North Korea Suffers Record Cold Amid Coal Shortage

In a worrisome new sign of catastrophic climate change, a record cold winter in North Korea suggests that the mere presence of two Current TV reporters may be enough to invoke The Gore Effect:

Citing data from the North’s meteorological research unit, the KCNA reported that between Dec. 24 and Jan. 19, the average daytime high temperature had been minus 4.9 degrees Celsius while the morning low averaged minus 15.6 degrees. Both figures, it said, were 3.2 degrees lower than usual. “This is the first time since 1945 that the maximum daytime temperature has remained below zero for nearly a month,” the KCNA quoted an official as saying. On Jan. 16, the mercury dropped to 18.2 degrees below zero in Pyongyang and other parts of the country, a mark some 5 to 10 degrees colder than in normal winters, it said.

And at the same time, North Korea is suffering from an acute shortage of coal:

A source in Hyaesan, Yanggang Province reports on January 20th that “The New Year has seen a dramatic worsening in the area’s electricity supplies. Power has been out for twenty days straight. Nationwide the situation is similar, even in Pyongyang, where although there is some supply regular people are getting no more than one or two hours a day.” Because of this North Koreans are not merely undergoing the usual daily hardships but are beginning to wonder if the country is on its last legs.

“Power stations,” the source went on, “have insufficient coal supplies and so electricity production is out of the question. There’s an acute energy crisis.” In a stymying vicious circle, the lack of electric power necessary to drive the motors which rid the mine of stagnant water means the shaft can’t be entered in order to dig the coal necessary to produce the electricity the country needs. And because of the recent cessation in distribution to the miners of their daily 800 grams of rations, workers have downed tools and left the mine. [Open News]

Not only that, but North Korea’s untimely success at reducing greenhouse gas emissions will assuredly make things even worse.

Several weeks ago, a Korean source told me that the electricity shortage had brought industrial facilities to a halt but had at least left plenty for homes. Apparently, the situation has been deteriorating.

The general power supply situation is not as problematic in the summer when the heavy rainfall North Korea receives enables it to produce hydroelectric power. In the winter, a reduction in hydroelectric power has usually led to a worsening of the supply situation. But the situation this winter is considerably worse than usual. Amidst this power crisis, an official declared, “The railways are the arteries of North Korea and when they come to a standstill the country’s heart stops beating.” Factories and economic production has been killed off and all power redirected to the railways, the official added. Most factories and businesses having ceased production, the people have gone to farming villages to help plow and labor in the fields.

North Koreans know better than anyone that their country has been on its last legs for years, and why the system still persists. From within, it’s in an advanced state of decay (on the other hand, no coal means no cell phones, and no reading at night, and even less time and energy to think about politics). But just as fresh paint can conceal rotten wood for years, the state’s system of control maintains the appearance of stability. The people still lack the political consciousness, cohesion, organization, and firepower to challenge the state, but they’ve now reached the point where a well-funded and resourceful underground could take root and spread quickly, thanks in part to the extent of official corruption and disillusionment. This would still take years to shake the rotten structure. Of course, a military mutiny is always a possibility, but one has to wonder what kind of system it would install.

19 Responses

  1. It has been impressive before how the proletariat in communist, dysfunctional nations are able to withstand pain and suffering more than the masses in capitalist societies – and highly ironic given the amount of propaganda promoting “revolution” and the dictatorship of the workers/peasants — but what the North Korean people have suffered and continue to endure is truly astonishing…

    I get the feeling from time to time that they – the masses – are going to shock us one day. That a “miracle” is going to flash across our TV screens.

    We can look back at the mood across the world when the Soviet Union and Eastern European communism fell. We weren’t really expecting it, and events in the street seemed to drive everything. The protests in Moscow. The fall of the Berlin Wall.

    It didn’t turn out well for those in Tianamen Square, but I have a feeling the end in North Korea might very well startle us with a great awakening of the North Korean people and the very rapid collapse of the regime.

  2. …”their daily 800 grams of rations”… This was the ration for workers in Leningrad during the first year of the siege, and was universally considered far too low, by workers and their administrators.

  3. The defectors I interviewed in late Novemeber told me that the only way they keep warm is to gather together under large plastic sheets in order to conserve body heat. For most NKs there is no heat this winter.

  4. KCJ, that depends on whether those NK defectors find China first. Even those Elite in Pyongyang now realize that a warm cloth given by the generallismo is more worthless than a cold sheet found in the streets. The DPRK can no longer claim that the Americans are responsible for the misfortune of the Korean Race. The Korean Race is doing just fine. The United States holds our Commintment to a Brilliant Twin of the Korean Peninsula, we choose the Southern Korean. If the Northern Korean twin ever attacks again even a single hair on the head of a South Korean, then the Southern Korean twin has full backing by the United States to make sure “Juche” NEVER existed.

    The U.S. would turn Pyongyang into molten lava if Seoul ever gave us the orders to.

  5. And that is the greatest misunderstaning when it come to American soldiers stationed in South Korea. If the Americans were oppressive Colonizers of Korea, then why does Korea excell ?

    Achiever should never be fallen prey to Beggar after Mercy is denied from beggar.

    South Korea at the next inter-Korean meeting should remind the North that the ROK will allow Satellite disruption of KCNA broadcasts into the DPRK.

  6. Ditto81, “molten lava” — I don’t believe the USA will ever use the nuclear bomb against another nation unless that nation first uses a nuclear weapon against the mainland of the USA. That is “no first use” and it is still a principle. That principle is one reason why the possession of nuclear weapons is such a difficult problem for the USA in its support of its ally South Korea — we are unlikely to use it in direct opposition to any invasion by the DPRK, even if the invasion follows a nuclear detonation in the South.

    Recently, the Obama administration issued a new policy statement which certainly can be read as approving second use in support of an ally — and I am sure that has set the DPRK back, and enthused the ROK. The statement is part of the problem that we face with unconventional warfare generally, where states like the DPRK and Burma and Iran and Pakistan — and then various guerilla and terrorist groups — seek to possess such weapons, and our military response (which needs to be clear, certain, and known to be effective) is still in development.

    We don’t want to say openly that “we’ll deal with offshore nuclear attacks on a case-by-case basis” — but that’s close to present, non-deterring, policy. The closest we can get to certitude is the reprehensible DPRK — and even then, we’re not likely ever to turn Pyongyang into molten lava with a nuke strike. We hope instead that the use of a nuke by the DPRK would be so universally condemned (by Japan for its own historical reasons) and by China too that there would be another UN invasion, with all nations united, and the end to the DPRK. But the likelihood of nukes on the North is exceptionally low even then.

  7. Not to mention that reducing Pyongyang to any base substance would just prove what the North Korean regime desperately wants its people to believe: that America (and the rest of the world, for that matter) seeks to destroy them.

    It is only the current North Korean leadership that we oppose. The indiscriminate slaughter of a nuclear weapon is not something that should even be considered. If the Norks nuke Norcal, maybe I’ll feel differently. But until then more restraint, and a more precise choice of target, is called for. Personally, I like the “blow up Kim Jong-Il’s hidden palaces” idea that was floated in a previous thread.

  8. I don’t want to speak for Ditto81, but I believe he is referring to capability more than likelihood.
    Every day that Pyongyang delays a “big war” (as opposed to a limited war like sinking the Cheonan and shelling Yeonpyong-do) their conventional capabilities deteriorate. Their USSR era tanks, jets, ships, weaponry, communications infrastructure, etc… are all rusting and decaying under the commie-red rumps of the KPA. Time is not on the side of Pyongyang when it comes to conventional war capability. Conversely, the ROK and its allies are increasing their strategic and operational capabilities by the day. In this Cold War, the ROK are following the US playbook that defeated the USSR – outspend the bastards and force them to either collapse or capitulate. The problem is that the center of gravity in the DPRK is not nuclear power or conventional war capability – it is religion. Until the Juche cult fails, they regime will continue to rally the people behind the “sacred” cause of reunification under the eternal leader/father Kim Il-sung. So while the conventional capabilities are necessary, they are probably not decisive. The religious war between the Juche cultists and the ROK Christian evangelists is the real front, and my money is on the ROK missionaries.

  9. What really is the Gore Effect, and does it apply only anecdotally, or is there a body of evidence derived from systematic scientific evaluation? Here are 2 unpopular interpretations from the Urban Dicitonary:

    “The phenomenon whereby right-wing climate change denialists grasp onto any weather event not involving wildfire occurring in the same hemisphere that Al Gore is visiting and use it to “prove” that climate change is a myth.
    Al Gore visited Brisbane, Australia last week. Brisbane’s average temperature at this time of year is 23.4 degrees Celsius. During Gore’s visit the temperature peaked at 23.3 degrees Celsius. Groupthinking right-wing bloggers have declared the Gore Effect active in Brisbane, Australia

    Refusal of an audience to grasp even the most basic model of climate change, even after it is explained, preferring to smirk at its absurdity.
    Hey, we may have a tragic, unnecessary war, an exploding deficit, and overseas torture chambers, but at least we don’t have to pay attention to the Gore effect.”

    The scientists tell us that due to increased CO2, the weather swings more radically than before, including lower lows. Something about changes in the seawater affecting currents, salinity, humidity, winds, etc. Don’t most meterologists agree on the overall warming trend on the Earth, whether man-made or not?

  10. Here are your facepalm moments of the day:

    1) The NGO Council for Cooperation with North Korea, an umbrella organization of 56 aid groups that prop up the Kim Jong-il regime and reward it for it’s economic mismanagement distribute humanitarian aid to the North “expects” to be granted permission next week to resume large-scale humanitarian shipments to the North.

