Defector Newspaper Reports Food Protests in North Korea

Amid reports  that North Hamgyeong Province (among others) totters on the brink of famine,  the  North Korean regime is desperately trying to shut down markets and regain state control of the food supply.  The regime has long used food to sustain those it trusts and control those it doesn’t.  I’ve written about  North Korea’s accelerating food  crisis  in some detail recently.

map-of-food-protests.jpg

 

Map of protest locations (click to enlarge)

This year, food shortages are reported even in elite Pyongyang, a place the regime has long fed at the expense of every other part of the country.  Some analysts believe that the markets are the only thing standing between North Korea and a second Great Famine.  The last one probably killed millions.

(New readers:  the Daily NK is run in large part by North Korean defectors.  It relies mostly on clandestine reports and rumors, since that’s about all the reporting that’s possible from inside North Korea.  I have written some pieces for them.)

Recently the regime banned women under the age of 49 from trading, but  fear of the regime is fading faster than firing squads can restore it.  In the city of Haeju, once  North Korea’s rice bowl, women literally fought back when  the security forces  tried to shut down their stalls:

In Haeju, South Hwanghae Province on February 5th, physical fights between young women trying to do business in the corners of markets and the guards regulating the markets erupted. Consequently, nine people, including Lee Chun Hee (38), were detained by the People’s Safety Agency, reported a newsletter disseminated by Good Friends, a nongovernmental aid organization to North Korea, on the 19th.

The newsletter revealed, “Women who have been detained underwent severe investigations, being asked “˜Who is your ringleader?” and on the 4th day, Lee, who could not endure the investigations, confessed that she was the mastermind and was retained while the rest of the women were all released.   [Daily NK]

The Daily  NK  reports that  the authorities have since quit enforcing the edict.  An even more remarkable event followed an attempt by security forces  to enforce  the ban  in the northeastern city of Chongjin, according the the NGO Good Friends:   

[…]  “In Chongjin, North Hamkyung Province on March 3rd, a mass occurrence by female merchants took place, so the city authorities have permitted sales by all females without an age restriction.

The market guards, including in Soonam and Shinam Districts, removed the products sold by females under the permitted age limit to outside of the market. Female merchants who were indignant by this collectively raised objections to the market guards, “If we cannot conduct business, the heads of households cannot go to work either.

Immediately after the mass protests of the female merchants, the Chongjin authorities reported the incident to the central Party, but it has been known that due to the lack of a clear policy, all women could engage in sales without a restriction in age.

The source relayed the news, “The enforcement units of the Chongjin Party Committee reluctantly permitted sales by female merchants, but this case has not been approved by the Central Party, so there is significant concern regarding punishment at a later time.   [Id.]

This is not the first report we’ve heard of a protest in North Korea over market restrictions.  In  December 2006, the Daily NK also reported that approximately 100 merchants and family members  in the city of Hoeryong protested at a local government office  when the regime sold them trading licenses, then refused to let them trade in their local market.  The regime later executed one of the “leaders” and arrested 20 others.  That was the last we heard of them.

Protests are still very rare in North Korea, but they may be less rare than you think.  I’ve compiled a detailed chronology of incidents of dissent, protest, and mutiny in North Korea.  You’ve probably never heard  of most of these events  because Kim Jong Il’s regime is very good at keeping secrets.

Desperate people do brave things.  Chongjin was one of the cities that was hardest hit by the Great Famine, and its  people have felt hunger and watched it kill their loved ones.  They’re willing to risk a firing squad —  or worse  — to trade, because if there are no rations, trading is the only way to  survive.

If we have begun to see public disturbances this early in the spring — traditionally, the leanest time of year in North Korea — it’s likely we’ll see more disturbances and, in all probability, a brutal reaction by the regime to restore its control.  North Korea’s population is spread out fairly evenly across its land area, and most towns are isolated from one another by mountainous terrain, poor infrastructure, and no efficient means for people to communicate between cities.  The regime can survive a significant amount of localized unrest in the countryside, as long as the security forces remain loyal and united.  But with shortages reaching even Pyongyang, even that is called into question this year.

7 Responses

  1. I hate to get my hopes up about NK’s collapse, but these stories you’ve been posting the past couple of months really give me optimism. But then again, I must remind myself that KJI will stop at nothing to remain in power. Wholesale slaughter of entire towns would not be out of the realm of possibility if it meant he could retain power. If only the NK military would reject their fealty to him…

  2. interesting comment Rob as i’ve been savoring/waiting for that CeauÅŸescu moment for KJI.

    do you think a military unit could slaughter an entire town/region without feeling any regret?

  3. Hello James. Yes, I absolutely believe a NK military unit would slaughter a town. Especially if that military unit is from a distant province. It’s a common practice of Communist nations to use military units to destroy/subdue towns and provinces they don’t originate from. That way there’s less apprehension to using violence on the rebelling town/province–they’re not the military unit’s “people”.

  4. Rob is absolutely right, and some North Korean defectors confirmed it in a group interview I posted here several years ago. Yes, I think most soldiers would obey orders to fire. They’re more likely to desert then mutiny.

  5. The situation seems to be getting worse, and only time will tell if it will escalate.I am starting a post about a Good Friends report where the rationing has stopped since last March. This may be old news now, but according to the report, shortages are happening in a place called the Pyongsung market.

    I did not know what the Pyongsung market was until I looked it up, and very little information was available about it. There may be a lot of info, but maybe my Google-foo is not up to snuff. However, this PDF discussed what Pyongsung is. According to that paper:

    These days, most Chinese imports being brought into the country through Shinuiju are coming through Pyongsung before being sold to to various regions throughout the country. Traders from the east coast cities such as Hamheung, Wonsan, as well as Sariwon, Haeju, Nampo and other areas regularly travel to Pyongsung in order top stock up on goods.

    Now if Pyongsung is the hub for goods for other major cities to get supplies and is hard to find food there, that is not a good sign for the regime if the elite cannot get their rations. Also, Relief Web reported:

    As we enter March, more and more farm worker households in South Hwanghae Province are making ends meet by eating gruel instead of rice because of the acute lack of food. Strangely enough, the rice prices in this traditional bread basket region are higher than those in North Hwanghae Province, prompting even the rice merchants to exclaim, “This is something we have never seen before in the republic.” In most farm areas in South Hwanghae Province, including Baechun, Yeonahn, and Ahnak Counties, the households were given only 40kg of rice in November. A new year has come and new season has turned since then, but so far there is no news of additional food distribution.

    The emphasis I did not get. Does this mean only 40kg of food was rationed to all of those counties to individual homes? If that is true, that is very, very bleak. Furthermore, there seems to be some flashback to the Great Leap Forward:

    Because of problems with falsified food production reports in Uiju County in North Pyongan Province, inspections of local farm collectives by the military prosecutors’ office have begun. The Daemun-ri Farm Collective had reported that it had attained the production goal, but the actual amount that came into the Grain Policy Division(Local Food Administration Unit; ) of the local army was a far cry from the reported amount. Ultimately, this discrepancy resulted in prosecutors combing through the production numbers of every single working group in the farm collective and discovered that, even in one working group, there existed tons of discrepancy between the reported and delivered food production amount. The army decided to expand its inspection efforts, assuming that this is not an isolated incident. In response, one official said, “How are you going to solve this problem with inspections? It’s not a problem that has been around for one or two years. It’s an old problem throughout the republic.”

    and

    […]”this year is going to be a difficult time even for mid- and low-level officials,” which demonstrates that North Korea’s chronic food shortages have worsened and affect food rations even for government officials[…]

    So this says a lot if true.