The Beginning of the End: Food Shortages Reach Pyongyang (Updated)

[Update: Welcome to all of you who are coming in from Gateway Pundit and Best of the Web, and many thanks to James Hoft and James Taranto for linking.]

Now that I’ve just spent five days writing this dissertation on North Korea’s worsening food situation, there’s dramatic new information that alters the entire analysis. This may be the single most significant event in North Korean history since the invention of blogs, because if it’s true, the regime is finished.

North Korea’s chronic food shortage has worsened to affect even some of the country’s elite citizens in Pyongyang, a South Korean aid group said Thursday.

The communist nation has not given rice rations to medium- and lower-level officials living in Pyongyang, the capital city, this month after cutting the rations by 60 percent in February, the Good Friends aid agency said in its regular newsletter.

Pyongyang citizens are considered the most well-off in the isolated, impoverished country, where the government controls most means of production and operates a centralized ration system. Only those deemed most loyal to Kim Jong Il’s regime are allowed to live in the capital. [AP]

More at Sky News. The report notes that in the countryside, workers are receiving no food at all and aren’t showing up for work because they’re too weak to plant crops.

The regime has contained and survived mass-casualty famine and dissent in the countryside before. A severe downturn in Pyongyang, however, is a game-changer. If the regime can’t even feed its elite, it’s going to have to take some chairs away from the banquet table. That means commissars and apparatchiks will shiv each other for the remaining chairs as though their lives depend on it. A rumored phase-out of the “military first” policy introduces a whole new pool of potential coup plotters. This could be the beginning of the end. If the report is true — and if China doesn’t execute an Olympic-sized airlift to reverse those conditions fast — there’s a 70% chance of regime collapse within the next year.

So if North Korea asks us for food aid, what should we say? We should agree, as long as the World Food Program can distribute the food through its own distribution system to every single county, village, Army barracks, and concentration camp. No exceptions. Wouldn’t that be saving a repellent regime? No, that would be a humane way of destroying a repellent regime that was built on isolation and xenophobic mythology.

Updates: The BBC adds that rations have stopped even in South Hwanghae, North Korea’s traditional rice bowl. And if more evidence were needed of why any international food aid must be monitored carefully, the Chosun Ilbo publishes photographs of North Korean army trucks delivering sacks of humanitarian aid — complete with red cross emblem — to army posts along the DMZ.

An equally significant development is the continuing decline of the regime’s control of its border with China. Last September, I told you of the accelerating trends in this direction, and how corruption and low morale were turning the North Korean border guards into toll-takers, drug mules, and deserters. In January, I surveyed the signs that the regime was weakening, but concluded that collapse did not yet appear to be imminent.

It looks imminent now.

The North Korean regime has always depended on isolation to control the thoughts, movements, and resources of the people. Without that isolation, Kim Jong Il’s personality cult dies like a vampire in the daylight.

Now, for a fee, any South Korean journalist can hire a Chinese boatman to float up to North Korea and toss bags of sausages to starving people who pretend — briefly — not to want them. At these “human safaris” along the Yalu River, even ruling party officials are reduced to begging tourists for trinkets. The imperative tone of voice is a hard habit to break:

A moment later, another man appeared on the shore. The guide hinted that he was a “senior member of the North Korean Workers’ Party.” He warned us not to speak Korean. “Give me money,” the man said. We gave him 100 yuan. He demanded more, saying, “Give me ball-point pens and cigarettes.”

The boatman got angry. “You guys are always asking for anything and everything, aren’t you?” We moved another 400 m ahead, when three children waved to us, gesturing as if they were counting money. “Go away,” the guide yelled at them. We met about 10 more North Koreans. They too came quietly near us and took the food we had brought with us. All the North Koreans who got angry at us also ended up taking the food.

The North Korean-Chinese border was literally falling down. Across it, one group of North Korean refugees follows another every day. Those who don’t are treated like animals at home. [Chosun Ilbo]

Some of us grumble about Beijing’s selection as the host of the 2008 Olympics, but if the IOC had picked Toronto, the Chinese Army would probably be massing in Dandong instead of Lhasa right now.

