Seoul, South Korea CNN —
Concerns are growing over North Korea’s chronic food shortages, with multiple sources this week suggesting deaths from starvation are likely.
Some experts say the country is at its worst point since a famine in the 1990s known as the “Hard March” caused mass starvation and killed hundreds of thousands of people, or an estimated 3-5% of the then 20 million population.
Trade data, satellite imagery and assessments by the United Nations and South Korean authorities all suggest that food supplies have now fallen “below what is needed to meet minimum human needs,” according to Lucas Rengifo-Keller, a research analyst at the Peterson Institute for International economy.
Even if the food were distributed evenly — which is almost unthinkable in North Korea, where the elite and the military take precedence — Rengifo-Keller said, “You would have starvation-related deaths.”
South Korean officials agree with that assessment, with Seoul recently announcing it believes starvation is occurring in some areas of the country. Although the country’s isolation has made it difficult to provide solid evidence to support these claims, few experts question his assessment.
Even before the Covid pandemic, almost half of North Korea’s population was malnourished, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
Three years of closed borders and isolation can only make matters worse.
In a sign of how desperate the situation has become, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un held a four-day meeting of the Labor Party this week to discuss transforming the country’s agricultural sector and agreeing to a “major transformation” in agriculture and the state call for economic plans and the need to strengthen state control of agriculture.
But various experts say Pyongyang is to blame for the problems. During the pandemic, Pyongyang amplified its isolationist tendencies, erected a second layer of fences along 300 kilometers of its border with China, and squeezed what little cross-border trade it had access to.
And over the past year, it has spent valuable resources conducting a record number of missile tests.
“There were shoot-to-fire orders (at the border) issued in August 2020 … a travel and trade blockade that included very limited official trade (before),” said Lina Yoon, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.
In 2022, China officially exported nearly 56 million kilograms of wheat or maslin flour and 53,280 kg of grains/flakes to North Korea, according to Chinese customs data.
But Pyongyang’s crackdown has stifled unofficial trade, which Yoon points out is “one of the main lifelines of markets in North Korea where ordinary North Koreans buy products.”
Cases of people smuggling Chinese products into the country by bribing a border guard to look the other way have been virtually non-existent since the borders closed.
Various experts say the root problem is years of economic mismanagement and that Kim’s efforts to further tighten government control will only make things worse.
“North Korea’s borders need to be opened and they need to start trading again and they need to put these things in place so that agriculture improves and they need food to feed the people. But right now, they’re prioritizing isolation, they’re prioritizing oppression,” Yoon said.
But as Rengifo-Keller pointed out, it is not in Kim’s interest to revive the unofficial trade of the past in this dynastic country. “The regime does not want a thriving entrepreneurial class that can threaten its power.”
Then there’s the missile tests that Kim remains obsessed with and his constant refusals of offers of help from his neighbor.
South Korea’s Foreign Minister Park Jin said in an interview with CNN last week, “The only way North Korea can get out of these difficulties is to return to the dialogue table and accept our humanitarian offer to the North and make a better choice for the country.” Future.”
Prime Minister Han Duck-soo told CNN on Thursday the situation “is getting worse, as our intelligence agencies are showing, because it’s clear their policy is changing… you know, the food supply to their people, which isn’t going to work.”
Seoul’s Ministry of Unification was quick to point out that Pyongyang remains focused on its missile and nuclear programs rather than feeding its own people.
In a briefing last month, Deputy Spokesman Lee Hyo-jung said: “According to local and international research institutes, if North Korea covered the cost of the missiles it launched last year for food supplies, North Korea would have been enough to buy more than one.” would have used millions of tons of food, which is believed to be more than enough to meet North Korea’s annual food shortage.”
Seoul’s Rural Development Agency estimates that North Korea’s crop production last year was 4% lower than a year earlier due to flooding and inclement weather.
Rengifo-Keller fears that the worsening of these effects, coupled with the regime’s “misguided economic policy approach,” could have devastating effects on already suffering populations.
“This is a population that has been chronically malnourished for decades, high growth rates and all signs point to a worsening situation, so it certainly wouldn’t take much to plunge the country into famine.”