Flowers Bloom, Birds Fly North, North Korean Harvest Fails

Even when you consider the potential consequences, it’s getting difficult to sustain a state of alarm about North Korea’s food situation when alarming statistics about food prices in North Korea’s black markets have become just so much perennial growth:

Except that there is a difference: unlike last year’s famine scare, when the price of rice (the food of the “loyal” classes) rose as much as the price of corn (the food of the “expendable” classes), this year, it’s corn prices that are shooting up. Open Radio offers some explanations for why this might be, and reports, contrary to what the ChiCom press would have us believe, that food continues to flow freely across the border from China, most likely under the tight control of the regime’s discriminatory rationing system.

China has refused for years to donate its food aid to North Korea through the World Food Program, channeling its aid to the regime itself and undercutting the World Food Program’s efforts to force the regime to accept a transparent and non-discriminatory distribution system.

Pyongyang residents’ favored place in this year’s rations are not surprising, but Open Radio also reports that remote, traditionally disfavored and discontented Hoeryong is also getting 100% of its rations. Officially, that’s related to the fact that Hoeryong is the birthplace of Kim Jong Il’s mother, although Hoeryong’s history of dissent and its proximity to China may mean that North Korea is trying to avoid an outbreak of rebellion that would be difficult to keep secret.

Update: Related thoughts from Richard Halloran.