N. Korea Has 1M Tonne Food Shortfall

The U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization estimates that this year’s harvest in North Korea will be 1 million tonnes short of domestic needs.

Despite an overall satisfactory food supply situation in the subregion, food shortages and emergencies persist, at national or subnational levels due to natural disasters and civil unrest. In DPR Korea, harvesting of the 2006 main season crops of rice, maize, and potatoes is underway. Lower output than last year is expected, as a result of severe floods that struck South Pyongan, North Hwanghae, Kangwon and South Hamgyong provinces in mid-July, which totally or partially destroyed 23 400 houses and left some 19 000 families homeless, and caused extensive damage to crops (mainly maize, paddy and soybeans). Total cereal import requirement in 2006/07 (Nov/Oct), including commercial import and food aid, is expected at more than 1 million tonnes.

The World Food Program gives a somewhat lower estimate of 750,000 tons (now, less united than ever!). Either estimate should be treated with great suspicion because of their possible reliance on government statistics and satellite photography. Either estimate would also constitue a big shortfall when put into perspective, and would mark a reversal of a modest improvement in domestic production in recent years.

The 2005 shortfall, for example, was 500,000 tonnes. In 1996, the shortfall was 1.5 million tons (equal to 1.36 million tonnes). In 1997, the famine was peaking, North Korea was slapping rouge on the cheeks of starving kids and parading them past reporters, and the shortfall was 1 million tonnes. In 2000, the shortfall was 1.3 million tonnes, but international aid was then arriving in quantity (and plenty of hungry people had already died).
A recent BBC report says that the July floods are responsible for just 100,000 tonnes’ worth of the shortfall. Thus, we have to look for other explanations for most of the decline in domestic production.  Domestic production notwithstanding, North Korea would be capable of importing plenty of food.  The main problem is one of priorities.

The report also notes that “now operates in 13 counties in North Korea, feeding around half of the 1.9 million people it has identified as being in need of food aid.” It notes that donors, who are tired of hearing that their aid was diverted by the military and the elite, aren’t giving. The report doesn’t mention that last year, before North Korea kicked the WPF out of more than 100 other counties, it had identied a total of 6.5 million people as being in need. Like Human Rights Watch, I agree in principle with feeding hungry people, but unlike Human Rights Watch, I don’t agree with giving aid when we know that it will only be stolen from those who need it, by those who enforce their suffering. Doing so, without demanding and getting more transparency in distribution, only means the people will go on suffering longer.

It’s going to be a hard winter.