North Korea’s Food Crisis and the Theory of Comparative Advantage
Donor fatigue has hit the World Food Program’s much-reduced North Korea operations:
James Morris, the agency’s outgoing chief, told the WFP executive board session in Rome earlier this week that the operation in North Korea “is dramatically underfunded.”
“If we are to continue, and you overwhelmingly have said you want us to stay there and want us to be helpful in addressing the humanitarian agenda, we are going to need some help,” he said.
“Otherwise, come February, we will be out of business.”
I would rather see North Korea get no food aid at all than see it get unmonitored aid that the regime can steal, use as a weapon, or otherwise use to prolong the agony of its people. With this year’s domestic production as low as it appears to be, an aid cutoff would, at the very least, force the regime to cut back on military spending to keep its elite eating well. The goal, however, should be concerted international pressure to force North Korea to open itself up to monitored and transparent aid for everyone.
Another measure the U.N. ought to consider: a ban on food exports from North Korea. North Korea should not be expending its agricultural energies on producing such luxuries as mushrooms, ginseng, seafood, poultry, alcoholic beverages, or walnuts (which I’ve seen in South Korean stores). Those exports are harvested from land and water that should be used to feed the domestic population. Yes, I suppose I’m asking to repeal the theory of comparative advantage, but how much of the cash North Korea earns from those exports is used to buy rice?
Meanwhile, Japan, with an eye to 1718’s prohibition on the export of luxury items to North Korea, is taking a closer look at the luxury foods it sends to Kim Jong Il’s banquet tables.
The daily said the government’s main guide on the issue is a book titled “I Was Kim Jong-il’s Cook,” written by Kenji Fujimoto, who was Kim’s personal chef for 13 years before escaping. According to the book, Kim enjoys bluefin tuna from the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo. For stews, it has to be Matsuzaka beef from Mie Prefecture, a prime product that sells for W25,000 (US$1=W939) per 100g.
Kim is also a big fan of chicken from Nagoya, Kikkoman soy sauce, Bunmeido Castella sponge cake, Suntory Imperial whisky, and Nissin Cup Ramen. But cracking down on the instant noodles would also hit the people of North Korea, so Kim will not be deprived of the pleasure just yet. “It looks like banning the cup ramen won’t be possible, and in the case of the bluefin tuna, we aren’t sure if we need to ban it altogether or just the belly flesh,” a thoughtful official said.
When we hear that Kim Jong Il is eating parched corn, we’ll know that the sanctions are working.
I agree with you. The Kim Family Regime is beyond reform. The best thing we can do is to push it toward collapse.
That Ramen could even conceivably be considered a luxury good tells the world a lot about North Korea.
Hard to justify sanctioning food, when we know that back in the 1990’s DPRK soldiers would routinely steal food from farmers–starving the farmers. On top of this, those DPRK soldiers with enough conscience NOT to steal food at gun point, would also die from starvation. Not sending food won’t reduce their research efforts in WMD. We already know they are not going to spend cash to buy food no matter what. Only way to prevent cash from being used to make WMD is to stop sending cash/or stop sending oil.
There is not much we can do about this other than completely annihilate the information blockade and also insure that DPRK don’t sell food aid off back into the international market. It’s also about time we stop sending them rice and send them corn or barley–traditional “poor men’s” grains. Even if it cost more than rice. If we can get the security council to agree that food stuff other than rice to be sent, then South Korea’s rice farmers can’t use this as an issue to take an anti-american stance. Also, isn’t there something we can do to stop the Russians and Chinese from giving DPRK party leaders advanced medical care? This is really untolerable.
I just wish there is something we can do to make the price of VCD players more affordable to NK residents. If they are already using these to watch South Korean dramas, they could also use them to read PDF files. DPRK is finished if we can take these things to every DPRK households.
There are lots of things that we *could* do if only we had Chinese and South Korean buy in on them. But without those countries cooperation, we are much more limited. They are terrified of the KJI regime collapsing and being faced with a nation full of starving North Koreans to assimilate. Perhaps they find nuclear catastrophe to be preferable, I don’t know.
Meanwhile, the millions of North Koreans would most probably be happy to simply have safety, rice and beans, maybe tents, some classes run by defectors who have made it in the South, and a chance of a brighter future without this parasitic shrieking Kim-thing attached to their backs.
I think that the collapse of North Korea’s dictatorship could be the success story for people power of the 21st century. By all accounts the North Korean people are nothing if not resourseful and resilient. I think that the lives that they have lived hold unique value in intangible ways which they could take advantage of. Growing up poor isn’t bad. Sometimes, it helps you keep things in perspective.