    2) The rumor floating around these days is that the North asked Washington for 500,000 tons of humanitarian aid via the New York channel and the Obama administration reacted “postively.” James Steinberg apparantly raised the issue during his recent visit. Seoul had to go out of it’s way to deny this rumor.

    How stupid are our leaders? Seriously….how do people who would probably otherwise be confined to group homes for the intellectually challenged manage to get into the halls of power?

  11. david woolley, The United States of America is not afraid of Nuclear Technology, nor any other of our OWN Advanced Inventions. We are afraid of our Progress for progress sake, not our Weapons. As I have said before, and say again, We Americans are not afraid of killing every single Human Being on this Planet if the U.S.A. were ever really under attack, including ourselves. It is not just by chance that the Americans are exploring and surveying distant Galaxies and Planets. The truth is that if the U.S. Falls, it Literally will be the last Bastion of Human Nations to do so.

  12. ditto81… it appears that you are General Ripper to my Bud Turgidson! I missed the irony in your prior posts. Sorry for that.

  13. Don’t most meterologists agree on the overall warming trend on the Earth, whether man-made or not?

    But the “man-made or not” is the whole core to Gore’s and other’s effort to curtail industry – (an effort to reverse the industrial revolution that certain segments of society have been fighting since the industrial revolution first gained traction).

    Scientist have known that temperatures fluctuate over the long term. The Earth cools and warms up for long stretches of time. What is has not done for eons is — swing to extremes – particularly ice ages like have occurred in the past.

    Gore and friends want to attack big business, industrialism, and the kind of consumerism typical in capitalistic rich nations by saying the Earth is spiraling toward utter destruction due to man-made global warming.

    If the climate is warming as part of a natural fluctuation in temperatures, which means it will eventually move to a period of cooling down some decades/centuries later, it would completely destroy Gore and crew’s effort.

  14. Meteorology tells one what the weather is likely to be in the near future. Climatology (if it exists as a science) is merely a branch of history, assessing what the climate of the earth was in the past. It is a fundamental misuse of history to use it to predict the future. This fundamental point underlies all our doubts about inevitable tectonic, solar or anthropogenic global warming.

    You can’t use the past to predict the future.

    So global warming cannot identify in advance the number of blankets Little Kim will use any night of this winter.

  15. You can’t use the past to predict the future.

    Here I have to disagree: Science is founded on observation on which you formulate possible explanations then test them.

    The problem with Gore and crew is that they are taking relatively current data and drawing the most drastic conclusions without a solid foundation of experimental results or historical data. The climate was warming for some decades and they trumpeted the idea the warming would continue until the world as we know it comes to an end.

  16. Suppose we have a block of ice on the floor, and that we turn up the thermostat. If the ice were melting, we’d have to mop it up, so it’s not melting. Okay, it’s melting, but the areas where the melt water if flowing are actually cooling, so the room isn’t warming.

    Sadly, China keeps putting more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, because it’s ruled by a thuggish Mandarin class, impervious to obvious facts and simple logic.

  17. Chou En Lai was probably the last member of the Mandarin class to rule in China. It was a distinguished intellectual group that is easy to pillory, but on the whole was self-made and elitist, which is not altogether bad. Mao’s policies in forcing crude proletarian leadership and punishing class enemies, including The Great Leap Forward, 1000 Flowers Bloom, Red Guards, destroyed the mandarinate, and it is doubtful if any senior member of the governing class can claim a mandarin grandfather.

    As for the coal powered energy plants that “put carbon dioxide” into the atmosphere == how, Glans, would you propose supplying power to 1.5 billion people who lack significant oil resources?

  18. Gore is the front man for a new industry, designed to pillage corporations and small business alike, and we the JQ public will also feel the drain in the form of taxes, fees, fines, etc.

    Even local police cash in on pollution credits when cars are towed and stored a minimum of 30 days and more than a few owners decide not to pay more than the car is worth. They prey on the easy targets: scavengers exiting recycle centers, for example, and take the car/truck for the least of violations: third tail light not lighting. They put working people out of their jobs instead of using their manpower for real crime fighting. A waste of our tax dollars and a burden on our economy.
    Just wait until cap and trade goes full swing, and we’ll all see the side effects, down to the cash hidden under mattresses nationwide. The green police will get their green, global warming or not.

    The real Gore effect will be measured by how much more in taxes, fees, fines, etc. we all will be forced to pay.

  19. Ma Pae, Gore did not invent the concept of pollution credits. Economists at least since the 1980s have proposed the concept as a way of gradually reducing pollution in a way that is cheapest and most efficient, by allowing those who can do it more easily or more innovatively to do so more and then get the financial reward from those who are unable or unwilling to make the cuts themselves.

    The concept of pollution credits has already worked for reducing acid rain, soot, and ground-level ozone, sometimes through legislation signed by Republicans.

    Just sayin’.