The ministry on Monday said it signed a memorandum of understanding with the UN Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) in December last year to donate $4 million to the census. This accounts for 72 percent of the estimated total $5.55 million needed, but South Korean census takers are unlikely to take part since, according to a ministry official, the North opposes it.

Seoul is to receive the questionnaires and results of the census from the UNFPA on a priority basis. The ministry said the results “will be of great help to understanding the people's lives and various social phenomena in North Korea. We decided to help the North's census from the Inter-Korean Cooperation Fund since the results will serve as basic materials for us to work out medium and long-term North Korea policies."

UNFPA technical advisors have been in the North since the second half of last year. They will start the census-taking in October, with the results due out in 2009. The Hong Kong-based Chinese language newspaper Wen Wei Po in December last year reported North Korea has dispatched five researchers to Hong Kong University of Science and Technology with the UN fund, where they were to undergo a month’s training in methods of census-taking and statistical analysis of survey data.

(englishnews@chosun.com )