N. Korea Food Situation Update

Via the excellent Suburban Dissident blog, here’s the newest detailed report on the food situation in the North. The executive summary is that even accepting North Korean estimates of an improved harvest, it’s dramatically insufficient. . . .

North Korea’s grain production rose 5.3 per cent to 4.54 million tonnes in 2005, helped by better harvests and fertilizer shipments from South Korea, South Korean data showed today. The 2005 harvest was still far short of the impoverished country’s annual demand, estimated at six million tonnes, South Korea’s unification ministry said in a report.

For comparison, the World Food Program had planned to give North Korea just over 500,000 tonnes of cereals in 2005, and South Korea independently provided 500,000 tonnes in 2005, leaving a theoretical deficit of at least another half million tonnes, plus whatever the North Koreans refused to take or donors refused to give (in light of North Korea’s refusal of monitoring) at the end of 2005. There are no reliable figures on what China gave, although whatever China gave was completely unmonitored. Carte blanche.

Thus far, there are no clear signs of famine. I’d obviously be happy to be proven overly alarmist here, but we’re not even close to being past the danger point:

The UN agency has repeatedly warned that the famine which may have left up to two million dead in the 1990s could recur unless urgent action is taken. UN’s food aid to North Korea, however, ended on December 31 after Pyongyang said it no longer needed emergency shipments from international agencies.

Indeed, this is about the time I’d expect to see signs of famine, presuming that the information makes its way out. Daily NK keeps extraordinarily close tabs on commodity prices, but nothing very conclusive there yet.