Food tension in N Korea

NORTH Korean leader Kim Jong-un has called the country’s food situation “tense,” state media reported yesterday, amid mounting reports of shortages.

Opening a plenary meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party’s central committee, Kim claimed the economy had improved this year, with industrial production up 25% from a year earlier, and he generally struck a more upbeat tone than in February, when he had admitted the country’s economic plan had “failed tremendously”.

Nevertheless, Kim’s admission about food shortages speaks of a problem that can’t be glossed over.

Last year, North Korea faced its worst slump in more than two decades, experts say, largely due to the self-imposed closure of the border with China, a measure designed to keep the coronavirus pandemic at bay.

There were reports of acute power cuts and factory closures, with coal and fertilizer production hit by electricity shortages and lack of spare parts.

In April, Kim had warned Workers’ Party members to embark on an “Arduous March” to solve mounting economic problems, using a phrase that harked back to the dreadful famine in the 1990s that killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Experts are not expecting widespread famine this year. They say food shortages will not fatally undermine the regime, or force Kim to the negotiating table with the US. But they do spell hardship for millions of people inside the country, while the regime will be concerned about shortages also biting on the elite in Pyongyang.

Kim put the blame on nature rather than a desperately inefficient farming sector and the border closure, as the plenum agreed to direct all efforts to farming this year.

“The people’s food situation is now getting tense as the agricultural sector failed to fulfil its grain production plan due to the damage by the typhoon last year,” Kim said.

Earlier this month, the Korea Development Institute, a think tank based in Seoul, estimated that grain production had fallen by 5.5% last year, leaving a food shortage of about 1.5 million tons. It blamed typhoons and flooding as well as a shortage of farming materials caused by the border closure, said the Yonhap news agency.

Normally North Korea would aim to meet the shortfall through a combination of food aid and commercial imports. But trade with China remains slow, and the last two international staff of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) left Pyongyang in March, as part of an exodus of foreigners caused by the strict lockdowns there.

Although WFP has kept its office open with local staff members, a lack of foreign supervision could undermine donors’ enthusiasm to supply significant food aid.

Urging the UN to relax sanctions and North Korea to allow in humanitarian aid without restrictions, UN Special Rapporteur Tomás Ojea Quintana voiced alarm last week over “widespread food shortages and malnutrition” in North Korea. He talked of “drastic economic hardship” and cited reports of an increase of homeless people in large cities and rocketing medicine prices.

“An increasing number of families eat only twice a day, or eat only corn, and some are starving,” he said in a statement, Reuters reported.

This week Daily NK, an independent news organisation based in Seoul, reported that North Korea appeared to be running into serious difficulties with its corn harvest this year, with a lack of fertilizer, agricultural chemicals, farm materials, personnel and work cows causing fields to be overrun with weeds. Last month, Radio Free Asia reported that some farmers in one region of North Korea had been asked to donate two litres of their urine every day to help produce fertilizer.

Another Seoul-based news organisation this week reported the price of some imports had spiked in Pyongyang, with some shampoos selling for $200 (about R2 700) and a kilogram of bananas for $45.

Michael Madden, a non-resident fellow at the Stimson Center, also cited several reports of gold being smuggled across the border into China, with anyone caught facing severe penalties including being shot to death.