Update 22 Mar 08:

It’s interesting to go back to the immediate aftermath of the floods and read my own analysis of their likely impact. One unsurprising but ironic facet of Roh Moo-Hyun’s lame-duck summit in Pyongyang, which the floods postponed, is the role it apparently played in making the food situation worse:

“The Leaders of Revolution (referring to the nation’s top authorities) suddenly began to suppress market activities around October 2007 when the inter-Korean Summit was just about to take place. The authorities wanted to stop the spread of the ever growing positive attitudes towards South Korea among the public,” reports the magazine.

The magazine also reports about an order issued by the Central Committee of the Workers’ party in October 2007, saying, “The order describes jangmadang as a breeding place of anti-socialist activities which must be cracked down. The order points out that merchants are now spreading a rosy fantasy of the enemy [referring to S. Korea] by trading South Korean goods in the jangmandang, and calls for actions to root out anti-socialist activities.

“The conservatives and privileged groups of North Korea have been exploiting the people by controlling market activities. Gradually, their control has been weakened as the market expanded and those merchants with capital began to trade goods from South Korea and China and made good fortune,” reports the magazine.

“However, the Inter-Korean Summit, held in Pyongyang last October, changed the course of jangamadang (market) development,” says the magazine. The North Korean authorities began strictly regulating the markets for the reason that the South Korean media have begun reporting on the jangmadangs, and moreover that the President of South Korea was visiting North Korea, says the magazine. [Daily NK]

So much for Sunshine opening up North Korea to reform.

Today, nations, including ours, are starting to come to grips with the possibility of a humanitarian disaster:

A U.S. State Department official visited South Korea to assess North Korea’s food situation amid reports of a worsening food shortage in the communist state, a government source here said Thursday. Mark Phelan, an analyst in food security at the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, spent two days in Seoul from Monday for talks with related Unification Ministry officials and aid activists, the source said. [Yonhap]

Phelan and his South Korean hosts are said to have agreed that the food situation in the North will worsen:

Washington reportedly intends to send 500,000 tons of food aid to the impoverished North in line with a six-party agreement on denuclearizing the communist state signed in February last year. However, Pyongyang’s refusal to accept monitoring by U.S. officials of food distribution has been hampering any implementation of the plan, according to reports.

In Washington, State Department Spokesman Tom Casey restates the principles that will govern U.S. humanitarian aid to the North:

Casey summed up the criteria as: first, what is the existing need; second, how does that need balance out against competing needs elsewhere in the world; and third, the ability to ensure that the food provided actually reaches the people in need.

Casey emphasized the weight of transparency in the distribution system, citing that the World Food Program had ceased operations for a time “because they felt that they could not adequately monitor and ensure that foods were reaching the folks there,” and that “it’s important to continue discussions on this issue and if possible, be in a position to be able to provide that kind of support to the people in need in North Korea. [Daily NK]

While I’m glad to see us sticking to our conditions on monitoring — for now — I’m not sure our government grasps the full potential for social chaos and humanitarian disaster if North Korea has now begun its final dissolution into anarchy in earnest. Unfortunately, few Americans grasp how profoundly broken, denuded, and dysfunctional North Korea has become during Kim Jong Il’s reign. (That being said, on balance, the collapse of this unspeakably barbaric regime may well save more lives that it would cost … if other nations’ response is coordinated and efficient.)

How can food be distributed to the blighted interior of a nation whose infrastructure is broken — its railways sagged and buckled, its ports and electrical grid dilapidated?

Are conditions in North Korea so disastrous that not even South Korean companies would invest in what’s left of it?

Has South Korea made plans to breach the DMZ to establish feeding centers and refugee camps?

Who will send task forces in to the concentration camps to feed and care for the tortured souls there? Do we have plans to document and prosecute Kim Jong Il’s crimes against humanity? Would we consider accepting the grave injustice of letting Kim Jong Il and his henchmen escape the gallows if by doing so, we could save lives?

If the security forces shatter into fratricidal factions, how will America, South Korea, and China react? If China moves in, how forcefully would South Korea oppose it? In light of the Roh Administration’s uncooperative approach to updating OPLAN 5029, how quickly can those old differences now be resolved. If the Pentagon is forced to implement OPLAN 5027 instead, has it considered the effect of generations of anti-American indoctrination on ordinary North Koreans?

Would a Chinese intervention effectively re-draw the DMZ, or even perpetuate it in place, thus robbing Koreans of their dream of reunification? Since no one wants war with China, have American or South Korean diplomats started talking to the Chinese about these contingencies?

