Category: Famine & Food Aid

It’s not news to readers of this site, but North Koreans’ views about their overlords are a bit more complex than the invincible one-hearted unity of Arirang pixels: Public discontent is simmering in North Korea after the hardline communist regime imposed tighter restrictions on market trading in an attempt to reassert its control over the state, observers say. [….] The latest crackdown began after elections on March 8 for a new parliament, according to Good Friends, a Seoul-based research group...

North Korea has refused a new consignment of American food aid, and has ordered five American aid groups to leave by the end of this month. Why do this, you may ask? Evidently, just to be assholes: Joy Portella, a spokeswoman for one of the groups affected by the decision to stop accepting food aid, Mercy Corps, said they were ordered to leave with any reason being given. “North Korea has informed the United States that it does not wish...

The Washington Post certainly has become a better paper now that someone other than Glenn Kessler is covering North Korea. A year after this excellent report, Blaine Harden follows up to explain how in North Korea, change comes to North Korea from the bottom up, despite the regime’s best efforts, through the desperation of starving people unwilling to accept their expendable status, rather than because the regime is receptive to reform or openness. Change is coming to North Korea, but...

We’ve seen a great deal of conflicting information about the food situation inside North Korea recently, but Marcus Noland and Stephen Haggard have a new paper out that claims that the situation is still precarious for many in the provinces. They conclude that last year, the food situation was as bad as at any time since the famine, and that despite a slightly improved harvest, people are still going hungry because the food is being allocated unevenly. Read the whole...

Not surprisingly, the North reneged on the agreements it made with USAID to get food aid. Its interest is in feeding its elite, our interest is in feeding those in greatest need, and there’s little overlap between those two groups. It’s more surprising to see Americans with the courage to hold North Koreans to their commitments. We are now learning that things broke down last August, and that most of the food aid was never delivered. A much-heralded U.S. program...

A UN agency reports that North Korea’s food production this year will be up slightly over last year’s, which is a lot like predicting that the Nasdaq will perform better next year than this. The production figure of 3.3 million tons of cereals is still far short of the North’s total needs — 800,000 tons short — and lower than the average annual production of the post-famine period. At the same time, the WFP and FAO are both saying that...

Recently, I was arguing with an influential supporter of a soft-line approach to North Korea about food aid.  Generally, we both supported the provision of food aid, and both of us acknowledged that the regime would use every means at its disposal to divert that aid to loyalists, high-ranking cadres, and the military. We agreed that Kim Jong Il doesn’t see the lives of all North Koreans as having equal value. We diverged when it came to what U.S. policy...