North Korea’s child mortality rate improved in 2021 but remained five times higher than neighboring South Korea, according to a new U.N. report.

Fifteen out of 1,000 children born in the DPRK died in 2021, down from 16.5 in 2020 and from an all-time high of 75.7 out of a 1,000 children during the height of North Korea’s Arduous March famine in 1996, according to the report published by UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday.

By comparison, the report estimated South Korea’s child mortality rate to be 2.9.

Another reportpublished by the two organizations put the