한국 기대수명 82.7년, OECD 2위… 자살률은 하향곡선

A recent OECD report suggests.... South Koreans born in 2017 are expected to live for more than 82 years on average.
That's an improvement from the previous year and an all-time high for the country.
Choi Si-young has the full story.
According to the OECD's Health Statistics, South Koreans' life expectancy at birth averaged 82-point-7 years in 2017, slightly up from the previous year's 82-point-4 years.
That's 2 years longer than the OECD average of 80-point-7.
The suicide rate for the country has also been on the decline.
It decreased from 29.1 people per 100-thousand in 2012 to 24.6 per 100-thousand in 2016.
But it is still well above the OECD average of eleven-point-seven.
The report also said that South Korea had just two-point-three physicians per thousand people the lowest number in the OECD.
The OECD average was three-point-four with Austria topping the list at five-point-two physicians per thousand people.
But South Korea has more medical equipment, with higher numbers of MRI and CT machines than the OECD average.
The chances of dying from cancer stood at one-hundred-sixty-five-point-two people per 100-thousand in 2016.
That's well below some other developed countries such as Germany, the U.S. and Japan.
The number of deaths from dementia was twelve-point-three people per hundred-thousand in 2016, far lower than the OECD average of twenty-four-point-three.
However, South Korea had the lowest number of people that answered positively to the OECD survey question asking them "if they feel they are healthy."
Choi Si-young, Arirang News.