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Compare · UN World Population Prospects 2024
Nepal and 
South Korea, side by side
Line both places up by age in 2026. In Nepal, half are older than 27; in South Korea, half are older than 47.
UN estimates for mid-2023: Nepal 29,694,614 people · South Korea 51,748,739
How to read this: each pyramid stacks a place’s people by age — babies at the bottom, the oldest at the top, men on the left and women on the right. A wide bottom means many children; a wide top means many older people.
Each bar is a share of its own place’s people, so a small country and a large one can be read side by side.
men women projected
NPL × KOR · 2026 · age groups
If each place were 100 people
Shrink each population to 100 people and count them. Dots are children under 15, filled squares are people aged 15 to 64, and open squares are people 65 and over. The picture follows the year slider above.
- Children, under 15
- 28
- Aged 15 to 64
- 65
- Aged 65 and over
- 7
- Children, under 15
- 10
- Aged 15 to 64
- 69
- Aged 65 and over
- 21
NPL × KOR · families and lifetimes
Children, and how long lives last
Nepal is at about 1.9 children for each woman, at this year's rates; South Korea is at about 0.8. Life expectancy at birth this year: about 71 years in Nepal, about 85 in South Korea.
Children per woman, 2026
Each figure is one child: how many children a woman would have in her lifetime at that year’s rates.
The dashed line at 2.1 is about what it takes for each generation to replace the one before it, leaving migration aside.
How long a newborn can expect to live, 2026
Each block is ten years of life, if the death rates of that year stayed the same all life long.
Hatched marks are UN projections (medium variant), not measurements.
NPL × KOR · 1950–2100 · how many
How big, and where they are heading
South Korea has about 70% more people than Nepal: 51.6 million against 29.6 million.
Nepal's population is 3.5 times what it was in 1950; South Korea's population is 2.6 times what it was in 1950.
Nepal's population is expected to peak in 2067. Meanwhile South Korea's population peaked in 2020. The UN expects Nepal to have more people than South Korea from 2068. In 2100: 31.8 million in Nepal, 21.8 million in South Korea (UN projection, medium).
Show the numbers
| Year | Nepal: people | South Korea: people | Nepal: half older than | South Korea: half older than | Nepal: children per woman | South Korea: children per woman | Nepal: life expectancy | South Korea: life expectancy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 | 8.39660 million | 19.7573 million | 19.6 | 18.7 | 6.06 | 6.06 | 37.6 | 22.2 |
| 1960 | 10.1237 million | 26.1154 million | 19.5 | 19.3 | 6.07 | 5.99 | 38.6 | 53.8 |
| 1970 | 12.4362 million | 32.5422 million | 19.7 | 18.7 | 5.87 | 4.46 | 43.1 | 62.2 |
| 1980 | 15.5531 million | 38.1411 million | 19.5 | 21.9 | 5.60 | 2.73 | 48.3 | 64.8 |
| 1990 | 19.5246 million | 44.0814 million | 19.1 | 26.8 | 5.21 | 1.60 | 54.8 | 71.0 |
| 2000 | 24.5465 million | 46.7667 million | 19.3 | 31.7 | 3.98 | 1.47 | 62.6 | 76.2 |
| 2010 | 27.3420 million | 48.7693 million | 21.2 | 37.6 | 2.54 | 1.23 | 66.8 | 80.7 |
| 2023 | 29.6946 million | 51.7487 million | 25.7 | 45.5 | 1.98 | 0.72 | 70.3 | 84.3 |
| 2030* | 30.5100 million | 51.1886 million | 28.1 | 49.5 | 1.86 | 0.81 | 72.1 | 85.1 |
| 2040* | 32.9095 million | 48.9487 million | 32.1 | 54.3 | 1.77 | 0.93 | 74.2 | 86.2 |
| 2050* | 34.6420 million | 45.1431 million | 36.0 | 57.7 | 1.73 | 1.03 | 76.0 | 87.3 |
| 2060* | 35.6230 million | 39.8572 million | 39.6 | 61.1 | 1.71 | 1.10 | 77.8 | 88.5 |
| 2070* | 35.7524 million | 34.4530 million | 42.8 | 62.5 | 1.70 | 1.16 | 79.3 | 89.6 |
| 2080* | 35.0535 million | 29.6715 million | 45.4 | 64.0 | 1.69 | 1.21 | 80.8 | 90.7 |
| 2090* | 33.6420 million | 25.4491 million | 47.1 | 62.2 | 1.68 | 1.26 | 82.3 | 91.9 |
| 2100* | 31.8314 million | 21.8488 million | 48.4 | 60.9 | 1.67 | 1.30 | 83.7 | 93.1 |
* UN projection, medium variant. People at mid-year; ages and life expectancy in years.
NPL − KOR · 1950–2100 · every age
Which ages each place has more of
Each column is a year and each row an age, from babies at the bottom to 100 at the top. The shade of a cell shows which place has more of its people at that age — the key beside the picture tells you which shade is Nepal and which is South Korea, and the in-between shade means the same. Because it compares shares, a small place and a large one can be compared fairly.
236 countries · 1950–2100
Where they sit among all countries
Every country in the world, every year from 1950 to 2100. The grey cloud shows where most countries are; Nepal is drawn in solid blue squares and South Korea in open orange squares, so you can see whether each is ahead of the crowd, behind it or in the middle.
More comparisons
Keep exploring
Each place on its own: Nepal · South Korea. Or pick any two places with the boxes at the top of this page.
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- South Korea and Eastern Asia
Apparatus
Sources and method
Every figure for Nepal and South Korea is the United Nations Population Division's, from World Population Prospects 2024: counted to 2023, and the medium projection for each year after that. Both places are taken from the same release and the same tables, which is what makes them comparable at all.
For how the median age is derived, why “100 people” can read a person high or low, and what the all-country pictures do and do not count, see the method.
250 comparisons have a page of their own; any other two places can be compared from the boxes at the top.
Sources: UN WPP 2024 · flag-icons. Every source, its licence and how to cite it →
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries