The author has made an attempt to examine the transition of the leading causes of death in Korea recently since 1983 by analytically reviewing the annual statistical data on the causes of death for the past ten years reported mainly from the
National
Statistical off ice and other informative materials.
@ES The Results were summarized as follows:
@EN 1. After the inverting period of the 1970s and early 1980s changing remarkably from the communicable to the non-communicable disease, the leading causes of death were changed to the chronic degenerative diseses such as circulatory disease and
malignant neoplasms recently.
2. With the particularly increasing deaths due to the unintentional accidents sice the mid-1980s, circulatory disease, malignant neoplasms, and accidents became the three leading causes of death, and accounted for about 66 percent of the total
deaths
in 1992.
3. Concerning the sex-specific leading causes of death, currently they were malignant neoplasms, accidents, cerebrovascular disease, chronic liver disease, and heart disease in males, and cerebrovascular disease, malignant neoplasms, heart
disease,
accidents, and hypertensive disease in females in that or that order respectively.
4. As to the leading causes of death th the age-groups, they were congenital anomaly and infectious disease at infantile age; accidents and unintentional injury at ages 1-39 year ; malignant neoplasms, circulatory disease, and chronic liver
disease at
ages 40-69 years ; and circulatory disease, senility and other chronic degenerative disease at ages 70 and over respectively.
5. In reviewing the transition of the leading causes of death, communicable diseases formidably prevailed for the past decades were rapidly decreased recently, and chronic degenerative diseases, so-called, "Chronic Illness" such as circulatory
disease,
malignant neoplasms, and chronic pulmonary disease are in tendency of continuous increase year by year. Although chronic liver disease seems to be stationary in incidence now-a-day, additionally, its level of death is still relatively high. And
the
death rates due to all kinds of accidents are remarkably increasing. Overall, accidents and unintentional injuries were the third leading cause of death and accounted for mere than 15 percent of the total deaths.
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