Famine Strikes N. Korean Region that Floods Missed

As busy as I’ve been at work, I’ve been derelict in covering the famine.  But the famine continues to spread and worsen, according to the Word Food Program:

North Korea is suffering its worst food crisis since the late 1990s due to rising grain prices and a poor harvest, the U.N. food agency said Wednesday.

“We believe that the food security situation right now, in many parts of the country, is the worst that it has been since the late 1990s,” Jean-Pierre de Margerie, the World Food Program’s director for North Korea, said at a press conference in Beijing.  [Yonhap]

What is interesting about the reports is not the unsurprising truth of the famine’s  exacerbation, but  the implications of its  distribution.   Another recent WFP report notes that “areas undergoing the crisis include the Hamgyong and Ryanggang provinces.”  It is “normal” for those areas to experience the worst of North Korea’s privations for several reasons, including bad soil and poor infrastructure, but also because those are the most politically disfavored parts of North Korea.  And what is so damning about that this year is the reason so many press reports give for this year’s famine, which is last year’s floods.  While I don’t question that those floods certainly caused plenty of problems in areas like North and South Hwanghae, Pyongyang, and South Pyongan, note well that the northeastern areas that  have seen begun to  starve are the only areas of North Korea that last year’s floods actually missed. 

Media reports that attribute the food crisis to the floods are speaking in half-truths.  The greater problem is the regime’s priorities, and there is no better illustration of this than the regime’s  investment of scarce foreign exchange in a 105-story, 4,000 square foot Death Star while its people are starving to death.