SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un opened a major policy conference to improve agriculture, state media reported Monday, amid external assessments that the country’s chronic food insecurity is worsening.
Recent unconfirmed reports say an unknown number of North Koreans have died of starvation. However, observers have seen no signs of mass deaths or starvation in North Korea, although food shortages have likely worsened due to pandemic-related restrictions, ongoing international sanctions and its own mismanagement.
During a high-level meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party that began on Sunday, senior party officials reviewed last year’s work towards the state’s goals of completing the “new-era rural revolution,” the official Korean Central News Agency reported.
The report said the meeting of the party’s Central Committee will determine “immediate, important” tasks on agricultural issues and “urgent tasks that arise at the current stage of national economic development.”
KNCA did not say if Kim spoke during the meeting or how long it would last. High-ranking officials such as Premier Kim Tok Hun and Jo Yong Won, one of Kim’s closest associates who handles the Central Committee’s organizational affairs, were also present.
The meeting is the party’s first plenary session convened solely to discuss agriculture. Monday’s report did not elaborate on its agenda, but the party’s powerful Politburo said earlier this month that “a turning point is needed to dynamically drive radical changes in agricultural development”.
According to most analysts, North Korea’s food situation is nowhere near as extreme today as it was in the 1990s, when hundreds of thousands of people died in a famine. But some experts say food insecurity is probably at its worst since Kim took power in 2011, after COVID-19 restrictions further shocked an economy battered by decades of mismanagement and crippling US-led sanctions on Kim’s nuclear program.
In early 2020, North Korea attempted to protect its people from the coronavirus by imposing strict border controls that choked off trade with China, its key ally and economic lifeline. Russia’s war against Ukraine may have worsened the situation by raising global prices for food, energy and fertilizers on which North Korea’s agricultural production depends heavily.
After spending more than two years in a strict pandemic lockdown, North Korea resumed freight train services with China and Russia last year. More than 90% of North Korea’s official foreign trade is conducted across the border with China.
According to South Korean government estimates, North Korea’s grain production was estimated at 4.5 million tons last year, down 3.8% from 2020. According to previous South Korean data, the north produced between 4.4 and 4.8 million tons of grain annually between 2012 and 2021.
North Korea needs about 5.5 million tons of grain to feed its 25 million people annually, so this year is about 1 million tons short. In recent years, half of such a gap has typically been filled by unofficial grain purchases from China, while the rest remains as an unsolved shortage, according to Kwon Tae-jin, a senior economist at the private GS&J institute in South Korea.
According to Kwon, trade restrictions due to the pandemic have likely hampered unofficial rice purchases from China. Efforts by North Korean authorities to tighten controls and restrict market activities have also worsened the situation, he said.
It’s unclear if North Korea will take action to quickly address its food problems. Some experts say North Korea will use this week’s plenary session to bolster public support for Kim during his confrontations with the United States and its allies over his nuclear ambitions.
Despite limited resources, Kim has aggressively pushed to expand his nuclear weapons and missile programs to pressure Washington to accept the idea of the North as a nuclear power and lift international sanctions against it. After a record year of weapons testing activity in 2022, North Korea launched an ICBM and other weapons in displays this month.