27 Responses

  1. I have to agree, and since there is really no way to verify every food source, money supply and whatnot, chances are, things are not looking good for Kim Jong Il. As you stated, North Korea has survived massive famine, but affected the countryside while the elites and KPA got their rations. This you know well and I do not have to repeat it.

    Now, with the possible change of the Songun Policy, and a possible destabilization of the power structure, no food for the elites and policy elites mean dissent and Kim can do nothing about it. Now the question I posed today on my own crappy blog (and still researching) is, what could Kim Jong Il do?

    I watched an interesting documentary about the psychological profile of Hitler, and the predictions made of the man were very accurate. So I decided to look up some things about Kim Jong Il. While the information is scant so far, I am sure there is something somewhere that is more extensive.

    Jerrold M. Post, a psychiatrist who founded and was the longtime director of the CIA’s Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior, says Kim’s obsession with eating the best food comes from being the son of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, revered by the propaganda machine as a god-like figure. Post diagnosed the younger Kim as a malign narcissist in large part based on information about his eating habits.

    Now the diagnosis and the food situation is interesting. What I cannot find is what could he do later as his regime starts to crumble around him. Will analysis shed light on this?

    Will he run away?

    Kill himself?

    In desperation attack Seoul?

    Something else?

    I understand it may depend on how other things happen, and things may accelerate so quickly (which I am fully convinced of) he will have little time to react. In that desperation, I am going to guess he will run away especially if the people, especially elites and his mad military turns the guns on him.

    as you said, if this is true, this should very interesting.

  2. I wonder if we’ll start to see a rash of mid to high level folk defecting in the near future? See generals and colonels and provincial chiefs and top regime figures using their resources to cross the land and sea borders to a third country….

    I think that and news of uprisings here and there will be the signal for all concerned nations to kick post-collapse planning into high gear.

    I think another nuke or ICBM test would also be a sign that the end is near – and if the end is near – I’d expect to see this within the next 6 months or so.

    I’d also expect to see DMZ border clashes on a limited scale.

  3. I tend to believe that if the food situation is as bad as claimed the Chinese will do everything possible to send food to North Korea. Could you imagine an Olympics with North Korea going through famine and on the verge of collapse? With the on going Tibet problems I just see no way the Chinese will allow this happen.

  4. GI: I was wondering if China has enough to send to thwart the problems. The DPRK is a good buffer from USFK and you are right; if the regime would go bye-bye, that means all sorts of problems not only for China but the ROK as well.

  5. If the end is near, then the guns will likely turn inward at regime opponents rather than at Seoul. Then look for Chinese divisions to swoop into the North when collapse is immiment.

  6. I doubt the Chinese would invade before the Olympics, especially now that they’re busy quelling unrest in the colonies. But I do think our State Department ought to be worrying less about dealing with lame duck tyrants and more about reaching some sort of accord with the Chinese about how to deal with a post-collapse North Korea.

    Let’s hope no one is dumb enough to agree to give the ChiComs a “temporary” occupation zone or, for that matter, to put American ground forces into North Korea.

    My next project may be a post on collapse scenarios, and how we should respond to each.

  7. Depending on loyalty, the regime will come to the idea that border clashes will bring about tension which will bring about a change in the amount the US is willing to give the North. They have proven their track record there.

    On China and food aid, a key question we can’t answer is how much this slide to the end, if they are sliding faster now, stems directly from the sanctions the US imposed last year. A question that fits in is how much have those sanctions been lifted since Bush flip-flopped.

    If the US sanctions are the primary push that started the slide to the end, there is a chance it was “the straw that broke the camel’s back” and almost no amount of Chinese aid will stop the collapse.

    However, if the sanctions have not set off a chain of events on top of the already desperate situation, if the sanctions just caused acute pain, the China should have enough resources to put Pyongyang back on life-support.

    Which brings us to the last realization —- that the end is going to come, no matter what, whether the slide to doom is speeding to that conclusion now or 10 years from now:

    The Soviet Union and China pumping massive amounts of material wealth into the North could not create a stable state over a 40 year period of giving (and giving).

    China is not going to try to repeat the Soviet performance. It isn’t going to try to make North Korea a world class state. It will simply try to keep it alive.

    And that means no reform in the North. Pyongyang would refuse to reform anyway, but even if China pumped in massive amounts of aid, baring reform, the North would still be doomed, just with a longer lease on life.

    Since China won’t go massive with aid, we have a continual tightrope walking situation and there is no telling when and where and how the tipping point will be reached.

