It also follows a ‘military first’ approach which prioritises the Korean People’s Army when it comes to the allocation of resources.It is the country with the highest number of military and paramilitary personnel per capita, and its active-duty army of 1.28 million soldiers is the fourth largest in the world, despite having the world’s 56th largest population.According to South Korea’s government statistics agency, North Korea’s total fertility rate, or the average number of babies expected to be born to a woman over her lifetime, was 1.79 in 2022, down from 1.88 in 2014.