Bleak Signs for North Korea’s Food Situation (Updated)

Original Post, 10 March 2010:

This week’s papers have several disturbing indicators suggesting that a sudden deterioration of the food situation is in the works. First was this report that even shops and hotels for foreigners in Pyongyang had run out of food; then, Robert linked to a report that kids can now seen begging even in Pyongyang.

Depending on what you choose to believe, however, this may not be an entirely new development. Our friend Christine Ahn, no less, reports seeing kids begging during a 2004 “solidarity” visit to Pyongyang.

“I went to North Korea as a peace activist. North Koreans were living in very difficult conditions. Eight-year-old children were loitering around the hotel, shaking because of hunger. Even soldiers were extremely thin.

From which she concludes:

One thing that surprised me was the mental strength of the North Koreans. I strongly felt their pride and urge to preserve their system.

So, Christine, you could feel the urge of starving eight-year-olds to preserve the system? Do tell! Still, I tend to think that a person who prefers to speak of North Korea’s “collective spirit” and complete absence of sexist billboards would not have mentioned the hungry kids unless she’d actually seen them. Ahn says the kids were “loitering.” To ask her to concede that they were most likely begging may be asking too much.

In other dreary news, at least one “leading” expert projects that North Korea’s grain production will continue to decline. Meanwhile, a regime crackdown on illegal border crossing has caused food prices to rise in North Korea.

The regime, for its part, thinks the answer to low food production is more state intervention, not less. It is offering financial incentives to party officials and their wives in Pyongyang to move to the countryside, something that would be tantamount to suicide for city folk unaccustomed to the hardships and privations of rural life.

Civic group North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity said the party held seminars at party chapters on Feb. 23 promising W10,000 in cash and 120 kg of food for households if they voluntarily move to farms.

The Workers’ Party recently distributed copies of a training manual for senior officials on fortifying rural bases. “To increase grain production the most important thing is to make up for a shortage in the rural workforce. This is why blue-collar workers and office workers in urban areas, senior officials in particular, should lead the vanguard in the campaign.” The regime is urging the wives of senior officials in the party and security agencies to set an example for others.

The regime is afraid of the possibility of mounting public discontent if it forces people to relocate at a time when they are seething in the wake of a disastrous currency reform. The regime is giving indoctrination classes to senior officials to move to rural areas and urging them to set an example, news media speculated.

But the group said such efforts would not be effective in persuading ordinary North Koreans to move to rural areas because living conditions there are very bad. “It’s very likely that the regime will end up forcibly relocating them,” it added.

The report goes on to predict that the regime won’t find many volunteers and will end up relocating people forcibly. But moving people from the top of the food chain to the bottom is a potential source of instability when it creates anxiety within the ruling class. This is a story worth watching.

Update, 12 March 2010: The Daily NK has more on the regime’s invitation to the elite to banish themselves to the countryside. The elite seem more interested in unloading their savings on expensive South Korean consumer goods before their money becomes worthless or gets confiscated.