    But we will reach it one day —- which is what makes the Chris Hill way of doing business with the North all the more depressing.

    All we are doing is buying time —-

    time in which the outside world does not have to face a terribly difficult situation —

    —- and time in which the North Korean people are brutalized, terrorized, and killed.

    Depressing all the way around…..

  8. I fail to see how it would be in the ‘best interests’ of either Beijing or Seoul to allow the current regime in Pyongyang to fold.

    Seoul will do just about anything to avoid having to face the economic realities that would result from a ‘Berlin Wall Redux’.

    And Beijing may yet ‘save the day’ to offset the negative pressures currently being caused by Lhasa.

  9. I seriously doubt as well that Kim will start a war because it is a war he cannot win. If Kim was on the verge of collapse due to the food shortage I would look to him to work out some kind of exile agreement with the Chinese and allow them to occupy the North.

    However I just do not see this happening before the Olympics. I would think the Chinese would expend whatever resources it has to fend off a famine in NK that would lead to the regime’s collapse. The food shortage would have to be extremely bad if the Chinese do not have the resources to fill the amount of food needed to at least keep the people in Pyongyang fed.

  10. I don’t think Kim Jong Il would start a war – on purpose – but do believe it is a good possibility that he could set things in motion that ends in war.

    Pyongyang has shown in the past a willingness to piss off China when the regime felt it need to nudge the world community along. I can easily picture Kim using the opportunity of the Olympics to stir the pot. It is like Kim to seek to snatch global attention when the opportunity arises in the region.

    Border clashes, ICBM and nuke tests, sea battles, and so on, are all things Pyongyang routinely does at times like the Olympics being in China.

    The problem for Kim is that he can’t always depend on the global community caving in after a NK stunt — even though he has watched us enough to gain confidence in the tactic.

    But at some point of regime instability, the usual bag of tricks can spiral out of control.

    They could lead to medium to long term cut backs in aid — which could strangle the regime.

    Depending on how close to collapse the regime might be, provocations could push discontent regime loyalists to move against the regime. The more provocative the regime gets near collapse, the less likely top regime people will get golden parachutes by the US and world community.

    Because, many of those elites know North Korea can’t win a war, but some of them will think like me — that Kim Jong Il’s personality is such that he’d rather run the risk of falling into a war or inviting nation-killing sanctions and then go down with a fight rather than going in the other direction of temporarily appeasing the US and Japan and others.

    Part of my thinking on this is also that the North Korean people could become bolder in the situations mentioned above. I would bet that one reason revolts have not occurred in North Korea is due in large measure to a lack of confidence that some nation will step in to finish off the regime if the people were to act.

    But, if Kim Jong Il reaches a certain desperation point, and pulls out his usual bag of tricks, and it fails to gain concessions but does produce tougher sanctions, and things start getting worse, not just the elites might figure that the time is ripe to act and invite deeper outside interference from China and/or the US by means of open rebellion.

    I think it is a good bet that the increase of North Korean refugees in Thailand as reported recently is directly tied to the election of Lee and the GNP into the Blue House in South Korea.

    In short, I think the closer the regime gets to collapse, the more Kim Jong Il will try provocations to save himself.

    But, the closer and more provocative the regime leadership becomes, the more likely it is that it will be like setting off sparks in a hay field which eventually ignite a chain of events that speeds up the regime’s downfall.

    And what I am talking about might be something like what happened in Germany in World War II when they tried to assassinate Hitler — with a key difference being the bulk of the North Korean people likely despise the regime on a much wider scale than in the Hitler case.

  11. One thing to consider:

    Will China take food out of its own mouth (creating some unrest in China) to feed a traditional enemy?

    A regime like China has to consider public opinion. They may be able to withstand a 30 – 70 split. They can’t deal with a 10 – 90 split.

    Even totalitarian regimes have to deal with public opinion.

  12. I think the Chinese would be willing to take food out of Chinese mouths to feed North Koreans because they can squash Chinese protesters and keep them quiet. Also keep in mind the Chinese can buy food to send to North Korea from a 3rd country.

    A North Korean collapse before or during the Olympics would be an absolute disaster for the Chinese and they will be eager to prevent in anyway possible. However, who knows what will happen? North Korea is a very difficult country to make predictions with and thus the US should be prepared for all possible collapse scenarios which currently we are not.