A comparative study on mortality patterns among Koreans, Korean-Chinese and Chinese.

In order to understand the causal mechanism of disease aggregates peculiar to place and ethnicity, mortality data of Yanji city, China (1993) were collected, examined for validity and analyzed. Age standardized, age specific mortality rates and ten leading causes of death were compared with 1993 Korean mortality statistics. Age standardized mortality rates for both sexes were highest in Korean-Chinese followed by Koreans and Chinese (the lowest). Out of ten leading causes of death (54%-70% of the total deaths), seven for male and six causes of death for female were common in all groups. Korean-Chinese females had more similar patterns to Chinese females than males did. Differences in mortality rates by causes of death among groups suggested that hypertensive diseases and respiratory tuberculosis were associated with ethnicity, homicide/injuries inflicted by others, diabetes mellitus and chronic renal disease with environment, and others with both ethnicity and environment. These results suggest that a few causes of death were attributed to either ethnicity or environment whereas most of the ten leading causes of deaths were attributed to mixed impacts of both ethnicity and environment.