NK has 3.24 mln mobile phones, 13 subscriptions per 100 people: research

The number of mobile phones being used in North Korea came to 3.24 million as of July last year, a US broadcaster reported Wednesday, citing the US Central Intelligence Agency's recently updated version of the World Factbook.

The Voice of America said the North's mobile phone subscriptions per 100 residents came to 13, securing 142nd place on the list of the 217 countries surveyed in the factbook.

South Korea, ranked 27th in the world, has 58.93 million mobile phones and 120 subscriptions per 100 residents, about 20 times more than North Korea, the VOA said.

A photo captured from the North's Korean Central TV on July 25, shows a North Korean student photographing her friends with a mobile phone at a museum in Pyongyang.(Yonhap)

The North's population reached an estimated 25.11 million as of July this year, with people aged 65 or older making up for 9.74 percent of the entire population, an indication the country has become an "aging society" in which more than 7 percent of a country's population is 65 or older.

North Korean residents aged 65 or older came to an estimated 840,000 men and 1.6 million women, according to the factbook.

Both South and North Korea registered a population growth rate of 0.53 percent, ranking 155th and 156th on the list.

North Korea's gross domestic product per capita has stayed flat at $1,800 for three years since 2012, when its new leader Kim Jong-un came to power, and its GDP also showed no growth at $40 billion in the same period. (Yonhap)