Good Friends: Some Districts of Pyongyang Near Starvation

While some reports continue to suggest that North Korea’s elite is still surviving by spending their savings in food markets, it also appears that the elite isn’t what it once was. Without as much food to go around, it no longer includes the entire population of Pyongyang or the “core” areas surrounding it. Today, according to Good Friends, the inhabitants of several districts in the privileged capital may be surviving on watery gruel. Nampo, the port city that serves Pyongyang, is also experiencing famine conditions, as are the areas just outside the capital.

The hardest-hit area is South Hwanghae, the North’s main food-producing region, which was spared the worst of the Great Famine a decade ago. The reason — the regime has seized most of the province’s crops to feed the military.

This year’s famine is affecting even key defense industries whose workers have never had to miss their rations before. In the past, workers who suddenly lost their rations either starved or adapted by learning to trade. The state-owned industries they abandoned largely ceased to function. This year’s famine could leave North Korea’s surviving industrial production severely stunted.

North Korea Today News Flash – No. 129

People Subsisting on Thin Porridge

With the suspension of food distribution in some parts of Pyongyang, the number of people who are subsisting on watery porridge is on the rise. Residents of areas like Sadong district사동구역, Ryukpo district력포구역, Rakrang District락랑구역 and Seungho district승호구역, are likely to be resorting to these measures. The food stores in these areas are completely empty and have closed their doors, and factories and businesses that used to distribute food on their own have suspended distribution because of the lack of food.

[Famine-risk map of Pyongyang; click for full size]

Chairman Kim Jung-il has several times ordered that the food rations for Pyongayng to be guaranteed that even in April, the chairman has called in the trade minister, Secretary of the Pyongyang City Party, Chairman of the People’s Assembly to ensure that the food rations will be provided to people in the city of Pyongyang.

A part of a shipment of food that entered the country through Sinuiju was immediately released to residents of Pyongyang, but because of the overall lack of food, food distribution was suspended again shortly thereafter. Households that are well off and live in the central districts of Pyongyang have, at minimum, 6 months of food in reserve, in addition to US dollars, which gives them the option of buying food if they run out. However, in other districts that are occupied by people with less power, households are more reliant on food distribution by the government and have few other options when food distribution is suspended.

One official in Pyongyang said, “I recently went to Gangwon Province because I had some work to do there. It was on that trip that I truly realized that the extreme disparity in living standards between Pyongyang and its outlying regions. It seems like another world in areas outside of Pyongyang. The living conditions of residents are so poor that I couldn’t help tearing up. Compared to other areas, Pyongyang is like heaven. If even people in Pyongyang are subsisting on porridge water, it is easy to believe that people in other areas are dying of starvation

People’s Supreme Assembly of the Nampo City Request Emergency Food Aid

Conditions in Nampo city are much worse than in Pyongyang. All of the food stores within the city have closed their doors, and even the factories and businesses that were designated as important by the government stopped providing food rations long ago. The officials in Nampo all say that “because of the pressing food situation, the young, the elderly, and all of the citizens are facing death and human casualties.

The officials went on to say that if the government wishes to prevent large-scale deaths due to starvation, food aid must enter the country as soon as possible. The People’s Assembly of the city is urgently requesting the central government for food aid.

Nampo’s food crisis began in December of last year, and food distribution was suspended beginning in February of this year. Only the workers at Nampo’s port receive a small amount of food rations, and even the workers who work at Nampo’s artillery and military armaments factories are facing difficult times.

The central government released party funds on a one time basis in order to provide a month of food rations to workers in military related factories such as these and other important industries such as specially designated businesses and factories. If these workers were like the other citizens who never received a grain of rice from the government, they would have resorted to working in the markets or farming earlier, but because these workers were all used to receiving their food rations without fail, the cessation of food distribution has had an even greater effect on them.

An official from Nampo said, “Originally, there were plans to get rid of the markets on April 15th, the Day of the Sun 태양절 (Birthday of Kim Il Sung), but now they are unable to get rid of the markets and the policy became vague. Things that can be regulated are being regulated, but the minimum age requirement is not being enforced. Since the amount of food stuffs are so scarce, the authority are fearing that the public reaction would worsen even further. Women who were arrested for offense, often they are physically protesting, for instance, scratching the police’s face or grab on the ears of the officers when the women’s goods are being confiscated.

Once again, the obvious cautions apply — these reports are hearsay, and although subsequent reports have largely borne out Good Friends’s reports this year, there’s no way to confirm most of this independently. You can read two more new dispatches from Good Friends here:

nkt127-eng1.pdf

nkt128-eng1.pdf