of social customs and superstitution seem to be the potential causes especially in case of births and deaths. 4. Recommendations for the Improvement of Vital Statistics (1) Reporting systems such as civil registration, vital statistics and resident registration should be integrated under the single law. Also, administrative supervision, personnel and budget with regard to the registration system should be under the control of a single ministry. (2) It is necessary to simplify the procedures and methods of reporting vital events, i.e., reducing number of sheets of the form, making corrections easily, reducing registration items, etc. (3) Continuous Demographic Survey as a supplementary source of vital registration should be improved and special ad-hoc surveys should be conducted wth regular interval. (4) In-depth analysis should be done using various sources of data on vital statistics. 5. Concluding Remarks From this study, we can notice that temporary campaign and motivation programs are not sufficient to improve the quality of vital statistics. Strong intentions and continuous efforts of the government are needed for the improvement of the vital registration system. Furthermore, most of the data collected through the registration are not properly analyzed and utilized, partly due to the lack of appreciation among high-level governmental officials of the need for vital statistics. It is, therefore, requested that long-term improvement programs of vital statistics be implemented with policy priority and continuous efforts be given to this purpose as a long-term goal of development in Korea.

• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.19-29
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• 1989

It is well known that vital statistics is of great importance as basic data for establishing various range of national policies. Especially, vital statistics is important among demographic information for monitoring and evaluating the population policy, for constructing life table, for making population projection, and for studying various aspects of the society. In principle, the production of vital statistics is based on the registration system. It is, however, still observed that there are some limitations in utilizing fully the registration system due to the inherent problems such as problems in its coverage, accuracies and timeliness. Thus, as an alternative, many countries conduct survey on vital statistics in order to supplement the registration system and obtain in-depth data. Korea is no exception in this aspect. The National Bureau of Statistics carries out the so-called Continuous Demographic Survey. This is a kind of multi-round retrospective survey, covering 32, 000 households and having reference period of one month. The survey has also characteristics of multi-subject sample. Thus, surveys on economic activity status of population, house-hold income & expenditure, and social indicators are together conducted with the same sample. It is, however, found that the survey itself tends to have some quality problems. Especially, the quality problems connected with field data collection are summarized as coverage error, non-response error and response error. Although it is inevitable not to be free from these errors, we should make all our efforts to reduce the errors. The probable schemes pointed out in this paper are as follows : 1) the strengthening formal quality control activities, 2) the review of the survey method, i. e., the combining interview method with mail-sending and mail-back method or pick-up method, 3) well documentation for various cases found in every stage of data collection, and 4) the strengthening the analytical activities. It is, also, emphasized that sincerity of planners and interviewers is the most important factor among other things.

• Survey Research
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.1-31
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• 2012

Demographic Analysis(DA) as well as Post Enumeration Survey(PES) are typical methods for evaluating completeness of census and vital statistics. In spite of its popularity, DA has never been attempted in Korea, while other international journals of demography have pointed out the backwardness of death registration in Korea in terms of DA approach. This paper introduces various DA methods and modifies them to be adequate for Korea census and vital statistics. Our method are also applied to reconstruct year-age-sex specific population and estimate their omission rates for year and age. Empirical analysis of census and vital statistics of Korea from 1985 to 2010 demonstrates high completeness of death registration in Korea, contrary to existing literatures. We also investigates abnormal patterns in census by comparing with reconstruction data in view of cohort, sex ratio and age ratio.

• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.53-72
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• 1994

The historical study reveals that our ancestors had maintained a system which could produce data on population and households. The main purposes of maintaing the system at that time were taxation and conscription. At the present time, however, there are three major data sources which produce the statistics on pop-ulation and households in Korea : Civil Registration System, Resident Registration System and Popula-tion Census. These three systems are found to have some problems. there are some inherent problems in the regis-tration systems, such as problems in its coverage, accuracies in contents and timeliness in reporting the vital events and publishing the results. The population census has also non- sampling erors, such as errors in coverage, respone and non-response. Apart from the above mentioned problems, there are also conflicting problems arised from having three data sources, We can find some overlapping problems and difficulties in comparative studies. In the future, these problems should be considered for the improvement of the quality of statistics on population and household.

• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.99-116
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• 1982

The historical study reveals that our ancestors had maintained a system which could produce data on population and households. The main purposes of maintaing the system at that time were taxation and conscription. At the present time, however, there are three major data sources which produce the statistics on pop-ulation and households in Korea : Civil Registration System, Resident Registration System and Popula-tion Census. These three systems are found to have some problems. there are some inherent problems in the regis-tration systems, such as problems in its coverage, accuracies in contents and timeliness in reporting the vital events and publishing the results. The population census has also non- sampling erors, such as errors in coverage, respone and non-response. Apart from the above mentioned problems, there are also conflicting problems arised from having three data sources, We can find some overlapping problems and difficulties in comparative studies. In the future, these problems should be considered for the improvement of the quality of statistics on population and household.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.109-117
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• 1977

The improvement of civil registration reguires continuous study rather than periodic efforts. More and better statistics, however, are urgently required to formulate development programs and planning. Data obtainable from the civil registration are usually marred by errors of omission which are difficult to correct. This study aimed at finding out the problems occuring when a set of crude birth registration data in a rural area is used. Data Sources of this study are: 1) For birth registration: government birth registration records obtained from myun office and other government offices. 2) For the actual number of births: birth and child records from the Kang Wha Community Health Project The study area is Sunwon Myun and Naega Myun in Kang Wha Gun, Gyunggido. The referrance period for the accumulated data is one full year: Jan. 1st 1975-Dec. 31st 1975 Major findings are as follows: If the number of registered births is compared with the actual number of births which occured in the target area, the former is far greater than the latter. The general assumption usually is, that the actual number of births exceeds the registered number of birth in Korea. The observation from this specific study in this specific target area, shows the opporsite trend. The number of births which were registered is 550. This is more than two times as much as the number of births which actually occured during the year of 1975 in the study area namely 256. The difference comes mainly from the fact that many cases of births from other areas were registered in the target area. In other words birth is not registered where it occured but where the permanent residence adress is. Among 550 births registered in the target area 66% did not occur in the target area. Only one third of all registered births were registered within the legal period for birth registration which is 2 weeks. 34% of the registered births actually occured in 1974, but were registered in 1975. In 55% of the cases a difference was observed between the actual date of birth and the registered date of birth. From the 256 births which occured in the target area, only 153 births (59%) were registered at the myun office and the remaining 130 births (41%) were not resistered there in the year of study. 6% of the 550 cases listed as registered have no seperate registration sheets. Nevertheless, they definitly have been registered in the birth list at the myun office. 3% of the 550 cases are not recorded in this list but have a separate registration sheet at the myun office. In conclusion, birth registration data have many errors and problems. Their usefulness as. a source for vital and other statistics should be reconsidered. A series of sound methological studies will be necessary to establish their actual usefulness. A continuous and permanent compulsory system of birth recording is needed.

• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.93-105
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• 1986

The historical study reveals that our ancestors had maintained a system which could produce data on the number of population and households as well as on their characteristics. For example, such data on age structure of the population, number of births, number of deaths by age & sex, number of in & out migrants were found in an historical document for the year 755. The main purposes of maintaining the system at that time were taxation and conscription. As the system evolves, another function of identifying the legal status of people was also added. Looking into the figures for those days reveals that ommission rates of the number of population and households were high. Thus, in an effort to obtain a reliable data, the annual population survey system was introduced as of 1 September 1896. This date is now cerebrated as the Statistics Day. Since then, the survey system has been diversified. At the present time, there are three major data sources which produce the statistics on population and households: Civil Registration System (vital statistics), Resident Registratiton System (migration statistics) and Population Census. However, these three systems are found to have some problems to produce the accurate data. There are some inherent problems in the registration systems such as problems in its coverage, accuracies in contents and timeliness in reporting the vital events and publishing the results. The population census has also non-sampling errors such as errors in coverage, response and non-response. Apart from the above mentioned problems, there are also conflicting problems arised from having different three data source. We can find some overlapping problems in laws and difficulties in comparative studies between regions. In the future, these problems should be taken into consideration for the improvement of the quality of statistics on population and households.

• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.5-25
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• 1997

The historical study reveals that our ancestors had maintained a system which could produce data on the number of population and households as well as on their characteristics. For example, such data on age structure of the population, number of births, number of deaths by age & sex, number of in & out migrants were found in an historical document for the year 755. The main purposes of maintaining the system at that time were taxation and conscription. As the system evolves, another function of identifying the legal status of people was also added. Looking into the figures for those days reveals that ommission rates of the number of population and households were high. Thus, in an effort to obtain a reliable data, the annual population survey system was introduced as of 1 September 1896. This date is now cerebrated as the Statistics Day. Since then, the survey system has been diversified. At the present time, there are three major data sources which produce the statistics on population and households: Civil Registration System (vital statistics), Resident Registratiton System (migration statistics) and Population Census. However, these three systems are found to have some problems to produce the accurate data. There are some inherent problems in the registration systems such as problems in its coverage, accuracies in contents and timeliness in reporting the vital events and publishing the results. The population census has also non-sampling errors such as errors in coverage, response and non-response. Apart from the above mentioned problems, there are also conflicting problems arised from having different three data source. We can find some overlapping problems in laws and difficulties in comparative studies between regions. In the future, these problems should be taken into consideration for the improvement of the quality of statistics on population and households.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.20 no.1 s.61
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• pp.98-103
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• 2006

This paper analyzed deaths caused by fires using the Annual Report on the Cause of Death Statistics (based on vital registration) published by the Korea National Statistical Office. The number of fire deaths and the fire death rates of all deaths have started to decrease since the height in 1993. The younger groups have increasingly more fire deaths than the older groups. While children groups(age 10 and under) have decreased in their deaths caused by fires, the older groups (65 and over) tend to increase. Males are more likely to have a risk than females in all age groups. Fire death rates per 100,000 populations by age group suggest very high rates in the older groups. Although there are few changes in death rates caused by fires of all deaths, young children (age 4 and under) and older adults (age 75 and over) have a higher risk than any other age groups.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.354-362
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• 2001

Objectives : The aim of this study was to estimate the burden of disease through an analysis of Years of Life Lost due to premature deaths, one component of the Disability-Adjusted Life years (DALY). In addition, the cause of death statistics were adjusted to improve validity, and the results were compared with those of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD). Methods : In closely fellowing the approach taken in the original GBD study, most of the explicit assumptions and the value judgments were not changed. However, the statistics for some problematic concerns such as deaths of infants or those due to senility, were adjusted. Deaths, standard expected years of life lost (SEYLL), and potential years of life lost (PYLL) were computed using vital registration data compiled by the National Statistical Office. Results : The burden for males is 1.8 and 2.3 times higher than that for females, according to SEYLL and PYLL, respectively. The proportions of deaths due to Group I, II, and III causes are 5.4%, 80.4%, and 14.3%, respectively, for PYLL, but in a major shift from Group II to III they are 6.3%, 66.2%, and 27.5%, respectively, for SEYLL. The proportion of Group III causes in Korea, 27.5%, is extremely high when compared to 10.1% for the world, 7.6% for developed countries, and 10.7% for developing countries. Conclusions : Estimation results showed that the total burden due to premature deaths is smaller than that for the entire world but larger than that for developed countries. The disease structure of Korea has changed to resemble that of developed countries. Also, an overly large portion of the total burden in Korea stems from injuries arising from car accidents.